Concert Venues | DCHeavyMetal.com

Metal Show Of The Week: Hush

Who? Hush
When? Saturday, October 19th
Where? Velvet Lounge (map)
How much? $8 cash at the door

This week’s pick for the metal show of the week goes to Hush at the Velvet Lounge on Saturday, Oct 19th. All of the bands on this bill are worth checking out in their own right even if you can’t make this show. I’m not just saying that to be nice either, it really is a stacked line up. First up the band Hush comes from Albany, New York and brings a dark and angry form of sludgy doom metal to town. If you’ve never heard them before then be sure to download their Untitled I album here (you name the price, even free). If you like slow and heavy metal then you’ll like these guys.

Hush is a good band, no doubt about it, and it’s definitely worth checking them out in a close up live setting like this, but this show has an excellent line up of local metal bands playing as well. The Osedax is a local atmospheric doom metal band and I can tell you these guys are an excellent live band. Their songs are doomy and yet leave you energized. You can download a song of theirs for free here. Also on the bill is Fortress, a local favorite of mine (if you count Hagerstown, MD as local). Their live show is Motörhead level loud but slow and heavy like lava oozing from a volcano. You can download their demo for free here but you’ve really got to see them live to truly experience the force of their sound (tip: bring ear plugs!). And let’s not forget local black metal band Thrain. The three piece has no bass player but they make up for it by not giving a shit about bass and writing some shredding dual guitar black metal anyways. Some of you may recognize the band’s ginger front man James Healy, the guy who fixes up guitars for metal heads around the area at Old Town Lutherie. You can also grab Thrain’s demo for free here.

In addition to the four bands the Philly based indie label Dullest Records will be setting up shop for the night so you vinyl collectors might want to bring a few extra dollars cash. In all, this is a great line up with a dark touring band and three excellent local bands, and it’s just $8! The Velvet Lounge is on U Street right around the corner from the 9:30 Club and as such it’s easily reachable by Metro. Doors open at 9pm and the first band goes on at 9:30. Please note that it is ages 21+ only. I hope to see some of you there, it’s going to be a hell of a dark show! Now check out these clips of the bands from YouTube, a couple of them are live recordings so you’ll have to excuse the low sound quality on those.

October 17, 2013
Categories: Metal Show Of The Week, Velvet Lounge, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: Doom Metal, Fortress, Hush, The Osedax, Thrain, Velvet Lounge . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

Saint Vitus ticket give away

Saint Vitus

Many years ago Scott “Wino” Weinrich was told, by Ian MacKaye (of Minor Threat and Fugazi fame), of a doom metal band out in LA called Saint Vitus. Wino ended up moving from the DC area to California to become the front man for Saint Vitus and doom metal history was made by this perfect matching. Now Wino and Saint Vitus are coming back to the area to play a show at Empire on Sunday, October 20th and we’ve got a free pair of tickets to give one of you lucky readers! To enter just leave a comment on this post telling me what song you’d like to hear Saint Vitus play live the most at this show. You can see their discography here if you need some help. At 5pm EST this Friday, October 11th, 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 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 Amped & Alive for $17 here.

Along with Saint Vitus on this tour there will be psychedelic sludge band Zoroaster performing as well as a high energy set by punk/metal/rock band The Hookers. Local support will be from DC’s stoner riff masters Borracho. In all that’s a damn solid line up! Now check out these songs below by the bands playing and tell me what song you want to hear Saint Vitus play live.

October 7, 2013
Categories: Contests, Doom Metal, Empire, Stoner . Tags: Borracho, Doom Metal, Empire, Saint Vitus, The Hookers, Wino, Zoroaster . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 15 Comments

New DCHM T-Shirt Design Revealed

Some of you may have seen me out and about wearing the new prototype for the next DCHeavyMetal.com t-shirt design featuring a parody of the classic Black Sabbath Vol. 4 album cover with Richard Nixon taking Ozzy’s place. From Sleep to Darkest Hour it seems like almost everyone has parodied this design so why not DCHM? I came up with the idea myself but I think we can all agree that RJ Mahoney did a great job executing the artwork and I think it’s another design that screams heavy metal and DC at the same time.

I’m ready to get these out to you guys so starting right now until Monday, Sept 16th we’re going to do a presale for these killer shirts. And you may have heard of this show I’m putting on at the Fillmore on Sept 26th, the DCHM 4th Anniversary Party (details here). If you buy a ticket to the show from DCHM and a shirt with it we’ll have a reduced price for you and the shirt will be available for pick up at the show.

