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Recap of the first Metal Night at the State Theatre

Wow what a night for local metal! Friday the 20th of August 2010 was the first metal night at the State Theatre in Falls Church, Virginia and it was a pretty fun time. Four local bands played, Invader, Croatoan, King Giant and Timelord, and the event was organized by an employee of the State Theatre, Alan Margazano. Since this was the first of hopefully many local metal nights at the State Theatre, I didn’t really know what to expect. Word from management was that if they could sell 200 tickets the night would be considered a financial success and more metal nights would be scheduled in the future. This meant that it was important that people actually came out to this event and showed that there is a real interest in metal in the area. There was no way that I was going to miss this call for local metal heads to assemble, even if I wasn’t running this blog I’d have gone.

I got there at about 8:15 and the first band, Invader, had already started playing. I didn’t know if there would be like 20 people there when I walked in or what, but there was already at least 75 people inside the venue at that point. Invader had also recently played at the Blood And Fire Festival in July (you can read my review of that here) but they had played before I arrived then. I’m glad I got to see them this time, they put on a fun set of thrashy death metal including a cover a Slayer‘s crowd pleasing classic Raining Blood where the vocalist and drummer switched roles. Even if you don’t include the cover, their set consisted of a lot of mosh-friendly riffs and a ton of raw energy coming from the stage. You could tell they were having a lot of fun and were happy to be playing. Their set was long enough you could get a good idea of what they were about, and they were a great band to start off the event on a high note.

The next band up was Croatoan. I didn’t know much about these guys. They weren’t bad, but they seemed to have not really found their sound yet. Different songs seemed to be in different genres. One more more death oriented, one more traditional thrash, another doom. Don’t get me wrong, they were fun to watch, and they were certainly having fun entertaining the audience. Their vocalist, Emil Poss, had a good banter with the crowd going between songs, and they didn’t lose my interest through their entire set either. I just think a more defined direction would help these guys out. There’s certainly room for them to grow and I look forward to seeing them again in the future to see how they’ve progressed. They did get the pit going a few times, and I have to admit it was kind of surreal seeing a circle pit at the State Theatre.

After Croatoan played there was a long break before the next band, King Giant, started. This made it a good time to get a beer and/or order food from the bar. There wasn’t a whole lot of food to chose from on the menu, pretty standard burgers and fries (there was a veggie burger too) with the only thing a little different being the hummus. I’ve got a pic of the menu here if you want to check it out. The beer menu was certainly more filled out, though there were a couple draft beers that had run out. They did have a decent selection of bottled beer too, including a couple non-alcoholic options, as well as a fully stocked liquor bar too. You can check out the picture I shot of the beer list here. After each band played they’d hide the stage with a movie screen that dropped down and displayed various images on the screen. Often logos for the band playing next, or a funny images from the internet. They would also play samples of music by metal bands selling merch in the back of the room. These were local bands who weren’t playing this evening, but were hoping to play future metal nights. The upstairs balcony seating was closed, so people were confined to the downstairs main floor, which had tables as well as a standing room only pit area directly in front of the stage. Alan would get up on stage before each band played and introduce them as the movie screen raised up behind him revealing the next act.

When King Giant hit the stage the venue was really alive. They had the largest draw of the evening and probably should have been playing last. I won’t get into a long description of the band and their sound here, I reviewed them playing at the 9:30 Club three weeks ago and you can read that here if you want that. In short their sound is a very polished and distinctly southern heavy metal. They have a clear vision of their sound and they bring it to the stage very well, this night being no exception. They were a bit different in sound than the rest of the bands playing, but I think that’s great. Part of the draw of Metal Night, at least for me, is seeing a mixture of bands from different sub-genres exposing each other’s fans to new music they wouldn’t have heard before. I’m sure there were some people who didn’t like the sound as much, there always is, but I talked to several people who were impressed with King Giant and they certainly won some new fans this night. Their set wasn’t as long as it had been at the 9:30 Club, but it still had fan favorites like Solace and Mississippi River in there. In all, it was another good live performance by one of the area’s best unsigned metal bands.

