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.
Band: Terracide Album: Existence Asunder Release Date: 6 June 2014 Buy digital or CD for $10 on Bandcamp: Here
Here’s another album review by Tal and you can of course read more of her writings on her personal blog In My Winter Castle. I’ll keep this short and let you get right into it.
It’s not too easy to find an epic melodic metal band that’s local to the DC area, so the debut full-length Existence Asunder from Washington, DC’s Terracide is a welcome addition. It’s an extravaganza of melodic guitar, alternating between aggressive melodeath riffs and high-flying power metal epicness, with a few proggy melodies thrown in for good measure. The album also brings more death metal thunder than their EP, Primordium, would have led one to expect. As for vocals, Terracide mainman Daniel Tidwell’s voice ranges from a low growl, to a harsh shriek, to harsh singing, to high clean vocals. To further muddy the waters, the album even forays into metalcore territory, with a touch of angst in some of the clean choruses and even a few breakdowns – but I can forgive them since it doesn’t sound out of place or detract from the melodic punch of the album. Who doesn’t mix half a dozen different genres these days anyway?
My favorite track is probably “Your Heaven’s Falling.” It’s actually one of the less melodic songs on the album, but it’s definitely the most headbangable. It starts off fast and thundering, gets really groovy for the chorus, and then revs up to circle-pit pace again in the second verse. Some other standout heavy tracks are “Halo Delusion,” with its epic melodic chorus anchored by rumbling growls, and “Stars Align” with its speedy melodic lead over very headbangable bass thunder. The more aggressive songs on the album put me very much in mind of Slaughter of the Soul era At The Gates, with their furious pace, the epic feel of their raging, melodic riffs, and the driving heaviness of their slower parts.
Other songs go more straightforwardly in an epic direction, notably “When Roses Bleed” and “Installation 04 (September 2552).” These songs include harsh vocals, but besides that they have more of a galloping NWOBHM or power metal sound even in their more forceful parts. The high, clean choruses, such as in “Installation 04,” certainly have a power metal flair, as do a few of the more flamboyant solos, such as two minutes into “Feed the Flame.” Another nice touch is the melancholy yet beautiful piano intro to “When Roses Bleed,” composed and played by guest musician Yoko Mada. It lasts for one third of the song and is so lovely that it brings tears to my eyes; it contrasts strongly with the charging energy when the speedy metal part of the song gets started.
The epic, power metally parts of the album tend to be songs from the band’s EP, such as “Installation 04,” and parts of “Mirrorborn” and “Forge of Empty Souls.” The songs that are new on this album have a much stronger death metal feel, with a Gothenburg sound in particular. I wonder what precipitated this change, though I for one can appreciate both styles. I sure wouldn’t mind if they continued to mix these sounds, as long as they keep dazzling us with melodic guitars, whether epic or thundering. I’m looking forward to hearing what this band will do next, and I’m excited to see how their sound and career will develop.
The Dutch symphonic power metal band Epica will be playing the Howard Theatre in Washington DC on Tuesday, October 23rd and you can win a free pair of tickets to this show here on DCHeavyMetal.com! All you have to do to enter is give me a good reason why you want to go to this show by leaving a comment at the end of this post and at 5pm EST on Friday, October 19th I’ll pick one winner at random (using Random.org) from all the valid entries to win the tickets to this killer show. Be sure to enter with a valid email address you check regularly so I can contact you if you win. If I don’t hear from you in 24 hours then I’ll pick another winner to get the tickets. Don’t worry, I won’t add you to any email lists or anything like that, I hate spam too. If you enter more than once then all of your entries will be disqualified. If you simply can’t wait to see if you win the contest you can get tickets from Ticket Master here for $23.
