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 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!
The new Fillmore in Silver Spring, Maryland, hasn’t had a metal show since Anthrax and Testament played there in November, but they’ve just announced two killer metal concerts coming there in May. The Heritage Hunter tour with Opeth, Mastodon and Ghost on May 9th and the Ophidian Trek tour with Meshuggah, Baroness and Decapitated on May 22nd. Here at DCHeavyMetal.com we couldn’t pick which concert to give tickets away to, so we’re giving a pair of tickets away to both shows! All you’ve got to do to enter is make a comment at the bottom of this post saying which of these killer metal shows you’d like to enter to win tickets to. You can enter to win both if you’d like, but each concert will have a different winner. The winners will be picked at 4pm EST on Friday the 10th of February. One winner will be chosen at random with Random.org for each concert and they’ll win a pair of tickets to the show of their choice! Be sure you use a real email address you check regularly when you enter so I can contact you when you win, though your email doesn’t have to be in the comment itself. And don’t worry, I won’t add you to any email lists or sell your info to anyone, I hate that crap too. Now, here’s a bit more info on these concerts.
The Heritage Hunter tour has quite a line up! Opeth is Sweden’s premiere progressive metal band and while their last trip through the area saw them playing mostly softer material with a focus on their new album, Heritage, word has it this tour will feature a more “best of” style set list. I suppose we won’t know for sure until they’re actually playing it though. Opeth sold out their last area appearance on November 1st at Rams Head Live in Baltimore. Mastodon is probably the most famous band out of that big Georgia metal scene. Their latest album, The Hunter, looks to make them an even bigger name in the world of metal and you can bet they’ll be playing material from it as well. They also sold out their last area appearance which was at the 9:30 Club on November 27th. The opening act on this tour is Sweden’s mysterious Ghost. The members of the band all cover their faces and hide their identities and so the rumors have swirled around them about who might actually be in the band and what other bands those people are members of. Regardless, their debut album, Opus Eponymous, has won over critics and metal fans alike with their clean vocals and simple but catchy songs, all in the name of Satan of course. And you probably guessed it, but they also sold out their most recent area appearance when they headlined the Rock & Roll Hotel on January 19th. That’s right, this tour is made up of three bands who all sold out their most recent area appearances. If you missed any of them before now is your chance to see them live! If you want to be sure you get tickets before it sells out (which it seems likely to do considering the line up) you can buy tickets online now for $29.50 here.
The other metal show coming to the Fillmore in May is the Ophidian Trek tour with Sweden’s popular tech metal band Meshuggah headlining in support of their new album Koloss. Everyone knows these guys can shred and this will be the area’s first chance to hear any of their new material played live. If that wasn’t good enough for you they’ve also brought along another one of the premiere bands from the Georgia metal scene, Baroness! Baroness should have a new album out this year, hopefully in time for this tour, but even if they don’t the material on their first two albums is fantastic live. I saw them play the Rock & Roll Hotel back in November of 2009 and while that show was excellent, it will be great to see them on a bigger stage. The opening act is Decapitated, a Polish technical death metal band that has reformed with a new line up after a tragic bus accident in 2007 left the drummer dead and the vocalist in a coma. And you know what Meshuggah and Decapitated on the same bill means, you’re pretty much guaranteed to hear both Bleed and Spheres Of Madness played live at the same concert, hell yeah! If you want to get tickets to this show now and not have to worry about it selling out (you know, on the off chance you don’t win this contest) you can go ahead and buy your tickets online for $25 each by going here.
Well, those are your two choices. Check out these classic videos by the headliners and enter to win below!
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!
So this past week I saw three Swedish bands headline concerts in a row. I saw In Flames play on Saturday 14 January 2012, Graveyard play on Monday the 16th and Ghost play on Thursday the 19th. This was total coincidence as these bands aren’t label mates or anything like that, they just all happened to hit the area at once. So which of these bands kicked the most ass during this mini-Swedish invasion? Read on and you’ll find out.
Saturday the 14th saw me heading up to Baltimore for the first big metal show of the year in this area, In Flames playing at Rams Head Live! In Flames is probably the most famous of the Gothenburg, Sweden based melodic death metal bands from the 90s (other acts include At The Gates and Dark Tranquillity, among others). In Flames is also sort of like Metallica in that their first few albums grabbed them a devoted fan base that was then completely turned off to the band when they changed their sound and found commercial success. Their 2002 release Reroute To Remain is akin to Metallica’s self-titled album (or the “black album” as most people call it) in that it greatly expanded their fan base but completely alienated most older fans with the simplified songs and flashy production. The band has been very successful though, and the reason they are playing Rams Head Live instead of smaller venues like Sonar or Empire (formerly Jaxx) is due to that change in sound. In 2010 the band’s founder, Jesper Strömblad, left In Flames which now has no original members. This didn’t deter them as the summer of 2011 saw them release their first album without Jesper, Sounds Of A Playground Fading, the album which this tour was promoting.