Next up was the final band of the night, Timelord. I’ve seen them on the calendar opening for bands at Jaxx before, but never gotten the chance to see them. Alan introduced them as an Iron Maiden influenced band and he wasn’t kidding. Vocalist Matt Aub certainly has a likeness to Bruce Dickenson in his vocal tone, though he is also playing guitar while singing. These guys definitely knew how to play their instruments and their set was full of killer guitar solos and even a drum solo at one point. I think calling them Maiden influenced thrashy power metal would probably best describe them. Unfortunately, power metal isn’t my favorite metal sub genre and while their set wasn’t bad by any means, it was probably better suited to fans of the genre more than myself. The songs didn’t have a lot of variation, which isn’t always a bad thing, but when paired with my lack of interest in power metal I found myself getting distracted and talking to people. Fans of old school heavy metal, NWOBHM, and power metal in general would probably enjoy these guys a lot more than I did. At one point a couple of the guys from Invader showed up on stage with them and started headbanging. After their final song, Cult Of The Dead, people were chanting for them to play more but the movie screen started lowering and people knew the concert was over.

The first metal night ended a few minutes shy of midnight. Afterwards Alan announced over the PA system that the night had been a success and the next “Monthly” Metal Night at the State Theatre would be held in October. The event was hell of a lot of fun, and I spent a good amount of time talking to people. Throughout the night I saw a lot of familiar faces from the area’s metal scene and got the chance to meet some new people and bands too. I picked up some new music and also got to check out some bands play that I’d never seen before. On my way out the door Alan told me over 230 tickets had been sold, plenty more than the 200 needed to ensure more metal nights at the State Theatre in the future. They’ve got a big stage with great lights and a good sound system too, it’s very cool that they’re giving real metal a chance to use it. It’s really amazing that this all came together from it’s beginnings as a Facebook group page (join it here for updates on future metal nights). They’re already starting the search for the next event’s band line up and you can make suggestions for that here. I’d like to see more genres represented at the next one, maybe some black and doom and a bit less thrash. Also, you can check out videos I shot of each of the four bands who played at the end of this post and view the photos I’ve posted here. The event’s turn out was good and while Alan deserves a lot of credit for putting this all together as well as the bands who played, all the people who got off their asses and came out and bought tickets for a night of local metal deserve a big thanks for making it not only possible but successful enough to ensure another metal night. Lets keep this ball rolling and get even more people to come out to the next one on October!

August 22, 2010
Categories: Concert Reviews, Death Metal, Local Band Info, Power Metal, Sludge Metal, State Theatre, Thrash Metal, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: Band, Concert, Concert Review, Concerts, Croatoan, Gig, Heavy Metal, Invader, King Giant, Metal, Metal Night, Monthly Metal, Music, State Theatre, Timelord . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

Review of King Giant gig at the 9:30 Club

On Saturday the 31st of July 2010 I went to the 9:30 Club for my second metal concert of the weekend. While I went to the Black Cat the night before to check out a few touring black metal bands (you read that review here) this concert was not very similar at all, for several reasons. There were three local bands playing, though I only saw the headliner, King Giant. That’s right, a local metal act was headlining the 9:30 Club, a rare event indeed. These guys are a sort of southern sounding sludge band, I guess. It’s hard to explain their sound perfectly, though I could easily see them opening a tour with bands like Baroness or Down.