Don’t let redhead Simone Simons’ good looks fool you, she’s not just up there to look pretty. She can really sing and Requiem For The Indifferent, their album released earlier this year, is definite proof. I’ve posted their latest music video below so you can listen for yourself. This will be the area’s first chance to hear any of Epica’s new material live and I’m sure they’ll play some older classics as well. There are several other bands on this tour as well including Alestorm, a pirate themed metal band from Scotland. Insomnium is a melodic death metal band from Finland with some very heavy riffs. System Divide is a band with members from Europe, the Middle East, and various parts of the US including their guitarist, Steve Miller, who area metal heads will recognize as the guitarist for local death metal band Loculus. The opening act is Blackguard, an up and coming epic metal band from Montreal, Canada. That’s a hell of a line up coming to the Howard Theatre, a new venue with great sound in DC that is just around the corner from the 9:30 Club (and just as easy to get to). So check out the songs below, one by each band playing, and tell me why you want to be at this concert!
Iron Maiden is one of the world’s most famous metal bands and it’s always a big deal when they come to town. They played at Jiffy Lube Live (formerly Nissan Pavilion) on Saturday June 30th as the DC area stop on the Maiden England Tour and of course I was there. It was a scorching hot day and it stayed hot even after dark. There was a massive storm that swept through the night before and many people still didn’t have power so this show was a bit of an escape for people who were getting cabin fever. Iron Maiden draws a bunch of metal heads from across the genre lines and this show was no different. Since they’re one of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal bands they’re old school enough that parents bring their kids and everyone enjoys the show. There was also a big draw from places like Richmond and Virginia Beach since the tour wasn’t stopping anywhere closer to those areas.
The parking lot opened at 4pm and the gates at 6pm but opening act Alice Cooper didn’t start til almost 7:30pm. In other words, there was plenty of time to grill and drink a few before in the hot sun before the show. I saw Alice Cooper in 2010 opening for Rob Zombie at Merriweather Post Pavilion and I was really blown away by his live show then (check out my review of that show here). However this performance wasn’t even close to as good as that one. They didn’t have nearly as elaborate of a stage set up and other than Alice’s trademark decapitation by guillotine they didn’t really do any of the entertaining stunts on stage. This left a heavy focus on the music which, let’s be honest here, is a bit dated. I liked his 2010 show so much that I had high hopes for this one but it was a total let down. At least he played Feed My Frankenstein, the song everyone knows of his after being in the movie Wayne’s World, which always gets me to chuckle a little.
OK so surely Iron Maiden wouldn’t disappoint right? Long time readers of the site will remember my review of their last concert in the area (read it here) back in July of 2010 wasn’t exactly glowing. Back then the set list wasn’t great and the weather was awful on top of it all. This year’s tour is a sort of throwback theme to the Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son era of the band and the set list was probably the best thing about this show. They played five songs off of Seventh Son, including the title track which they hadn’t played in over 20 years before this tour. They also played a ton of crowd pleasing classic tracks like The Trooper, Run To The Hills and Number Of The Beast. They also played some more obscure songs for the old school fans such as The Prisoner and Afraid To Shoot Strangers. There were a couple hits I’d have liked to have heard that weren’t played, Hallowed Be Thy Name is a personal favorite of mine they chose not to perform, however they did play a 14 song set with a three song encore and really nothing they played wasn’t worth including in the set. You can check out the set list for yourself below, keep in mind the covers and Churchill thing were recordings.
