Heavy Metal Night II at Port City Brewery

This Friday, the 16th of November, the Port City Brewery in Alexandria, Virginia, is having their second ever metal night and I’m inviting you to get your ass down there and have some beers with me. Port City’s assistant brewer, Will, is a big metal head and brews much of the beer they make while blasting metal on the stereo so he figured why not have a bunch of metal heads over to listen to metal and drink that same beer. There won’t be any bands playing live but there will be a mix of all kinds of metal playing the entire night. In fact, you can send Will songs to add to the playlist right now via Twitter at @PCBCBrewMetal OR via email at will@portcitybrewing.com. So if you know some obscure black metal song that you’ve always wished you could hear in public or if you just want to give your band a little more exposure, this is a great way to do it. The event starts at 8pm and will run until 1:30am. If you’ve never been to Port City Brewing Company before, the address is 3950 Wheeler Ave, Alexandria, VA 22304 (map).

To make this event even better, I’ll be there all night holding a raffle that anyone who shows up can enter (no purchase necessary, in fact, designated drivers get two entries!) and I’ll be giving prizes out throughout the night. What prizes you ask? Well, for starters I’ll be giving out tickets to several upcoming metal shows, including High On Fire at the Rock & Roll Hotel on Nov 23rd as well as Clutch at the 9:30 Club on December 26th. Oh, and some of you might have heard that Lamb Of God, In Flames and Hatebreed are playing the Fillmore in Silver Spring the night after this metal night. I’ll be giving away a pair of tickets to that show as well, but to sweeten the deal the winner of the tickets will also get a special meet and greet with the band backstage the night of the show! That’s right, you can’t buy a meet & greet VIP ticket for this show but you can win one from DCHM at Port City this Friday on metal night! In addition there will be other prizes given out, like one of the brand new King Giant zip up hoodies (seen right) and some sweet Port City merch as well. You guys know I love giving free stuff to metal heads!

But wait, there’s more! This Friday night will also be this year’s debut of the Port City Brewery seasonal holiday beer, Tidings. It’s brewed with honey and spices and has a 7.8% alcohol content so it has some bite. You’ll be one of the first to get to try this year’s batch and of course you can also drink any of the other Port City beers which will be on tap all night. It should be noted that the Port City brewery is not like the Dogfish Head or Capital City breweries, it isn’t a restaurant and does not serve food. However there will be a food truck there, Borinquen Lunch Box, serving Puerto Rican food til 10pm or so. While you’re there you can also take a tour of the brewery to learn exactly how this local operation works.

In summary, it should be a really awesome night! You get to hang out with lots of the area’s metal heads, drink some great locally brewed beer (priced cheaper than most bars sell crap beer for!), enter to win some awesome prizes ALL while listening to a killer metal playlist that you can even add songs to! There’s no cover and of course you’ve got to be over 21 to drink. You must be on premises to win the prizes (so if you leave and they call your number, someone else gets it), and the final drawing will be held around midnight or so. Please tell your friends about this (there’s a Facebook Event Page here that anyone can join and invite others) because a good turn out will mean more metal nights in the future. Will is working hard to make a place for metal heads to hang out, talk about metal and network on nights when there isn’t a big show in town but it can’t be done without you showing up and supporting. I hope to see a lot of you there!

November 14, 2012
Categories: Shameless Promotion . Tags: , , . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

Three Year Anniversary

Today DCHeavyMetal.com turns 3 and it wouldn’t ever have been possible if it wasn’t for all the metal heads in this area. I am rather proud of myself as there are so many blogs out there that start and stop before running this long. I never thought when I started DCHM that it would end up changing my life but it certainly has. I’ve met so many cool people because of this site and it is you all who make this site worth doing. You read this site, tell your friends about it, shake my hand and say thanks at shows, and even tell me when I screw things up on the site, be it minor grammatical errors or bad/old info on the concert listings. It all helps make DCHeavyMetal.com something better than I could have ever hoped. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to continue to improve the site and spend most of my free time making it kick even more ass. Right now I’m in the middle of the slow process of completely revamping the Venues page. When it is done all the info on it will be updated and it will look more like the Upcoming Concert Calendar‘s new look. It will also include info on other local metal related businesses like record stores that specialize in metal and local guitar repair shops with employees that are metal heads. I’m also working on a deal with the Howard Theatre to give away tickets to their upcoming metal shows so hopefully one of you will be winning tickets to see Morbid Angel soon.