Before I even stepped into the venue you could see a row of motorcycles outside, as well as a very strong police presence. I’m not sure if there was a problem there before I arrived, but it was a bit offsetting. Once inside I saw there was a pretty good turn out for a show of local acts. The place wasn’t full by any means, the upper level had only a handful of people, but the floor level was mostly full. I got there about 10 minutes before the show started and easily walked right up to the front of the stage. I’d asked what the camera policy for the night was at the door and they said there wasn’t one, video and pics were all ok. Perfect! I ended up getting what I’d call my best pictures ever at the 9:30 Club. This was a good thing as these guys were very memorable and fun to watch on stage. I can’t remember the last time I saw a band live that had members wearing cowboy hats, but it was a vastly different audience than had been at the Black Cat the night before! They didn’t have much else on stage besides their instruments and amps, tho they did have a bottle of Jack up there as well as some rather randomly placed taxidermy of small woodland creatures. The band’s lead singer, Dave Hammerly, was very engaging on the stage, throwing his hands up in the air, pumping his fists, occasionally headbanging a bit and just generally walking around on the stage like he owned the place. He did a great job of keeping the audience engaged between songs. For example, this concert was on the birthday of their bass player, Floyd Walters, and at one point in the set they poured him a shot on stage and instructed everyone to take a birthday toast with him. Dave even went so far as to apologize to the women and children in attendance before playing the song Mississippi River. This song was the song I had wanted to see them play the most live, and I certainly wasn’t the only one as it got a great reaction from the audience, to which Dave quipped that it was funny how the songs about killing people get the best responses. But this is a band that has quite a few good songs, which is really saying something considering they only have one full length album out. Their music isn’t super complex, but it’s very well polished, especially for a local act, both in the studio and live. The lyrics tend to be very dark and sometimes quite personal, often dealing with personal and inner struggles. I enjoyed the entire set though the songs Burning Regrets and Solace, as well as the above mentioned Mississippi River, really stood out to me in the live setting.

I really didn’t find a single song they played all night to be boring at all, it was really entertaining the entire way through and I could see these guys getting noticed outside of the area. They’ve got some music for download at this location (some is free, some you have to pay for) if you’d like to check them out. The pictures I shot of King Giant that night can be seen here, and below I’ve posted the videos I shot. The volume of the vocals isn’t great on the ones I shot close to the stage, though the Mississippi River song has much better sound since I shot it from the upper level. Unfortunately it has the worst visuals as the lighting didn’t show up as well up there. After all this if you want to see these guys play live (and you really should), you’ve got a great chance coming up on Friday 20 August 2010. King Giant is one of the bands playing at the State Theatre in Falls Church, Virginia for their first ever metal night. I’ve got more info on that, including how to buy tickets, posted here. It should be a great night of metal, and if it’s half as good of a show as this was, it’ll be worth the price of admission. Now here’s the videos, enjoy!

August 2, 2010
Categories: Concert Reviews, Local Band Info, Nightclub 9:30, Sludge Metal, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: 9:30 Club, Concert, Concert Review, Gig, Heavy Metal, King Giant, Metal, Music, Nightclub 9:30 . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 1 Comment

The State Theatre To Host Their First Metal Night

The State Theatre in Falls Church will host its first ever Metal Night on Friday 20 August 2010. The concert will feature four local metal acts of various heavy metal sub genres, all sharing the stage for a night of metal. The bands that will play this epic local concert are Timelord, King Giant, Invader and Croatoan. Each band will have tickets for sale for $10. You will also be able to get tickets directly from the venue, but there will be some service fees depending on how you pay. The State Theatre box office will have tickets starting at $10 advance and $12 the day of the show, but buying them at the door will incur a $1 service fee, over the internet will be a $4 service fee and over the phone will be a $6 service fee. The State Theatre also has a $3 security fee for people ages 18 thru 20. You can buy tickets from the State Theatre online here or call the box office directly at (703) 237-0300 from noon to 6pm Mon-Sat (or noon to 11:30pm days there is a show). Remember, you can get tickets directly from the bands themselves for just $10 with no fees so I highly recommend that. You can buy tickets from Timelord by emailing them at TimeLordMetal@Yahoo.com (they will accept Paypal) and you can buy tickets from Croatoan by emailing them at CroatoanMetal@Gmail.com and you can contact Invader for tickets by messaging them through their MySpace page here. If the event does well financially for the venue, they plan on making it a monthly event, so lets show them the Northern Virginia metal scene isn’t dead!