So aside from the set list, the show itself was fun as hell. There were lots of back drops and Bruce Dickinson costume changes (I always jokingly hope he’ll come out in a gold plated diaper just once for the lulz!). Of course there were strategic pyrotechnics and a few Eddie appearances as well. Basically it was the action packed show you’d expect from Iron Maiden. Bruce Dickinson was running around the stage, well, mostly on the big raised up stuff on stage. My only problem with his performance was his voice seemed a bit off in a few places. He seemed very conscious of this though and while his voice kept up on most of those classic chorus lines it was on some of the verses that his voice seemed to waver a bit. Still, he handled it like a pro and kept his best moments for when everyone was really paying attention to his lines the most. Maiden’s triple guitarist shred fest was in full effect as well, switching seamlessly between leads and solos, even when they shifted to different band members. Aside from some of the nuances of the set list, there wasn’t much at this show you wouldn’t expect to see if you’ve seen Iron Maiden a few times before, but that isn’t a bad thing with a band that is known for consistently having great performances. For newer fans this was a great show to catch for a first Iron Maiden concert. Sorry I don’t have any photos, the band wouldn’t give me a photo pass because they have some policy about not giving them to online only publications. That kind of sucks doubly because I haven’t seen a live review of this show with photos from any of the local newspapers either, so I guess everyone loses on quality photos at this concert. Before the show I ran into one of the DC Brau guys, a local brewery in Washington DC, and it’s great to know some of them are metal heads. This also might explain why some of their beers have metal names like On The Wings Of Armageddon and Burial At Sea. I ran in to a lot of friends at the show and it’s always nice to see so many of the area’s metal heads all out like this. After the concert I drunkenly handed out a bunch of stickers to people stuck in traffic in the parking lot. In all, it was a hell of a lot of fun and totally worth the hang over the next day. If you’ve got some cool pics or videos feel free to post links to them in the comments below, or even if you’ve got a fun story about your experience there. Sorry it took so long to get up but my internet still hasn’t been restored since the storm which makes running a website kind of hard to do. Until next time, keep it metal everyone and support the scene you’re a part of!
Sometimes it seems like I run a shit load of contests on here and not much else. While I’m constantly working on updating the Upcoming Metal Concert Calendar the actual written posts haven’t been coming up as much lately. I have plenty of excuses like car trouble and getting sick and march madness, but I have gotten so far behind on some things that it is a bit ridiculous. I just recently finished going through all my concert pics from January, and I’ll post some of them below with a few notes about the shows they were at. You can of course click those images to see more of those bands. There are still more contests coming up soon. I love giving away free concert tickets and other stuff to the readers of the site and I hope I can continue to do so for a long time. There have been a lot of great performances by some of the area’s local acts this year and a few have even put out some high quality music videos. I did a post on that in February that you can read here though now there is another to add to the list, the below video for A Sound Of Thunder‘s song Murderous Horde. They’re having their CD release show this Saturday at Empire (formerly Jaxx).
This Sunday, April 1st (no joke!) a local black metal band, Fuchida, will be performing live for the first time at the Black Cat of all places. The venue is mostly known for appealing to the indie rock and alternative scene and I’m hoping there is a good turn out for this show so maybe they’ll consider hosting more extreme metal bands. You might be thinking that there are already places for local metal bands to play live in this area but how many of them aren’t pay-to-play? This is a local metal act headlining a show at an area venue that doesn’t make them sell tickets or sign a contract that involves them giving the venue money. We should be supporting that, even if we don’t know what the band sounds like yet.
The following Sunday, April 8th, there is another venue in Washington DC that will be hosting a metal show that doesn’t usually have them. The U Street Music Hall is normally home to dance and techno music (sort of filling the void left when Nation closed). They’re hosting their first metal show on this Sunday night, the old school UK thrashers Onslaught and a band you may not recognize by name, Mpire Of Evil, that features two ex-members of the legendary Venom. Not only that but they even play some Venom songs in their set list (details of their first show on this US tour here). The venue is said to have a great sound system (you just know those electronica DJ guys are good at setting up speakers) and it isn’t very often you get to see 80s thrash metal in a club with a great sound system set up. And really, when are you going to get to hear live Venom classics sound better than this? One of the venue’s owners even posted to Twitter (here) that he’d like to see more metal shows at the U Street Music Hall so I hope a good amount of you come out to show it is worth it! To make this all even sweeter, DCHeavyMetal.com will be giving away a pair of tickets to this show next week, so keep an eye out for that.
