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.
So after a miscommunication about my photo pass on Sunday, May 4th, 2014, I finally got to photograph the final band of the Revolver Golden Gods Tour’s stop at the Fillmore Silver Spring. I’m not going to do a whole review of the show here, though it was pretty fun. Guitar solos and pinch harmonics (those high pitch squeals you hear) were in high abundance but the band slowed it down some for a few songs as well. “In This River,” a tribute to Dimebag Darrell that had Zakk Wylde putting down his guitar and playing a piano that was brought on stage, was a nice lull in the energy that most of the other songs had. I’ve always been a much bigger fan of Zakk’s work with Ozzy Osbourne, but regardless of who he’s playing with the man can shred live, as evidenced by the extended guitar solo that lasted so long you could have chugged a beer between its start and finish. And did I mention the excellent lighting? What a fun band to not only photograph but just see lit up so well on stage. In all it was a really fun show, I just wish I had gotten into the venue early enough to catch Down, but that was beyond my control, unfortunately. You can check out some of my favorite photos that I shot at the show below, click on them to see them larger if you’d like, or just click here to view the entire set.
The set list that Black Label Society played was:
Intro———————————————-
My Dying Time
Godspeed Hell Bound
Destruction Overdrive
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The Rose Petalled Garden
Heart Of Darkness
Intro———————————————-
Overlord
Damn The Flood
-solo-
Parade Of The Dead
Fields Of Unforgiveness
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Angel Of Mercy
In This River
Intro———————————————-
The Blessed Hellride
Suicide Messiah
Intro———————————————-
Concrete Jungle
Stillborn
Papa Emeritus and his band of Nameless Ghouls will be playing at the Fillmore Silver Spring on Wednesday, May 14th as Ghost returns to the DC area. This week we’re giving away a pair of tickets to this show to get you as excited about this show as we are! To enter: leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite Ghost song is. If you need help you can find their discography listed here. If you’re not a huge Ghost fan but are more into one of the other bands on the bill, then tell me what you favorite song by one of them is instead. At 5pm EST this Friday, May 9th, a winner will be chosen at random (using Random.org) from all valid entries to receive two tickets to the show! Be sure to use a valid email 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 right now for $26.50 from Live Nation here.
The anonymous Swedes of Ghost have their true identities shrouded in mystery but one thing is for sure, they know how to put on a killer live show. From their costumes, stage backdrops and lighting to their super catchy riffs and chorus lines Ghost is quite the musical spectacle to behold. They’ll also be playing with King Dude, a dark and moody rocker from Seattle, who should be great at setting the stage for Ghost. In addition, the opening act for this show of the tour only will be the Flying Eyes, a psychedelic rock band from Baltimore. Now check out these killer tunes by Ghost and King Dude and tell me what your favorite Ghost song is in the comments!
Zakk Wylde and his band Black Label Society, along with Phil Anselmo and Down, are coming to the Fillmore Silver Spring on Sunday, May 4th, and since this show looks so damn good we’re giving away a free pair of tickets to it! To enter: leave a comment on this post telling me which band at this show you’re the most excited to see! Also appearing with BLS and Down is Devil You Know and the Butcher Babies. At 5pm EST this Friday, April 25th, a winner will be chosen at random (using Random.org) from all valid entries to receive two tickets to the show! Be sure to use a valid email 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 right now for $43 (after fees) from Live Nation here.
Zakk Wylde is best known for being Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist for many years but his personal band, Black Label Society has made a name for itself by following their motto: strength, determination, merciless, forever. Their acclaim is no surprise when you’ve got a guitar player as talented as Zakk is! But let’s not forget Down, the New Orleans band that Pantera vocalist Phil Anselmo currently rages in. Their southern style of stoner/doom/sludge is a perfect pairing with BLS. Also appearing on the tour is Devil You Know, the Los Angeles based band featuring Howard Jones of Killswitch Engage on vocals. The opening support for this stop on the Revolver Golden Gods tour comes from the Butcher Babies. Be sure to check out these killer new tunes by all the bands playing the show and tell me what your favorite band on the bill is in the comments!