The event will be 18+ though it can be all ages if accompanied by your parent (it must be your parent, not an older brother, uncle, friend’s parent, etc…). There will be a full service bar and food will be available too, selling standard wings, burgers, fries and the like. As per the State Theatre’s policy, all unattended beverages will be thrown away with no refunds to help prevent under age drinking. The venue has an outdoor smoking section as well (and they do allow re-entry from the smoking area) and you can bring your drink with you so there’s no reason to leave one unattended anyway. The event will have doors open at 7pm and the first band will probably be on at around 8pm. Bands will have merch for sale at the venue, so bring some cash to pick up a shirt or a demo or something if you particularly enjoy some of the acts. This kind of event should be a great way to check out some of the best metal acts in the area as well as hang out with fellow metal heads, network, and help build the metal community in Northern Virginia. Again, if it does well this event could become monthly and will feature different bands every month, so if you’d like your band to play on this stage at some point, help get people out to this event! We can build the community here in Northern Virginia and get more and more bands exposure, but only if people actually, ya know, come out and watch some bands play.

The whole event got started when Alan Margazano, a metal head employee of the State Theatre, had an idea for a metal night at the historic venue in Falls Church. He started a Facebook page to see if people were interested in the idea at all and there was a positive response backed with a rapid viral spreading of the Facebook page. After the group swelled to over 500 members in under a week, Alan proposed the idea to the management at the venue and got the green light. You can join the group by going here and he has also created an event page on Facebook you can join/send to your friends here. The bands have now been assembled and the first metal night should be a fun event catering to fans of various sub genres of metal. Timelord and Croatoan are thrash based acts while King Giant has a sort of southern sludge sound along the lines of bands like Down and Baroness and Invader has a more old school vibe I could see fans of NWOBHM bands like Iron Maiden really getting into. You can listen to these bands on their MySpace pages by clicking their names above. Timelord has tickets for sale via Paypal if you send $10 to the band’s email address: TimeLordBand@Yahoo.com If you don’t have a Paypal account you can purchase tickets from them in person in Springfield by contacting them with that same email address. If you’d like to purchase tickets from Croatoan just email CroatoanMetal@Gmail.com. You can purchase tickets from Invader by messaging them on their MySpace page here. I will have info on how to purchase tickets from the other bands soon. You can see the State Theatre’s event page on their website here. I’m hoping this goes well and we’ll get to see more metal bands of all sorts of genres at the State Theatre in the coming months.

Again, you can buy tickets online from the State Theatre here, and if you’d like to help spread the link to this page around on the internet, you can use this short link: http://wp.me/pDCET-qn

July 26, 2010
Categories: Local Band Info, Shameless Promotion, State Theatre, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: Bands, Concert, Croatoan, Falls Church, Gig, Heavy Metal, Invader, King Giant, Local Bands, Metal, Metal Night, Music, Northern Virginia, State Theatre, Timelord . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

Review of Blood And Fire Festival at KC’s

On Saturday the 10th of July, 2010 I headed down to Fredericksburg to a gathering of bands from Washington DC and Northern Virginia. This was the first Blood And Fire Festival and was held at KC’s Music Alley. The doors opened at 2pm but there was no way I was going to get down to Fredericksburg that early. I got there a little after 6pm and found the parking lot packed. I’d never been to KC’s before so I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but I hadn’t counted on the lot being completely full. I did find a spot eventually, and made my way inside. Orgy Of The Damned was on the stage when I went inside. I had met their drummer back in May at Maryland Deathfest and I’m glad I got there in time to check them out. They were a group of pretty young guys with a lot of youthful excitement and seemed to really be enjoying themselves on the stage. They had some technical difficulties (an unfortunate theme for the night really) and someone mentioned to me that their vocalist had been sick, but they made the best of it. During one of the breaks to fix equipment they played an impromptu cover of Napalm Death‘s one second song You Suffer, that was pretty entertaining. I thought it was kind of funny when the singer got a member of the audience to sing into the mic “I’m a fieces fiend”, haha. They also played a cover of Belphegor‘s ridiculously titled song Bondage Goat Zombie when they were told they had time for one more song.

