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.
If you’ve ever wanted to day drink with Metal Chris of DCHeavyMetal.com (and honestly who the hell hasn’t wanted to?) then this Saturday is your chance! He will be at the Oliver Ales brewery in Baltimore this Saturday, October 15th, from noon to 5pm for their release of the Pagan Science double IPA. As usual Metal Chris will have some metal concert tickets to hand out, including pairs of tickets to see Helmet (on 11/7) and Napalm Death, The Black Dahlia Murder and Pig Destroyer (on 11/13) both at the Baltimore Soundstage! Best of all the event is free to attend and it costs nothing to enter to win the tickets!
So what exactly is this Pagan Science beer you ask? It is an 8.5% DIPA showcasing mosaic hops that is inspired by the sophomore album by the Austin based doom/psych band The Well. The album Pagan Science is released this Friday on Riding Easy Records, then the beer Pagan Science is released at Oliver Ales on Saturday, and to top it all off The Well will be playing the Metro Gallery on Sunday! The event is free to attend so if you’re in the Baltimore area on Saturday stop by Oliver Ales, try the Pagan Science beer and if you’re lucky you’ll end up with a free pair of tickets to an upcoming metal show too!
September marks the seven year anniversary for DCHeavyMetal.com so we’ve been giving away tickets to tons of shows. We’ve still got one more give away this month and that is for a pair of tickets to see the Mexican gangsters in Brujeria at the Baltimore Soundstage this Saturday, October 1st of 2016! To enter: leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite metal band that originates from any country outside of the US. Then at 12pm EST this Friday, September 30th, the contest will close and I’ll pick a winner at random (using Random.org) from all valid entries to win the tickets. Please don’t enter if you can’t go, there’s not a lot of time between the end of the contest and the show. Be sure to use a valid email you check regularly so I can contact you if you win. Don’t worry, I won’t add you to any spam lists or sell your info or anything sleazy like that. If 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 Ticket Fly for $22 here.
Brujeria is the Spanish word for witchcraft and the band keeps the identities of its members a secret. There have been members of Fear Factory, Faith No More, Carcass, Napalm Death and many others all rumored to be members though, and if you’re at the show you can try to peek under their bandanas and figure out their identities, at your own risk of course! Brujeria isn’t a band to be fucked with! Also on the bill is the vegetarian death metal band Cattle Decapitation, a band who keeps putting out solid death metal albums regularly. The tour opener is Piñata Protest, a punk band from San Antonio, Texas and local support is provided by the grind band Ampallang Infection. Now check out these videos by the bands playing and let me know what your favorite metal band is that comes from another country!
Brujeria – Plata O Plomo
Cattle Decapitation – Forced Gender Reassignment
Piñata Protest – Vato Perron
Ampallang Infection – Colostomy Bag Piñata / Breaking Character With Shotguns
The legendary Swedish prog metal band Opeth is touring with Texas based doom metal masters The Sword which comes to the Fillmore Silver Spring on Friday, September 30th, 2016! We’re so psyched to see these two great bands together that we’re giving away a pair of tickets to this very show to one of you lucky DCHM readers! These bands are from two very different subgenres of heavy metal so to enter: just leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite heavy metal subgenre is. From traditional to funeral doom metal to crabcore to brutal slam sci-fi tech death metal, any metal subgenre is valid as long as it is your favorite! On Tuesday, Sept 27th at 5pm EST the contest will close and I’ll pick a winner 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 Live Nation for $35 here.
Opeth have been one of the leading bands in the progressive metal world since they released their debut album, Orchid, back in 1995. The band’s 12th studio album, Sorceress, is being released on the very same day as this show. That means we’ll be some of the first to hear these new songs live, as well as some of the band’s older classics from throughout the years as well. But let’s not forget the opening act on this tour, The Sword. Normally a headliner in their own right, The Sword will be opening shows on this tour with their catchy brand of doom metal. It’s not every day you get to see two great bands from such different subgenres on the same bill so this is not a show to be missed. Check out these videos from the bands below and tell me what your favorite heavy metal subgenre is!