All shirts will be black and the men’s shirts will be Gildan (a common band shirt brand). Women’s will be either Bella or District Threads. They’re all printed by MiNDJACKET Designs who printed my previous shirts. Now, here’s the pricing…

Men’s S-XL and women’s (girly cut) S-XL will be $15 each, shipped.

If you buy a ticket to the DCHM 4th Annivesary Party from us at the same time, the total will be $22. That’s $5 off! This option is only available for shirt pick up at the Fillmore the night of the show (the ticket will be mailed to you). If you’d like to purchase a shirt and multiple tickets, just add $12 per additional ticket.

Add an extra $1 for men’s XXL. Contact me if you need a size larger than that and we’ll work something out. This fee is for both the shipped option or the DCHM 4th Anniversary pick up option.

Add $1.50 per shirt if you are paying via Paypal using a credit/debit card (you do not have to pay the extra $1.50 if you paying with Paypal directly from a bank account). This fee is for both the shipped option or the DCHM 4th Anniversary pick up option.

If you’d like to purchase a ticket and not a shirt you can do that for $12 shipped (you must order the ticket from me by Sept 22nd to guarantee shipping on time).

To pay with Paypal go here and send money to:

DCHeavyMetal@Gmail.com

You don’t have to have a Paypal account to use it to pay. Be sure to include a note in the Message section with whatever address you want the item(s) shipped to and what size you want. If for some reason you don’t send the note properly, just email me from the same email address you made your payment from with the size and shipping info. If you don’t send me the right amount I’m just going to refund your purchase and you’ll have to try again.

I should have a few of the shirts in the new design at the show, but they will be more expensive than I’m selling them for here, will be sold for cash only and will be limited to the quantity at the show. I will also be at the Pinch on Thursday, Sept 12th with tickets for sale. The excellent Corsair is playing there that night and it’s a free show too so stop by if you can. Details are listed here.

I hope you all like this design as much as I do. I’m trying hard to keep costs as low as possible. If you have any questions about any of this feel free to send me an email at DCHeavyMetal@Gmail.com

September 11, 2013
Categories: Fillmore Silver Spring, Shameless Promotion . Tags: Black Sabbath Vol. 4, Merch, Merchandise, Presale, Richard Nixon, T-Shirt, T-Shirts . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 2 Comments

Four Year Anniversary

This September DCHeavyMetal.com turns 4 years old and I’m really trying to make it special with all kinds of great things, online and offline, to celebrate. There’s going to be more posts on the site this month, including a few album reviews which are in the works as well as a good old fashioned concert review or two, something I haven’t posted too recently. I’m also working on an app for Android users which will let people pull up the concert calendar on their phones very easily as well as some other features like an interactive map that will use your GPS location data to tell you what concert venues, record stores and other businesses in the area that are metal friendly are near you. This should make traveling to these places much easier if you’ve never been there before. I should also be selling not one but TWO new t-shirt designs this month that I hope you all like as much as I do. I can’t wait to reveal them! Now some details about some of the other things DCHM will be doing to celebrate our 4th anniversary…

To get things started, right now we’re giving away a pair of tickets (before they even go on sale) to see Slayer, Gojira and 4Arm at the Fillmore Silver Spring on 11/19. To enter you just need to send me the title of your favorite Slayer song either on Twitter (send it to @MetalChris) or you can leave a comment on the Facebook post here. The winner will be chosen at 5pm EST on Thursday, Sept 5th so don’t wait!

This Sunday, September 8th, you’ll find me at Port City Brewery in Alexandria as I co-host Metal Night IV there with their metal head brewer Will! The event is free and there won’t be any bands playing but we’ll be playing metal on the speakers all night from a playlist that you guys send in songs for. You can send song requests (limit 2 per person) to Will via Twitter (@PCBCBrewMetal) or via email at Will@PortCityBrewing.com. Since the brewery is releasing their Oktoberfest beer this metal night is having an Oktoberfest theme, meaning think of your favorite metal songs with a German theme or by bands actually from Germany (Blind Guardian, Kreator, Necrophagist, Sodom, etc…) You can send in non-German songs too, and local bands are always welcome on the list. There will be nine beers on tap for Metal Night IV including rare releases such as Deracho, Maniacal (named after the Cannibal Corpse song with that title) and my personal favorite, the smoked porter named Two. In addition to all that, we’ll have lots of prizes to give away, including tickets to upcoming area metal shows like Pelican/Coliseum at DC9, another pair of tickets to Slayer, and tix to several shows coming to Empire. More details and info can be found on the Facebook event page here.