The next band I saw was a black metal band from Leesburg, Virginia called Immortal Decay. Their bass player was in full corpse paint, and they had some deer antlers on the mic stand. Their singer had a lot of fun poses to watch, and the band had a lot of energy on stage. It was during their set I realized just how shitty the sound set up was at this venue. For most of their set I was standing in the middle very close to the front of the stage. From there you couldn’t hear the vocals at all. I didn’t shoot any video of these guys because I thought the mic was just out and didn’t want to make a shitty recording. At the end of their set I moved around a bit and realized that if you moved to the sides of the stage near the speakers you could hear the microphones much better. By the time I figured that out their set was almost over. I did enjoy their set though, and even if I couldn’t hear the vocalist he was putting on a good show. While most bands would try to get the audience moshing by spinning their hand or just telling the crowd to, this guy actually jumped off the stage and ran into the mosh pit, mid song! Now that is getting the audience into the show, haha! One of their guitarists, who was rather tall, was also helping with the showmanship. Between him and the vocalist it was hard to keep your eyes away from the stage. Their sound was certainly black metal, heavily distorted guitars making a wall of sound with rather aggressive riffs and fast paced drumming. They were pretty entertaining and I wouldn’t mind having some of their mp3s on my iPod. UPDATE: Immortal Decay posted a video of them playing the song Rotting Altar at the Blood And Fire Festival on their YouTube page here.

After they finished playing I went to the bar area for a bit. The entire venue is divided down the middle, one side with the stage area and the other had the bar and pool tables, as well as a foosball table and a lonely Tekken Tag arcade game. This created a bit of a problem, since you really couldn’t drink while watching the bands. I asked the bartender about this, and she said that apparently the guy checking the door was just looking to see if people were over 18 and not if they were over 21, so they didn’t have a way of knowing if people underage were drinking or not if they allowed people to bring their alcohol into the stage area. They had pretty cheap beer, I’d forgotten how cheap it is to drink the farther away you get from the city. They had $1.50 PBR drafts, and $2 Corona bottles, can’t find that anywhere inside the belt loop. Since I wanted to eat, drink, and talk to people a bit, I had to miss a few of the bands because of the set up though.

Anyways, the next band I watched was Apothys. They’re probably the most popular death metal band in Northern Virginia these days, and for good reason. They put on a good show and play some cool tunes too. I certainly got into the show when they played their song Venomcrest. They moved around on stage quite a bit, and kept the audience excited with their guitar solos and general stage presence. They had the largest size crowd of the night, partly because they’re fun to watch, but also because when their set ended, everyone under 18 was kicked out of the venue. I don’t know if Fredericksburg has a curfew or if the Virginia ABC has a law about it or maybe it was just the venue’s decision. Regardless, the bands who played after certainly had a smaller crowd to play for, and since the place was divided, this meant just as many people were left hanging out in the bar area, including me! I found myself talking to various locals, fans, band members, girlfriends, and pretty much anyone in my vicinity. I got the bartender to put one of my bumper stickers on the edge of the shelf holding up the TVs over the bar, which was pretty cool, and I handed out a bunch more of my stickers to people. It’s always cool when people recognize me from the site too, especially since you can’t really see my face on there since I’ve got corpse paint on. After a couple more bands played it was time to check out the final act of the night, Hatred.