Another thing I’d like to mention is that this month, March 2012, has been DCHeavyMetal.com’s best month ever in regards to total hits. You people who read this site, even if it’s just for the calendar, who spread the word to your friends, passed along the link of Facebook and Twitter, or even just stumbled upon it with Google, have made it worth all the work and time it takes me to run it. I don’t really make any money doing this (I do sell a few shirts here and there) and I refuse to put any paid ads on the site so if you’d like to donate a few bucks to the site you can send money via Paypal to the email address: DCHeavyMetal@Gmail.com Any donation is appreciated of course and will be put towards either making the site better or paying my way to get into more metal shows. Now, on to the photos…
I saw Jucifer back on Friday the 20th of January 2012 at the Black Cat and as always they put on a great show. This husband and wife duo truely live the lifestyle as they tour the country in their RV bringing their brand of sludge metal from city to city 12 months a year. And if you couldn’t tell from the mountain of speakers in this photo, they take the wall of sound thing quite literally. Be sure to see them next time they come through the area and bring ear plugs!
The next night, Saturday the 21st of January was a big night for Northern Virginia’s metal scene. One of the area’s biggest bands, King Giant, was having their CD release show for their sophomore album, Dismal Hollow. On top of that, this was the grand re-opening show for Empire, the new name of the venue formerly known as Jaxx. Not my best night of shooting photos but I mean, with a line up of Auroboros, The Crimson Electric, Borracho and King Giant, it would have just been wrong for me to not be drinking beer and whiskey all night. I shot a couple videos that night including the one below of King Giant playing Pistols And Penance off of the album. I also added a photo below showing some of the interior changes they have made at the venue if you haven’t seen them yet.
Tuesday the 7th of February found me at the Black Cat again, this time to see southern sludge metal band Hail!Hornet play on the back stage. There was a showing of the film Slow Southern Steel at the beginning of the show, a movie about heavy metal in the American south, but I missed that. The Atlanta, Georgia based psychedelic sludge band Zoroaster played after they did with a really trippy light show, and finally Hail!Hornet took the stage and killed it. They’re a band featuring members of Buzzov•en, Alabama Thunderpussy and Sourvein so you knew they were going to bring some great filthy sludge metal and they didn’t disappoint.
Now I’ve got to skip a few bands because I simply haven’t gotten to sorting all of their photos yet. The above image is of Dorthea Cottrell of the Richmond based doom band Windhand when they played at St. Stephen’s Church in Columbia Heights on Saturday, March 3rd. I won’t write much about that show here because I did a review of it covering all four bands who played it here.
On Tuesday March 13th I found myself at the 9:30 Club to see California thrash act Warbringer and Floridian power metal band Iced Earth. I had been given a photo pass for that show, though for some reason it was only valid for Warbringer’s set. To add to my frustration I was feeling sick and while it was cool too see Warbringer play on a bigger stage, I just wasn’t up for Iced Earth by the time they played. When Iced Earth’s new singer, Stu Block of Into Eternity fame, started making juvenile sexist comments about giving the shocker to the women in the audience I decided I’d had enough and took my infected self home.
I’m skipping over talking about an excellent Dysrhythmia show I saw in Baltimore here but I wanted to mention last night’s Alcest show at DC9. They put on a excellent performance of a set list made up of mostly their new album’s material. It did go on a bit long I thought, but it was still a pretty great experience. The lighting was pretty dim though making it hard to take photos, and the fog machine was jacked up the entire show making it even harder to get any great shots. Because of this I decided to make some animated gif images from some of my series of shots. I did see Alcest open for Enslaved in September last year so you can see some higher quality images of the band I shot by clicking the gif if you’d like.
Well, that’s all for now, thanks for reading DCHeavyMetal.com and if you’d like more updates on things like when local bands are making announcements or area venues and media have things to say about metal be sure to check out DCHM on Facebook and Twitter (your choice, I post most things to both). Keep it metal everyone and remember, support the scene you’re a part of!
Because giving away tickets to see Rammstein and Iron Maiden/Alice Cooper this week just wasn’t enough DCHeavyMetal.com is giving away a pair of tickets to see Iced Earth and Warbringer at the 9:30 Club on Tuesday 13 March 2012. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post below telling me which song you’d like to hear one of these bands play at the show. If you need help you can see both bands’ discographies here and here. Make sure you enter in a valid email address you check regularly when you submit your comment so I can contact you if you win, though it doesn’t need to be in the comment itself. On Monday, March 12th at 4pm EST the contest will close and I’ll select a winner at random (using Random.org) from all the comments below to win the pair of tickets. Don’t be a jerk and enter multiple times or I’ll disqualify all your entries. And please don’t enter if you can’t make it to the show!