And you may have heard by now that there will be a big DCHeavyMetal.com anniversary show at the Fillmore Silver Spring on Thursday, September 26th! I’ve got some of my favorite local bands, as well as the excellent sci-fi themed thrashers Vektor, playing this show! And these aren’t just any locals on the bill: the beer soaked heavy riffs of Borracho will be sure to please any Sabbath fans (isn’t that all of us?) and the guitar wizardy of Midnight Eye is going to sound great at the Fillmore! The opening act is Asthma Castle, a stoner metal band from Baltimore featuring Adam Jarvis (of Misery Index and Pig Destroyer) on drums. There will be more surprises to be announced about this show as well, so join the Facebook event page (here) and I’ll keep you up to date! I hope a lot of you can come out to this one, if there’s a good turn out I might be able to do more of these, plus it will be cool seeing these bands on such a big stage! You can get tickets for $12 here.

Last but not least a big thank you goes out to everyone who helps make this site, and the area’s metal scene, what it is. Checking out local bands, suggesting new tunes to people, going to concerts big and small all around the area, forming bands, setting up shows and just spreading the metal word any way you know how, it’s all of you who make this area’s metal scene awesome. I wouldn’t be doing this still after 4 years, advertisement free mind you, if this area’s metal scene sucked. I may keep this website alive but it’s all of you metal heads in this area that keep the scene alive here in the DMV and give me something to keep writing about. I hope to have many more reviews, improvements, fun events and of course ticket give aways for many more years to come. Keep it heavy everyone and remember: support the scene you’re a part of!

September 3, 2013
Categories: Fillmore Silver Spring, Shameless Promotion, Thrash Metal, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: 4Arm, Gojira, Slayer . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

Gorguts ticket give away

Gorguts

The French Canadian death metal band Gorguts is coming to Empire (formerly Jaxx) in Springfield, Virginia on Thursday, September 5th! They haven’t played the area since reforming and one of you lucky readers will win a free pair of tickets to the show. To enter just leave a comment on this post telling me which old school metal band you hope reforms to make a come back next and at 5pm EST this Friday, August 30th, 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 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 Amped & Alive for $16 here.

In the 90s Gorguts put out some excellent technical, yet very brutal, death metal albums but ended up going on hiatus in the new millennium. They reformed to play a set at Maryland Deathfest in 2010 which was awesome but lacked any new material. Well the new Gorguts album Colored Sands is coming out and I can tell you that having heard an advance copy already, it’s sick. This isn’t a recreation of past glories, this is a modern evolution of the classic Gorguts sound and there’s even some surprises in there too. If getting to see Gorguts play their classic songs plus some of their killer new material live wasn’t great enough there’s also direct support coming from Richmond’s Inter Arma. They released their first album on Relapse earlier this year and have been putting on some outstanding live performances in support of it. Seriously, catch these guys live and you’ll become a fan. There will also be sets by March To Victory from Pennsylvania and locals Acid Deth Kvlt. Now check out these awesome new songs by Gorguts and Inter Arma as you decide which old school metal band you wish would come back next!

August 26, 2013
Categories: Contests, Death Metal, Empire, Local Band Info, Tech Death . Tags: Acid Deth Kvlt, Empire, Gorguts, Inter Arma, March To Victory . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 16 Comments

Philip Anselmo to answer fans’ questions

Philip Anselmo, the famed vocalist for bands like Pantera, Down, Superjoint Ritual and others, is coming to the Fillmore Silver Spring on Sunday, August 18th with his new band, Philip H. Anselmo & The Illegals. And because “Music Media Is My Whore,” the first track off their debut full length Walk Through Exits Only, isn’t just a song title, Philip will be taking over the DCHeavyMetal.com Twitter account to answer fan questions! When Philip has finished dominating our Twitter account he’ll pick whichever question he thinks was the best and the person who asked it will win a pair of tickets to see his band play their original songs as well as some classics from his previous bands at the Fillmore Silver Spring!

So if you haven’t already, get a free Twitter account (here) and on Tuesday, August 13th at 5:30pm EST you can send questions to @MetalChris on Twitter with the hash tag #PhilipAtFillmoreSS. Philip will read your questions and answer them from the @MetalChris account. This won’t be on Facebook or any other social media site, this is an exclusive to the DCHeavyMetal.com Twitter account. If you just want to follow along, with or without a Twitter account, you can do that by going here, but you’ll need an account to be able to ask questions. I’m pretty excited for this exclusive opportunity to let my Twitter account become a mouth for war for Philip Anselmo so start brainstorming some questions for your chance to win those tickets!