Hatred has been playing the DC area since the early 90s. They’re a sort of old school thrashy death metal band. They were pretty fun to watch, as usual. Most of the people in the bar area moved out to see them play too, which was cool. It was nice to see people had stuck around to watch them. They played songs from most of their back catalog, not just stuff from their 2009 album Burning Paradise. At one point during the set they switched bass players, I’m not sure what happened there but that was kind of strange. The second guy sure had a lot more stage presence, as evidenced in the videos I posted below. They played a rather long set and the people there were chanting for them to come back after the last song was played. I don’t know if it was scheduled or not, the set list didn’t mention it, but they came back to play a final song that ended around 1am. That wrapped up the first Blood & Fire Festival, which I have to say was a pretty fun experience. I don’t know if anyone ever claimed the ticket raffle prizes (the winning ticket numbers were 55 and 57) and I didn’t even know there was a raffle until Apothys announced they were picking the winners on stage. They did have some of the coolest concert tickets I’ve ever seen, much nicer than the generic blue & white from Ticketmaster. They were black and red with flames and shit, pretty metal. There were certainly sound problems throughout the event, and the curfew thing was strange, but in all it was nice to see a bunch of local bands take some initiative and get together like this. I know Apothys had a big hand in organizing it, I’m hoping they put another one together in the future, just maybe not as far away as Fredericksburg next time. With that, I leave you with the videos I shot at the concert, the first is Orgy Of The Damned, the next two are Apothys and the rest are Hatred. Enjoy!

July 13, 2010
Categories: Black Metal, Concert Reviews, Death Metal, KC's Music Alley, Local Band Info, Thrash Metal, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: Apothys, Blood And Fire Festival, Concert, Concert Review, Hatred, Heavy Metal, Immortal Decay, KCs Music Alley, Music, Orgy Of The Damned . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 1 Comment

Album Review of Heirs To Thievery by Misery Index

Well, this is my first music review blog post. I doubt I’ll do these as regularly as my concert reviews but they will probably show up from time to time. Just for future reference, I’m only going to review material by local bands or bands that at least have some sort of tie to the area, in this case the new album Misery Index just put out May 11th, Heirs To Thievery. If you’re in a local band and want me to check out your stuff for possible review here, you can send me an email with a download link at DCHeavyMetal@Gmail.com Now I’ll get started with the review here, but first some background…

Misery Index was originally formed when most of Dying Fetus left that band, I suppose due to a falling out of some sort, and Jason Netherton, Sparky Voyles and Kevin Talley started a new band. Jason and Sparky are still in the band but Kevin has gone on to be in Dååth, and you may have seen the video of his audition for Slayer floating around on the net several years ago too. Now I have to say when I first heard that Kevin had left I was rather worried because I think he’s just a fucking fun drummer to listen to play. The first time I saw Misery Index after he left I was unsure how a new drummer would fill in those shoes, but Adam Jarvis totally blew me away to the point that he wasn’t just replacing Kevin, he was surpassing him! He really brings the drumming intensity to another level for the band. They’ve also had a few other guitarists go in and out the door too, but their line up seems pretty stable now with the inclusion of Mark Kloeppel several years ago. This album is a good example of how they are moving forward with this line up. Now on to the music on the album itself…

The album starts off with a quick song, Embracing Extinction, and it’s relentless. It’s under 2 minutes long and really sets the tone for the album. Fast, aggressive, brutal and short. The whole album is under 35 minutes long, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A full hour of this sort of intensity can get monotonous and I think they did a good job of giving the album enough variation that it doesn’t get stale and ending it before it does. While some of their previous work had some slower, I guess groovier parts and riffs, there isn’t as much of that on this one. Even one of the slower tempo songs, Carrion Creed, still has a nice rolling drum beat in the back that makes you want to step on the gas petal. There’s certainly a good mix of death, grind and punk in this album, as would be expected in a Misery Index album. And while they will probably always draw comparisons to Dying Fetus, they certainly have more of a punk edge than Dying Fetus does. While that may be so, this is by no means a crossover album, and I think there’s less of a ‘core sound in there than on their previous album, Traitors. This album seems more aggressive than that one too. One thing I don’t particularly like about this album is the way the vocals sound. I don’t know if Jason is using some weird distortion with reverb or a layering effect or what, but sometimes it comes out pretty weird. If you listen to the chorus in The Spectator you’ll hear what I’m saying. Maybe it’s one of the other guys helping out on backup vocals, but combined with the awkward tone the leads have on this one, it’s sort of distracting. The final song on the album, Day Of The Dead, has part of it’s chorus in Spanish and the vocal sound combined with the repetitive lyrics in the chorus kind of ruin that song for me. But this isn’t American Idol music here, the vocals aren’t the main attraction and great songs like You Lose and the title track more than make up for it on this solid album. I really can’t wait to hear some of this material live. I missed their last area concert when they kicked off the Facemelter Tour with Dying Fetus at Sonar in Baltimore this month, but maybe I’ll get to see them play the Ottobar on Friday 11 June 2010 with Goatwhore and Revocation. You can get more info on that on my Upcoming Concerts page.