The audience at the show was a bit rowdy; they are the kind of band that draws metal heads as well as non-metal heads to see them. This often means that some people in attendance see the show as “the rare concert I go to that I can get crazy at cause it’s a metal show” which is cool to a certain extent but I wasn’t loving that as In Flames started their first song, Sounds Of A Playground Fading, and I was hit in the back of the head with a drink someone had thrown from the balcony. Got my camera wet and if I wasn’t so focused on getting some decent shots of the band I’d have been much more pissed about that. I saw drinks being thrown throughout the show, so it wasn’t just me either. Anyways, their set list was heavy on material from the new album, the first three songs were the first three tracks off of it. People who are fans of only their pre-Reroute To Remain material didn’t miss much, the only songs they played from before that were Swim from Clayman and The Hive from Whoracle (I shot video of them playing both of these songs, as well as The Quiet Place, that you can watch at the end of this post). I’ve also posted a photo of the entire set list here. The sound mix at the venue wasn’t great. The volume was very low for a metal show and the bass seemed to drown out a lot. It’s like the guy mixing it thought all metal bands want to sound like Korn or something, haha. Seriously though, the guitars, and particularly the keyboards, were hard to pick out of the mix at times because the bass drown them out. The stage lighting was really awesome though! The band was heavily backlit with lots of big lights and enshrouded in a lot of fog which had a cool looking effect. The band’s performance was alright. Nothing too wild or phenomenal really but not bad. Vocalist Anders Fridén made sure to high five and fist bump most of the crowd surfers though he does this thing where he bends over and screams into the mic like ten times per song. It was fine at first but after a while you’re sort of thinking, c’mon man get another move or two. Between two songs he made a comment about how it is hard making money on music sales now and he was glad so many people came out to the show to support the band. The band did well and seemed to enjoy performing, and the new guitarist, Niclas Engelin, especially had a lot of energy up there almost like he was trying to be sure he won fans over to his replacement of Jesper. I sure think he did! They ended their set with Take This Life and they did not play an encore. Overall it was a decent show, for fans of the modern In Flames at least. Old school fans who are bitter would not have liked much about the show but that isn’t really a surprise. You got what you thought you were getting at this show, there were no big surprises, and that seemed to be good enough for most people in attendance.
Two nights later I found myself at DC9 to see the Swedish rock band Graveyard play. Between songs they said the show was sold out though I’m not sure if that’s true or not. It was pretty crowded so it might have been. The opening act was supposed to be Daniel Davies, the son of Dave Davies who is famous for being in the Kinks, but he canceled at the last minute and was replaced by a band called Black Cowgirl. I didn’t get to the show in time to see them though, but I did catch some of the set by the other support band, Radio Moscow. They were a bluesy rock band with some interesting guitar work. Just a few days prior a video went around on the internet (here) of the guitar player and vocalist, Parker Griggs, throwing his guitar into the drum kit in the middle of a song. The drummer got up and threw the guitar right back at Parker and it hit him in the face so hard he needed stitches. This was on the same tour that was in DC this night, and while both the drummer and bass player had been quickly replaced, you could still easily see the cut on Parker’s forehead. Their set wasn’t bad, a good opening act really. There was a delay at one point in their set when one of the amps blew. It took several minutes to find another one and get it up on the stage. They played some more afterwards though and while I enjoyed them I was ready for the headliner.
Graveyard, also from Gothenburg but not related to the melodic death metal scene there, is a throwback hard rock/metal band that sounds right out of the 70s, however they’re a newer band and have only put out two albums. In the spring of 2011 their sophomore album, Hisingen Blues, was released to much critical acclaim in the underground music press. Honestly it took me a few listens to really get into it, but it grew on me and I was excited that they were finally coming to the States to support the album. I’m glad I gave the album an extra chance because seeing these songs played live was simply awesome! The band was really on point this night and put on a great show. If you were there that night you didn’t just see a good band play some good songs, you got a rare chance to see a good band really coming into their own as they hit their stride. They stepped up to the plate and really hit it out of the park, even with Joakim Nilsson having problems with the strings on his guitars. He swapped them out quickly and didn’t take much away from the set by doing so. Since the band only has two albums they played most of both of them. As most tight bands do, they played their songs with quicker tempos even faster live really tearing through songs like Buying Truth and RSS. That’s not to say their slower songs didn’t stand out as well. Their performance on Uncomfortably Numb, a personal favorite of mine, was executed perfectly coming across with a lot of power for such a personal song in a room of so many people. Satan’s Finest also sounded great and got quite a reaction from the audience. Graveyard stopped at the end of their set but the crowd didn’t budge so they played a three song encore, finally ending their 80 minute set with the song Hisingen Blues. I’m sure there will be more good things coming from these guys and I’m betting they will be playing a larger venue next time they play the area. They’d be great on a tour with someone like The Sword. This was simply a great show and one of the best I’ve been to lately. It was a hell of a way to spend a Monday night!