In case you didn’t know, DCHeavyMetal.com turns 7 years old this weekend. To celebrate we’ll be doing a bunch of give aways throughout September. It just so happens that the Devin Townsend Project is playing the Fillmore Silver Spring on Tuesday, September 13th, 2016 and we are giving a pair of tickets away to the show! To enter: just leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite Devin Townsend song is. It can be from any of his eponymous projects, Strapping Young Lad, even Casualties Of Cool is fair game. Then on Monday, Sept 12th at 12pm EST the contest will close and I’ll pick a winner 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. Please don’t enter if you can’t go, this contest ends so close to the show time that I might not have time to pick another winner if you can’t go. If you can’t wait to see if you win or the contest is already over when you read this, then you can get tickets from Live Nation for $25 here.
I suppose guitar virtuoso Devin Townsend can be called a legend of progressive metal, though really his music is more “out there” than what is typically considered prog. The brand new DTP album, Transcendence came out today (Fri, Sept 9th) and this tour will be our first chance to hear Heavy Devy play some of those songs live. Also on the bill is the North Carolina based progressive Between The Buried And Me. BTBAM seems like a perfect support band for Devin Townsend, I’m surprised I haven’t seen them tour together before. The opening act is Fallujah, a proggy deathcore band that is actually from San Francisco, not Afghanistan. Check out these videos of the bands below and let me know your favorite Devin Townsend song!
Labor Day has come and gone, summer is over and it’s back to the real world after a long weekend. Not everything sucks though! This Thursday, September 8th of 2016, the UK based stoner band Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats are playing at the Howard Theatre (details here)! For you loyal DCHM readers that check in regularly, we’re doing a short running 24 hour contest to give away a free pair of tickets to this show! To enter: just leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite concert of the summer was. If you didn’t get out to any (what?) then you can tell me which concert you’re most looking forward to. At 5pm EST on September 7th, this contest will close and I’ll pick a winner at random (using Random.org) from all valid entries to win the tickets. Be sure to use a valid email you check regularly so I can contact you if you win. Don’t worry, I won’t add you to any spam lists or sell your info or anything sleazy like that. If I haven’t heard back from the winner in 24 hours another winner will be chosen at random. If you can’t wait to see if you win or the contest is already over when you read this, then you can get tickets from Ticketmaster for $20 here.
That’s right, this contest is only open for 24 hour so don’t wait to enter! Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats have never played in Washington DC before so if you’re into stoner and doom riffage with some good, old fashioned serial killer obsession thrown in you can’t miss this one. Also on the bill is the rockin’ Danava and the psychedelic The Shrine opening. Now check out these sick Uncle Acid videos below and tell me what your favorite concert of the summer was!
I’ve been to literally hundreds of concerts through the years but there has always been something special to me about seeing Black Sabbath play live. When the band’s final tour, dubbed “The End,” came to Jiffy Lube Live on Sunday, August 21st it would be the last time they would play in the greater Washington DC area. Black Sabbath are the fathers of the metal genre and my favorite band, but they’re also so much more than that. They’re one of the few bands that every time they play, no matter how many other people are there, no matter how close or far I am from the stage, I always feel like they’re playing just for me. They’re the reason I am a metal head today, and probably the reason a lot of you are too.
I have a lot of memories seeing Black Sabbath play Jiffy Lube Live (formerly named Nissan Pavilion) in the past. The original Reunion Tour, when Ozzy Osbourne rejoined Black Sabbath again, which I never thought would actually happen, started its US leg there back in 1997. That’s right, we were the first in the US to see Black Sabbath on the Reunion tour. That was one of the early Ozzfests and I got my first tattoo at that concert to commemorate the event, the letters O-Z-Z-Y on my left hand knuckles. Ozzy played a solo set with his band and then came out and did a full set with Black Sabbath right after, I’ll never forget it. The only original Black Sabbath member missing from that tour was drummer Bill Ward on drums, he was tied up with other touring commitments at the time. Ward did complete the original line up when he performed with the band in 1999 when Black Sabbath again headlined Ozzfest, a farewell tour the band called The Last Supper Tour. Despite this they came back to play for us at Jiffy Lube Live/Nissan Pavilion in Bristow, Virginia, again in 2001, 2004 and 2005. Black Sabbath was forced to change their name to Heaven And Hell when the late Ronnie James Dio returned on vocals, and this version of the band also played here in 2008 on the Metal Masters Tour. When Black Sabbath released their album 13 in 2013, their first studio album with Ozzy on vocals since 1978, they toured to support the album and again played Jiffy Lube Live. Now, on another final tour (which, judging by their ages, seems pretty likely to actually be their last this time), Black Sabbath once again played for us.