I’m not particularly big on reading lyrics to metal songs, I tend to like deciphering what I can for the most part on my own through listening, but for this review I looked at them a bit. I think a good way to get a general idea of what an album is really about is to check out the title track’s lyrics. On Heirs To Thievery the title track seems to be a Chomsky inspired critique about how much of what is in the history books taught to us in school is propaganda, particularly in how the US was stolen from the natives. Thus, we who are living in the US now are the heirs to the theft of their land/culture. Well, that’s what I get from it at least, and you can see this in the album cover art too. I particularly liked the line: “Eliminate the natives (and leave them a museum!)” If you’ve ever seen the National Museum of the American Indian Smithsonian museum on the National Mall in Washington DC from the outside, you’ll know it looks like modern European abstract architecture, but it’s covered in yellow stucco (or something). I guess the yellow stucco is representative of native american culture? The song’s lyrics sort of remind me of the Iron Maiden song Run To The Hills in that sense, but also because it’s kind of odd hearing that point of view from a band of white guys. In this song they also mention how the expansion of the US was built on slavery. Much of the other songs’ lyrics on the album are pretty typical political death/grind fare, though there is nothing wrong with that. This post is long enough already so you’ll have to find them yourself if you want to know the details. I actually like reading Jason’s blog Demockery, you can check that out here, which will probably give you a better idea of his views which are nothing if not well thought out.

Overall, I wouldn’t call this the best Misery Index album ever, but it’s still damn good and certainly worth getting, especially if you like any of their stuff already because you’ll certainly enjoy this one too. It still has that classic Misery Index sound but they keep progressing as a band too, enough to keep it from getting stale. Fans of bands like Nasum, modern Napalm Death and Brutal Truth will love this, but even if you’re just looking for something to simply bang your head to, their trademark combination of catchy riffs and sheer brutality will definitely do the trick.

May 21, 2010
Categories: Album Reviews, Death Metal, Grind, Local Band Info, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: Album Review, Band, Death Metal, Grind, Heavy Metal, Heirs To Thievery, Local Bands, Metal, Misery Index, Music . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 1 Comment

Maryland Deathfest The Movie Presale

Maryland Deathfest The Movie is now available for presale at this location. If you order a copy before the first day of Maryland Deathfest 2010 on May 28th, you will get the DVD as well a poster and you will be entered into a drawing for the entire Handshake Inc. DVD library and a 3 day pass to Maryland Deathfest IX in 2011. It’s price is $15 presale but I couldn’t find out what the shipping costs are. Apparently they will have a booth set up at this year’s MDF and if you preorder you can pick up your DVD and poster there. As far as I can tell the movie was not made by the group who runs Maryland Deathfest, but it is sanctioned by them. (UPDATE: I’ve been informed that Handshake Inc. is the creator of the movie, and Maryland Deathfest curators Ryan Taylor and Evan Harting are the executive producers). And in case you’re wondering, I have no affiliation with it either, nor do I make money on this post in any way. I just think it’s cool!