Sunday the 13th of April 2014 marked the final night of the 2014 Decibel Magazine Tour and it was at the Fillmore Silver Spring. The headliner was Carcass, making their first DC appearance since reuniting in 2008, though they have played Baltimore twice since then. Each stop on the tour had a local opener and for this show it was Coke Bust, a straight edge hardcore band. I got there in time to see them but there was a problem with my photo pass at the box office and I didn’t get the pass in hand until Coke Bust had finished their set. A shame since I’ve seen them before but never on such a big stage. The second band to play was Noisem, a band of very young guys from Baltimore. I don’t think any of them are even old enough to drink yet. Noisem wasn’t another local opener though, they were on the entire tour, and as such they’ve certainly been getting a lot of exposure outside the area as well. They play a rather catchy style of death/thrash that’s a throwback to the 90s. Their vocalist Tyler Carnes was pretty high energy on stage, at least when he wasn’t fighting with the mic chord that was wrapped around the stage monitors. He jumped down into the photo pit area several times during his set, you may have seen me trying to avoid running into him while photographing him down there, and he ran up to people and would scream lyrics at them. This must have been pretty cool to people close up but for anyone not right in front, well, they probably had no idea what he was doing. Their set was good though and the band looked good on the Fillmore’s nice, big stage. A cover of Terrorizer‘s “Fear Of Napalm” with guest bass by Alejandro Corredor of Nausea was fun and gave Noisem’s regular bass player the opportunity to stage dive.
The next band to play was technical death metal band Gorguts. The Canadian band only has one member from its pre-reunion days, guitarist/vocalist Luc Lemay, but the band was always really his to begin with. For some reason he was off to the left of the stage most of the time, an odd place for a lead vocalist even if he was also playing guitar. Two members of the techy instrumental band Dysrhythmia, a personal favorite band of mine, are in Gorguts so I’m definitely a fan of the current line up. They were absolutely crushing on Sunday at the Fillmore. They are probably the most brutal band to ever play there and while Gorguts only played five songs, each one was performed expertly. They closed out their set with their classic song “Obscura” which was punishing. This is the band I was most excited to see at this show and they did not disappoint! Luc Lemay was manning the band’s merch table most of the night and was very friendly with fans, shaking hands and taking photos with them. If you missed their incredible set don’t worry, they’re playing the final day of Maryland Deathfest this year, Sunday, May 25th, and they’re playing on one of the big outdoor stages so tickets won’t sell out.
The next band to play was The Black Dahlia Murder, a melodic death metal band from Michigan that, I’ll admit, I’ve never really been a fan of. I’ve seen them several times over the years since they tend to play with bands I like but I’m not really familiar with their music. A lot of people seemed to really dig their performance but I just wasn’t one of them so this part of the show was, for me, used to talk to various people I knew that were there. This isn’t to say that their set was particularly bad, though I could have done without the “big titties” comment from vocalist Trevor Strnad, it just wasn’t my kind of music and it wouldn’t really be fair of me to judge their overall performance.