It rained earlier in the day but it let up in time for the tailgaters to start pre gaming in the parking lot. I missed the opening band, Rival Sons, because they weren’t even a metal band and really shouldn’t have been on the bill to begin with. At the end of their set I did hear them thank “Bristow,” I guess not realizing that very few people at the venue were actually from Bristow. When Black Sabbath finally took the stage around 8:45pm I was excited. Hell, who isn’t excited when their favorite band plays? The short intro video ended and that iconic opening riff to the song “Black Sabbath” immediately demanded everyone’s attention. I had pretty decent seats, in section 102 on the aisle on the Tony Iommi side. Not lower orchestra but still I had a pretty good view and I was right by the sound board. They played a great set of older classics, though they left some big ones off. No “Sweet Leaf,” no “Supernaut,” no “Electric Funeral” (despite the Shepard Fairey designed tour poster heavily quoting and referencing that song, I still bought one for $40 anyways). Nothing at all from the albums Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage. Most surprisingly, their set list didn’t include even a single song from 13. They did play a few songs that weren’t really hits such as “Dirty Women,” “After Forever” and “Behind The Wall Of Sleep” (including the Wasp intro). Every song on the set list besides “Dirty Women” came from the first four albums but it didn’t really matter what songs they played, the riffs just keep coming with Sabbath.
The band doesn’t have the energy on stage that they used to of course. Even when Ozzy played those back to back sets in 1997 (was it really almost 20 years ago?!?!) he had more energy on stage than he does now. He had trouble singing in key Sunday night and even flubbed a few lines here and there, most glaringly missing the classic “I am iron man” line at the start of “Iron Man.” The video monitors had a slight delay, and half the time they used so many psychedelic effects you could hardly tell what they were showing. Other times they focused way too much on Not Bill Ward drummer for hire Tommy Clufetos, the only “member” of the band nobody at the show had actually bought a ticket to see. His extended drum solo during the Bill Ward drum solo song “Rat Salad” seemed to be a slap in the face to Ward and his fans. Geezer Butler was great on bass, no surprise there, but it was nice to see the guy’s still got it. He was getting some sick tones out of that bass too. And Tony Iommi, even after all these years, mutilated fingers and battling back from cancer, he still plays everything so damn smoothly live. I swear he could play those songs just as well in the dark. There were still a few new touches he threw in, like the bonus intro part at the start of the band’s perennial encore song, “Paranoid.” There’s a reason he is nicknamed the riff master and the night’s set was a showcase of some of his most classic riffs played to perfection.
This wasn’t the best I’ve ever seen Black Sabbath, but it was a great show. It really had me thinking about all the times I’ve seen them before, all the people I’d seen them with and the different places in life I was at each time. Black Sabbath wasn’t the first metal band I liked, I already had a few Metallica and Megadeth tapes and the like when I traded for a copy of Black Sabbath’s best hits album We Sold Our Souls For Rock ‘N’ Roll, but that album is what changed me from being a casual music fan to a die hard metal head. While Black Sabbath played songs from that album I thought about the day I first listened to it, I still remember. And I thought about how cool it was getting to interview and then meet Bill Ward in 2014, certainly the number one highlight of my time working on this very blog. I was hoping the show would never end because I didn’t want to deal with the cold, hard fact that I’ll never get to see them perform live again. But reality has a way of always winning out and time waits for no man. After the show ended the band all took a bow and Ozzy’s daughter Kelly came out on stage and shot a short video of the audience still going wild. I talked to a lot of people before, after and even a few during the show. Friends old and new, strangers, people who knew me from this website, random people crammed in line next to me while we waited to buy merch, drunks in the parking lot, everyone there to see Black Sabbath for one last time (or maybe even their first time). I had a great time and yeah, I’m bummed that I won’t have any more great times at Black Sabbath concerts, but I’m grateful that I got to see the band that started it all perform one last time for us and just for me.
Thanks for reading this. Below I’ve posted a few videos I shot at the show. I didn’t have a photo pass and these were all shot on my phone. I think the sound quality came out pretty good though. I hope you enjoy them!