Three days after Graveyard played it was time to head to the Rock & Roll Hotel to see Ghost, from Linköping, Sweden, play there on Thursday the 19th of January 2012. This show was definitely sold out as they had a big sign on the door saying so. The band was not allowing any cameras to be used, not even on phones, which, as a photographer, I find to be really annoying. There was a bit of a snafu with the label getting me my photo pass and while some of the venue’s staff knew I was OK’d to shoot there some of them didn’t and they told me part way thru to stop shooting, even though they let me in with my big camera. Whatever, miscommunication happens sometimes and I did still get a shot that I liked. I arrived in the middle of the set by one of the openers, Blood Ceremony. They’re a female fronted doom band from Toronto that some people were really getting into at the show. Vocalist Alia O’Brien busted out a flute during some songs and really it just wasn’t my thing, though I was never a Jethro Tull fan and they were definitely a big influence on Blood Ceremony. Ghost hit the stage around 10:30pm, which seemed a bit early to me for a show in DC. The band of course came out in full costumes including masks hiding their faces. Their main gimmick is that nobody really knows who is in the band Ghost as they always hide their identities and mask their voices in interviews. The lead vocalist, who goes by Papa Emeritus, comes out on stage wearing a mask with skull face paint and an elaborate evil cardinal costume. It’s all a bit over the top but whatever, they have some catchy tunes that are a bit of a throwback to old psychedelic bands and definitely Mercyful Fate as well. However even on the record Papa’s vocals are not nearly as high pitched as King Diamond. This night was no exception either, Papa was not hitting his high notes, he wasn’t even trying to. Instead he’d just replace them with a similar, but lower pitch, note which leads me to believe he was either sick or his voice wasn’t doing so well singing every night on tour. I had seen Ghost perform at Maryland Deathfest back in May and he was hitting his notes then, so I know he can do it. I guess this just wasn’t his night. The sound mix at the venue didn’t help much either, the keyboards were non-existent in the mix throughout most of the set and the vocals needed to be turned up several times as well. I could see one of the roadies giving signals to the guy at the sound board (I was standing in the part of the crowd directly between them) and they were having a lot of communication problems as well. At one point you jarringly heard the keyboards get pushed up to the mix way too high, it was almost like they didn’t sound check before the show and were just trying to figure it out as the show went on. Ghost stuck it out and instead of throwing a tantrum on stage they kept playing. They only have one album out so they don’t have a lot of material. They did perform their haunting rendition of Here Comes The Sun by the Beatles, a Japanese bonus track that they did not play at Deathfest. Towards the end of their set the sound did get better. Their closing song, Ritual, sounded pretty good actually, aside from Papa’s weak vocals. Luckily Ghost is the kind of band people love to sing along with and it helped cover some of the faults with his voice. Also, during the same song they brought out communion wafers and I guess wine or something and maybe five or so people in the front row ate them from Papa Emeritus’ hands. That was pretty corny and not as awesome as when Lord Worm would feed people live worms from the stage during Cryptopsy shows. Anyways, I was hoping Ghost might play some new material as I have heard the band has been working on a second album before they started this short 13 date tour. They didn’t play anything new and the set only lasted about 45 minutes, intros and all. That was rather short for a headlining band and left me feeling like it was a bit of a cash grab but what can ya do, they ran out of songs. The venue kept the lights down for a minute or two then suddenly turned them back on with house music over the speakers to end the night in a rather anticlimactic way. This show could have been a lot better, and the no photo policy forcing the venue’s bouncers to constantly be pushing through the sold out crowd, jarring your attention to let them pass every time you started to actually get lost in the show, didn’t help at all. They will be opening on a tour with Opeth and Mastodon in May that will hopefully come through this area and I really hope they put on the kind of performance I know they are capable of then. The metal fans in DC deserve it!
