This blog specializes in heavy metal music and how it relates to Washington DC and the surrounding area. Featuring info on upcoming metal concerts in Washington DC, Baltimore and Virginia, as well as info on local bands, area concert venues, reviews of live gigs, and lots of give aways.
Thanksgiving has come and gone and the holiday season is officially upon us. That means it’s the perfect time for a church burning ticket give away! Let the notorious Norwegian black metal legends Mayhem darken your holidays this Friday, December 1st, when they play the Baltimore Soundstage with Immolation and Black Anvil. We know you’ve got presents to buy on top of bills to pay so we’re going to give away a free pair of tickets to this show to one of you lucky readers. To enter: just leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite black metal song is. Then this Wednesday, Nov 29th at 5pm EST the contest will close and a winner will be chosen at random (using Random.org) from all valid entries. Be sure to enter using an email address you check regularly so I can contact you if you win. Don’t worry, I won’t add you to any spam lists or sell your info or anything sleazy like that. If I haven’t heard back from the winner in 24 hours another winner will be chosen at random. If you can’t wait to see if you win or the contest is already over when you read this, then you can get tickets from Ticket Fly for $23 here.
Mayhem is one of the original bands from the infamous second wave of black metal that arose out of Norway in the early 90s. On this tour they’ll be performing their classic 1994 album De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas in its entirety along with some of their other songs too. Also performing will be Immolation, a death metal band from New York that has managed to keep their sound intense without getting stale over the 30 years of their existence. New York City based black thrashers Black Anvil will open the show. Now check out these videos from the bands performing and let me know your favorite black metal song in the comments!
This Sunday, November 26th, metalcore masters Hatebreed are playing the Baltimore Soundstage with local death metal legends Dying Fetus! We’re so excited for this show that we’re giving away a pair of tickets to this show to one of you lucky DCHM readers. To enter: just leave a comment on this post telling me what metal band you’re most thankful for. Maybe they’re your favorite band, maybe they helped you through a rough time or maybe they did something super awesome for their fans or a charity or something. This is a short running contest due to the holiday this week so don’t wait to end because at 6pm EST on Wednesday, November 22nd the contest will close and a winner will be chosen at random (using Random.org) from all valid entries. Be sure to enter using an email address you check regularly so I can contact you if you win. Don’t worry, I won’t add you to any spam lists or sell your info or anything sleazy like that. If I haven’t heard back from the winner in 24 hours another winner will be chosen at random. If you can’t wait to see if you win or the contest is already over when you read this, then you can get tickets from Ticket Fly for $23 here.
Hatebreed formed in the late 90s and released their 8th studio album, The Concrete Confessional, last year. It was their first release on Nuclear Blast Records and it peaked at 25 on the Billboard charts, showing that they’re still hitting hard after all these years. Dying Fetus is bringing the slamming riffs to this show as well. They just released their latest album, Wrong One to Fuck With in June so we’ll finally get to hear some of those sick new tunes live. Code Orange is a hardcore punk band from Pittsburgh who released their third album, Forever, on Relapse Records earlier this year. Opening the show will be the Los Angeles based Twitching Tongues, a band that blends doom metal with hardcore. Be sure to check out these videos from the bands below and leave a comment telling me which metal band you’re the most thankful for!
Band: Omnislash Album: Slash ‘Em All! Release Date: 9 June 2017 Buy as mp3s ($8.91) from: Amazon Buy on CD ($10) from: Bandcamp
DCHM writer Tal is back with this in depth review of Baltimore based traditional/thrash metal band Omnislash’s sophomore album. Be sure to check out the video game inspired music video at the end of the post when you’re done reading.
We’re pretty spoiled in the DC area with a good number of local bands that sound like pros, and yet somehow I’m always surprised when I find another one. Omnislash is one of those bands. I had heard of them for possibly years, but had never been in the right place at the right time to actually see them live. Their recent album Slash ‘Em All! convinced me that I need to change that ASAP.
If Iron Maiden was a little faster and thrashier, that might describe Omnislash’s sound. They’re melodic like Iron Maiden, with mostly cleanish vocals, anthemic choruses and an upbeat vibe, but given to blistering thrash rampages. They at once claim to combine “the best elements of glam, thrash, power metal, death metal, hair metal, and classic rock” and to represent traditional heavy metal from “a time before the metal scene became fragmented.” I suppose if we hearken far enough back into the 80’s, it might be possible to do both at once. Certainly, Omnislash seems to combine all those diverging genres into one cohesive whole – thrash outbursts flow into expansive choruses, the vocals go from gritty to near operatic, and heavy riffs give way to melodic bridges or speedy solos, in such an organic way that nothing sounds out of place.