The next band to play was the headliner, Carcass. They played Maryland Deathfest last May as one of the headliners, but that was before they released their new album, last year’s Surgical Steel. Sunday night’s set list (see it here) was fairly similar to the one they played at Maryland Deathfest, except a few older songs had been removed to make room for several new songs. While Surgical Steel seems to have been well received by most fans, I didn’t like it at all so the loss of older songs in the set list for newer ones was a bummer for me. Overall the audience didn’t seem to mind and I suppose if you’re really into the new material this was your first chance to hear it live. The new song “Captive Bolt Pistol” certainly got a bigger mosh pit than “Exhume To Consume” did, and only hearing three songs from Necroticism: Descanting The Insalubrious was a bummer to me, but overall I got what I expected, mostly songs from Heartwork and Surgical Steel. I thought Carcass’ performance was much better here than at Maryland Deathfest where they seemed a bit rusty. Part of this might be due to the band having played so many more shows recently. Bill Steer and Mike Amott replacement not Bill Steer Ben Ash traded solos seamlessly and the band just seemed tighter overall this time. Jeff Walker sure talked a lot between songs and speaking with people after the show there seemed to be two sets of thought on this: some people loved it and found it very entertaining while others found it rambling and annoying. Sometimes he had some interesting or funny things to say about the band’s origins or the Chicken Man, but sometimes he said things that had me wondering why he was still talking. Like when he made a comment about how being vegetarian or vegan is a choice like being gay is (what?) and how the last time the band was in DC his only memory was of how confused he was by an overweight, black, lesbian Neo-Nazi at the 9:30 Club (again, what?). It didn’t take away from the show too much I guess but I certainly don’t remember him talking that much the last couple times I’ve seen them live. Anyways, even if this Carcass show wasn’t my ideal show, they did play material from every era of the band to at least have something in there for every Carcass fan. Plus a show like this brings out a lot of people and it’s always awesome running into so many familiar faces. Be sure to check out my photos and videos from the show below and feel free to leave a comment telling me about your experience at the biggest metal tour to come through our area this April.
Carcass is a band that started as vegetarian grindcore and evolved over the years into one of the pioneers of melodic death metal. They broke up in 1995 only to return recently with last year’s release of Surgical Steel and now, on Sunday, April 13th they’ll be playing songs spanning the entire history of the band at the Fillmore Silver Spring as they headline the 2014 line up of the Decibel Magazine Tour. We here at DCHM are pretty damn excited about this tour and so we’re going to give away a free pair of tickets to this show to one of you lucky readers. To enter: leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite Carcass album is. If you need help you can find their discography listed here. If you’re not a huge Carcass fan but more into one of the other bands on the tour, then tell me what you favorite album by one of them is instead. At 5pm EST this Friday, April 4th, a winner will be chosen at random (using Random.org) from all valid entries to receive two tickets to the show! Be sure to use a valid email 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 right now for $26.50 from Live Nation here.
Not only are death metal legends Carcass playing this show but a ton of other great bands as well. The Black Dahlia Murder is from Michigan and the melodic death metal band’s 2013 release Everdark might be their best album yet. Canadian techdeath masters Gorguts have also reunited and they’ll be destroying eardrums at this show as well. Gorguts may be the most brutal band to ever grace the stage at the Fillmore Silver Spring! Baltimore’s death/thrash upstarts Noisem are really starting to take off and they’ll be on the entire tour, not just our date, and for good reason: their high energy live show slays audiences! And for this date of the tour only straight edge hardcore band Coke Bust will be opening the show. Now that’s what I call a killer line up! Be sure to check out these killer tunes by all the bands playing the show and tell me what your favorite Carcass album is in the comments!
Get ready to start painting the devil on the wall cause this black Friday on DCHeavyMetal.com we’ll be giving away a pair of tickets to see Megadeth at the Fillmore Silver Spring on Wednesday, December 4th! You don’t have to get up early, wait in line or navigate through mobs of soccer moms to get in on this deal though, all you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post telling me what you think the best gift for a metal head this holiday season is. Concert tickets? Iron Maiden Beer? An ugly Dying Fetus sweater? A giant back tattoo of Dimebag and Jeff Hanneman playing dueling guitar solos while Satan crowd surfs in the audience?!?! Give me your best ideas and this (black) Friday, November 29th at 5pm EST a winner will be chosen at random (using Random.org) from all valid entries to win the tickets. Be sure to use a valid email 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 Live Nation right now for $45 here.
Dave Mustaine and Megadeth will be playing ‘deth songs new and old which will definitely keep you warm on this cold December night. But to get things started we’ll also be getting sets by industrial metal pioneers Fear Factory and Florida nu-metal band Nonpoint. So tell me what the most metal gifts are this season, I need some ideas ’cause people have been asking! Now be sure to check out these killer tracks from the bands playing and of course have a great Thanksgiving everyone.
DCHeavyMetal.com 