Well, that’s the three Swedish concerts I saw last week. Graveyard was certainly my favorite performance of the three Swedish bands but I’m glad I got to see all three of them play. Thanks for reading another long concert review post. As always you can see more of my concert photography on my Flickr page here or you can jump to the set of In Flames pics here or Graveyard pics here. Now check out the three videos of In Flames that I posted below. I didn’t shoot video at the other shows because the lighting was too poor, well that and Ghost had that crazy photo policy so I wasn’t going to push it. Stay metal DC and go out to a heavy concert!
Richmond natives Lamb Of God are headlining a show at the 9:30 Club this Saturday the 28th of January 2012 and DCHeavyMetal.com is giving away a pair of tickets to one of you lucky readers of the site. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post below telling me what heavy metal band you’d really like to see headline the 9:30 Club next. 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 Friday, January 27th 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. Do be awesome and tell your friends about this contest.
Lamb Of God is touring with The Acacia Strain, Too Late The Hero and Make Like Murder. This will be one of the first concerts of Lamb Of God’s tour to support their new album, Resolution, which is coming out January 24th! The doors open at 7pm for this show. Normally I’d post a link to where you can buy tickets but as you can see here this show has now sold out. If you slept on this one now is your last chance to get tickets. Now check out this animated video for their song, Ghost Walking, from the new album.
Well, it’s January 18th and you’ll probably notice a lot of websites doing things today in protest of the SOPA and PIPA bills being pushed through congress right now. I love music but I’m tired of the record industry (not the same as the music industry which includes companies that make instruments, run studios and venues, teach people how to play instruments and other things) trying to ruin music for everyone all in the name of profits. It used to be that record companies would (illegally) pay radio stations to play their music and the public, with few other ways of hearing new music, would pick and choose which acts they like from the small pool of talent they were exposed to. The record labels did the job of picking the diamonds out of the rough and exposing us to them. Now with the internet there are dozens of ways to find new music. Facebook and other social media sites, message boards, music news and fan sites and even blogs like this one. Online you can talk to people you’ve never met (and probably never will) about even the most obscure of sub-genres and share opinions on new (and old) music. The record labels do not like this, they want to control what we are exposed to, limiting our choices to only the media they can make money from. They say SOPA and PIPA is about preventing piracy but it is not. It’s about changing the way you find new culture and art, and changing the internet so that they can shut down websites that they don’t like, and broadening what websites can be shut down for. It’s about controlling what media you are exposed to and making sure it is only the media they can directly make money off of. They don’t care about the artists as they claim, they use shady contracts and even sketchier accounting practices to prevent paying them any way they can. They certainly don’t care about the art, it’s just a revenue stream to them. Look at who wins at the Grammy Awards and you’ll see just how out of touch the people running the record industry are with actual creative and groundbreaking music. They want to go back to a world where they tell us what to buy and how to buy it and they need to control the internet to do this. To paraphrase George Carlin here, they’re only interested in one thing, more for them and less for you.
I know that my site isn’t huge and I don’t have the reach of sites like Google, Wikipedia, Craigslist or even the Metal Archives, which are all doing things today to protest these horrible censorship bills, but I didn’t want to be silent about the issue. This isn’t a right or left issue, and unless you’re a record executive (or a lawmaker who is being paid off by one in an election year) you should be against these bills as well. On January 24th the Senate is voting on this and the plan is to have people call their senators on January 23rd (when the Senate is back in session). I know a lot of you are in the District itself, taxation without representation and all that, but you can still call a congressman or senator about this. If nothing else I’d ask that you take some time to see what the EFF (Electronic Freedom Foundation) has to say on this issue here. You can enter your zip code in there and they’ll pull up the contact information for your representative and senators. If nothing else you can at least check out the image below (click it to see it larger so you don’t have to squint) and spread the word about these awful bills designed to break the internet to preserve the antiquated revenue streams of some fading corporations.
There is a list of companies that should be ashamed for supporting these internet censorship bills in the name of profit. Some are music and entertainment related and some are downright surprising. A few of note are: Fender, Gibson and Taylor guitars, Bose, Shure, Peavey, Monster and Toshiba electronics, Harley Davidson, Ford, Phillip Morris and Zippo, Rite Aid, Nintendo and Electronic Arts (EA Sports), Nike, Addidas, Reebok and New Balance, Tiffany’s, Rolex, Oakley, Coach, Dolce & Gabbana, Chanel, Liz Claiborne, Ralph Lauren, Nervous Tattoo (Ed Hardy), Revlon, L’Oréal, sports brands NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, PGA, UFC, WWE as well as typical asshat companies like Sony, Disney, Time Warner, Viacom and Wal-Mart. You can read the whole list, which includes contact info, by going here.
DCHeavyMetal.com 