After an acoustic/neoclassical intro, the album starts off with rocking riffs with just a little thrash dirtiness, and a vicious scream from vocalist Jeremy Phoenix. True metal, all right. The first song, “Empires Fade,” is exemplary of the album – at once melodic, groovy and touched with thrash grittiness, and impossible to sit still for. The vocal style, clean yet forceful and sometimes rising into a scream, is reminiscent of harder power metal bands like Iced Earth. In another parallel to Iced Earth, there seems to be a historical theme to the song, which I first noticed with the line “Rome controls the Nile.” In an interview in Shockwave Magazine, Jeremy indicated that the song is about “that moment in time when it could have been the Egyptian Empire but it became the Roman Empire.” The wailed, “Run for your life” in the chorus can’t help evoking Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills,” as well.
There are several catchy songs you’ll be rocking out to in your mind long after the album’s done playing, but the catchiest has to be the title track (and band theme song?), “Metalliation Revengeance (Slash ‘Em All).” With the racing, driving rhythm and insistent, somehow danceable lead guitar, you won’t be able to help starting a toxic waltz wherever you are. Then it goes into a horn-throwing, sing-along chorus and bridge, complete with “woah’s” for the full metal experience. But don’t take my word for it; check out their hilarious video at the end of this post. I can just imagine this as the climactic closing song of their live show.
This is just the middle of the album, however, so the songs keep on coming. The most aggressive songs are in the second half: “Nuke the Moon” and “Not One Step Back,” the former about Project A119, a US Air Force project from the 1950’s that planned to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon, and the latter about the Battle of Stalingrad. There’s also a ballad of sorts, “Gothenburg,” if a song with pummeling thrash percussion and machine-gun guitars can be called a ballad just because it has more drawn-out and emotional vocals. “Blood Feud” is a song with furious aggressive verses and a catchy chorus that oddly reaches its anthemic height at the end of the chorus. Since I just finished reading Hillbilly Elegy, I can’t help wondering if the song has anything to do with Appalachia, since that book’s author, J.D. Vance, had some not-so-distant ancestors that took part in some pretty violent blood feuds in that area.
The band’s lyrical themes are another parallel to Iron Maiden, with a more historical bent than most thrash metal, although they still focus on typical thrash themes of war and violence.
One downside to the album, which might have been out of the band’s control, is that the production quality isn’t as good as I’ve become used to for some of our local bands. Some might argue that this is part of the band’s 80’s thrash vibe, but for me, it’s a detriment to the album. For instance, the furious beginning to “Nuke the Moon” sounds like a mess. It would be much more effective at showcasing the band’s technical virtuosity – not to mention more enjoyable as a thrash barrage – if I could hear everything going on. The rest of the album isn’t that bad, but it’s still poor enough that this is one of the rare cases where a pair of good headphones doesn’t help, and actually takes away from enjoyment of the album, since the sound quality issue becomes so distracting.
Sound quality aside, Slash ‘Em All! is a great album, putting Omnislash among the ranks of stellar local bands in the DC area.
We here at DCHeavyMetal.com are very proud of local metal head Danica Roem! Yesterday she was successfully elected to Virginia’s House Of Delegates to represent the state’s 13th district, which covers Manassas Park City and parts of Prince William County. Her historic win has garnered her headlines across the nation and world. While I’m totally psyched to see the first person from our area’s metal scene elected to office, the reason this grabbed headlines is the fact that Danica is transgender, and now the first ever transgender person elected to office in Virginia. I stopped by her victory party last night to join in the celebration (and make sure our area’s metal heads were representing!) and snapped the photo above. Danica gave a moving victory speech (embedded below) to the packed room and even gave a shout out to metal heads at the beginning! Though she ran on fixing traffic on Route 28 and paying teachers more, her win was important to many outside of her district as well.
It’s really awesome to see one of us making headlines and causing change in such a positive way. Arch Enemy frontwoman Alissa White-Gluz even made an Instagram post (here) about how she used to crash on Danica’s couch back in the day when she played Jaxx/Empire. Be sure to check out the party thrash band Danica fronts, Cab Ride Home, by streaming their 2017 album Crash The Gate below.
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