There’s another change coming to DCHM, and I think it’s a big step for the site. I’ve been thinking for a while about posting some album reviews on the site, however, I personally don’t like writing album reviews. So I’ve decided to let someone else start writing some for DCHM. I’ll have a formal announcement about that later but expect to see, at least at first, only material by local bands being reviewed here. I think Pig Destroyer’s new album will be the first review but again, some of the details are still being ironed out. The site keeps me very busy as it is with the constant updating of the calendar and you may have noticed some long gaps between posts on the site this summer. Those were mostly due to my free time simply being overwhelmed with the work I need to do on the site just to keep it up to date. Hopefully letting someone else post some album reviews will help break up those gaps between my posts. It’s kind of scary to me to give up some of the writing control as up to this point everything on DCHM (photos, videos, writing, reviews, concert listings, etc..) has been written or shot by me. But I’d like to see the site get even bigger and it is getting to the point that I simply can’t do it alone. Please don’t ask me if you can start contributing to DCHM, if I want you to do so I will ask you. I’m working on setting up a mailing address that local bands can send material to for review but nothing is final yet so you’ll have to wait for that info to be posted when it is solidified.

I’m looking forward to seeing DCHeavyMetal.com evolve into something even better than what it is now but it still takes help from you guys. If you’d like to kick a few bucks my way you can always do so via Paypal by sending any amount money to DCHeavyMetal@Gmail.com (or just clicking here). I promise to only spend the money on things related to the site, and maybe beer. But most of it will definitely go to things like hosting, concert tickets, upgrades to my cameras for concert photos, and restocking merch. Even if ya can’t help out financially helping spread the word to your metal head friends always helps too. Thanks to everyone for making the past three years the most metal three years of my life! Keep it heavy and remember, support the scene you’re a part of!

September 11, 2012
Categories: Shameless Promotion . . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

Washington City Paper Piece

If you follow DCHeavyMetal.com on Facebook or Twitter, you’ve probably already seen this today but in case you haven’t…

The Washington City Paper published a piece about me today in print and online. You can read it online here if you’d like. The piece was written by Leor Galil and the photo for the piece was shot by Darrow Montgomery in Mount Pleasant last Saturday, the 4th, while it was raining. Oh, and in case you’re wondering about those pictures of me in the corpse paint that are mentioned in the article, you can see those here. Ok enough about me, the next post will be about metal music, I promise!

February 9, 2012
Categories: Shameless Promotion . . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 3 Comments

New Local Music Videos

I know I usually write really long posts but today I thought I’d just do a short post featuring a couple of very professionally produced music videos by two kick ass local metal bands. Both of them are brand new, released in January 2012. I was going to have a third music video on here but apparently someone’s record label got all pissy about a video being too offensive or violent so that one has been delayed. In its place I’ve posted a video that I shot myself of a local band playing a new song live on January 21st. Now, on to the videos…

First up is this killer new Fierce Allegiance video for their song Devil’s Knight. They’re a thrash band based here in Washington DC and they have a new full length album coming out later this year. They’re giving away an mp3 of the song in this video which you can get here. While you’re there, go ahead and give them a like on Facebook as well so you’ll know when they’ve got more new material.

Next we’ve got this zombie filled video by the guys in King Giant, a local southern styled stoner/doom metal band. The song is Appomattox, off of their brand new album Dismal Hollow. I highly recommend it (and their first full length, Southern Darkness, is really good too). You can buy Dismal Hollow on CD or vinyl here or buy it as an mp3 download from Amazon.com here. This epic video is 8 minutes long so sit back and enjoy the bloodbath!

While the last two videos were not only visually stunning but had great studio production as well, you’ll have to excuse the next video’s quality as I shot it myself on my little Panasonic handheld camera. This is the Northern Virginia based sludge band Auroboros playing their new song Tired Grip. It’s a great song that really builds up well and the song is going to be on their new EP which is scheduled to be out this spring. Sorry you can’t see the band’s frontman, Brian Blickle, too well in this video, the stage lighting was on everyone but him! However if you’d like to see them live yourself they’re scheduled to play with the French band Alcest at DC9 on Thursday, March 29th (more details on the concert calendar). Now give these guys a listen and become a fan of one of the area’s rising metal bands!

I hope you all enjoyed this post. Be sure to check back soon because tomorrow I’ve got a big new ticket contest to announce. Stay metal DC and remember, support the scene you’re a part of!

February 2, 2012
Categories: Local Band Info, Shameless Promotion, Stoner, Thrash Metal, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

King Giant tickets and album give away

Hey everyone, I’ve got another contest for you this week. Local southern metal act King Giant is playing Jaxx Nightclub in Springfield, Virginia this Saturday the 21st of January and DCHeavyMetal.com is giving away a free pair of tickets to one of you lucky readers of the site. This isn’t just any ordinary King Giant show though, in addition to headlining it is also the release show for their new album Dismal Hollow. At the show they’ll have copies of it on both CD and vinyl and to sweeten this week’s contest I’ll be giving away a copy of it as well. You get to pick which version you want, CD or vinyl, and I’ll get the entire band to personally autograph it for you! And since I’m feeling so generous this week I’ll throw in a free DCHeavyMetal.com t-shirt with the Joshua Brettell artwork! So that means this week’s winner gets a copy of the new King Giant album in the format of their choice signed by the band AND two free tickets to the show on Saturday AND a free DCHeavyMetal.com shirt! All you have to do to win is tell me why you want to go to this show in the comments below and I’ll pick a winner at random using Random.org to win the prize package! Your reason can be to pick up the new album, to hear some of the new tunes played live, to get loaded at the bar or anything you want really. The winner will be picked at 5pm EST on Friday 20 January 2012. Be sure to use a valid email address you check regularly when you post a comment so I can contact you if you win, though the email address doesn’t have to be in the comment itself. And don’t worry, I won’t add you to any lists or spam you in any way, I hate that shit too.