This concert will be Iced Earth’s first show in the DC area with their new vocalist, Stu Block, also of Into Eternity. In October 2011 the Florida based band put out their first album with Stu, titled Dystopia, and it has gotten good reviews from both fans of the band and critics. It seems like Stu was the kind of change the band really needed. Support on this tour comes from one of the hottest bands of the modern thrash metal wave, Warbringer. They come from Southern California and have been shredding people’s faces off everywhere they play. If you don’t want to wait to see if you won you can get tickets to this show from Ticket Fly for $25 here. Now check out the latest music videos by both of these bands featuring songs they each released late last year and enter the contest in the comments below!
Well here’s something great for you readers of DCHeavyMetal.com, I’ve made an agreement with Live Nation to give away pairs of tickets to two of the biggest concerts coming to the area! Rammstein is playing the 1st Mariner Arena (formerly Baltimore Arena) in Baltimore on Wednesday 25 April 2012 and Iron Maiden with Alice Cooper on Saturday 30 June 2012 at Jiffy Lube Live (formerly Nissan Pavilion). One thing I hate about going to big concerts is sitting in the way back squinting to see exactly what the hell is going on so I’m not giving away nose bleed or lawn tickets but for both shows I’m giving away great seats! Rammstein will be premium floor seats and Iron Maiden will be in the 100 section. And of course for each show the tickets will be next to each other. All you have to do to enter this awesome contest is post a comment below telling me which of these two concerts you’d like to see the most. Unlike my past concerts, you CAN win tickets to both concerts so enter for both if you’d like! Be sure to use a valid email address that you check regularly when you enter so I can email you when you win. Don’t worry, I won’t put you on any email lists or sell your info, I hate spam just as much as you do. I’ll pick the lucky winner(s) at random (using Random.org) from all valid entries at 5pm EST on Friday 9 March 2012. Now read on below for more info about each of these concerts.
Rammstein is from Berlin, Germany and are the biggest band from the Neue Deutsche Härte scene there, a style of music that blends hard rock, industrial and metal. In December of 2011 they put out a compilation album that is a retrospective of the band’s entire history, aptly titled Made In Germany 1995-2011. This tour is to support that release and you can bet they’ll be playing a lot of material from their entire back catalog. On thing Rammstein is famous for is their theatrical live shows which use a ridiculous amount of pyrotechnics. And I’m not talking about a few fireworks here, they do things like walk around with 20 foot flames flying out of their costumes! Even if you don’t win the tickets from me you’ll want to be up close to really feel the heat coming from the stage, this isn’t your average performance. If you don’t want to wait to see if you win or the contest is already over when you read this, you can get tickets to this concert right now here for $47 – $90. This show is on Wednesday 25 April 2012 and starts at 8pm.
Iron Maiden is the biggest of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) bands from the 80s. Lots of those bands have broken up or faded from the spotlight but not Iron Maiden. Their last concert in the area, in 2010 to support their latest album, The Final Frontier, was a rainy day and featured mostly newer material by the band. However this time they’ll be playing a more “best hits” oriented set list so expect to hear classics like Run To The Hills and The Trooper this time around. The opening act is Alice Cooper, the original shock rocker. You probably know him for 80s classics like School’s Out and No More Mr. Nice Guy but his newer material has been much darker. You know he’ll bring an entertaining show with him featuring various magic tricks including his trademark, decapitating himself via guillotine! Another great show you don’t want to be in the back for, so be sure to get seated tickets even if you don’t win them here. If you don’t risk losing out on good seats by waiting for this contest to end, you can get tickets now here from $40 – $109.25. This concert is on Saturday 30 June 2012 and starts at 7:30pm (and remember, Jiffy Lube Live has gotten rid of its no tailgating rule).
Well, those are your two choices. Check out these classic videos by these three classic bands:
DCHeavyMetal.com 