King Giant puts on a great show however there’s a kick ass line up for the whole night so be sure to get there early and check out some of the other bands playing. Starting the night off will be a band called Weed Warlock and I honestly don’t know much about them but I’m going to guess they’re a stoner band just from the band name alone. After them will be Auroboros, one of the area’s rising sludge bands. You sort of have to mention that the band features former members of both Baroness and Salome, however they’re a great band even if they didn’t have a pedigree. I’ve also heard they have just made t-shirts and this will be the first place you’ll be able to get one at. After they play there’s The Crimson Electric who are coming up from the Virginia Beach area. You may recall that they played with King Giant at the State Theatre back in January of 2011. So I guess this is becoming an annual thing for them but that’s not a bad thing at all because they put on a great show. The final opening act before King Giant plays will be Borracho, a stoner/doom band from DC. Their name is Spanish for a drunk or lush and as you’d guess they write some great riffs to knock a few back to between rounds of shots. This is really an excellent line up of similar yet distinct and talented bands. If you don’t end up winning you can get a ticket online from Amped & Alive for $13.50 here OR you can buy a ticket at the door $12 (add $2 to that if you’re under 21). This show is all ages and the doors open at 6:30pm. I’ll also be selling DCHM shirts and hopefully have a new batch of DCHM stickers in by then and I’ll be giving those away for free to anyone who wants one. Now check out this kick ass King Giant video for their new song Appomattox and enter the contest below it:

January 16, 2012
Categories: Contests, Jaxx Nightclub, Local Band Info, Shameless Promotion, Sludge Metal, Stoner, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 23 Comments

Borracho CD release show!

Tonight is going to be a big night for the DC based stoner act Borracho, they’re finally having their big CD release show at the Velvet Lounge. You may recall that I gave away a few copies of their new album, Splitting Sky, in a post back in June and tonight, Friday the 16th of December, they’re finally having the big release show for it. They’ll be headlining the show with support by Philadelphia based Kingsnake and Rezin, a band from the DC suburbs of Maryland. Click any of the bands’ names if you’d like to hear them. There’s also going to be a DJ playing doom, stoner and sludge metal between the live bands. If that wasn’t cool enough, I’ll be the MC of the night and I’ll be introducing the bands and making a general ass of myself. Since it’s the holiday season you can expect some freebies to be given out at random (or possibly attached to a ridiculous contest or something). This show is just bursting at the seams with awesome, so head on down to the Velvet Lounge tonight. It’s at 915 U Street NW, Washington, DC 2001 (click to see it on a map) and is about 1 block away from the 9:30 Club. This is a late show, so don’t give me that crap about having to work late. The doors open at 9pm and the first band hits the stage at 10 so it’ll be raging for a while. $8 gets you in the door, however it is ages 21+ only.

While I’m in the middle of this shameless self promotion post, I might as well let you guys all know that at tonight’s show I’ll be selling DCHeavyMetal.com t-shirts with the new design by Joshua Brettell, drummer of local doom/death band Ilsa! The image is below, featuring the DCHM mascot Honest Abe in King Diamond style corpse paint and the logo in a wavy font similar to that on the cover of the Black Sabbath album Master Of Reality. Supplies are limited so get em while ya can, I can’t really reserve any for anyone but I will have sizes S thru XXL at the show, and they’re just $12!

Well if I haven’t given you enough reasons to come out to the show I don’t know what the hell will convince you. I’m sure this is going to be a fun show for everyone so let’s all have a blast and show DC that people will come out to metal shows inside the district. If you pay any attention to DCHM’s Facebook or Twitter accounts you’ve probably seen me talking up this concert so sorry if you’re tired of seeing this everywhere, however I’m really excited about tonight and I would be even if I didn’t have any part in it. Oh and one more thing, you can get free cabs tonight from the Sober Ride program to get you home even after the Metro closes. Call 1-800-200-TAXI (8294) or go here for more info. I hope to see some of you out there tonight! Now check out this rifftastic Borracho song, Concentric Circles.

December 16, 2011
Categories: Doom Metal, Local Band Info, Shameless Promotion, Sludge Metal, Stoner, Velvet Lounge, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: , , , , . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 1 Comment

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