Maryland Deathfest VIII Running Order Announced (sort of)

By far the biggest underground metal event every year in the area, and arguably the United States, is the Maryland Deathfest at Sonar in Baltimore. The Maryland Deathfest isn’t until Memorial Day weekend in May, but they start planning it usually around 10 or 11 months before then. Their website has listed most of the bands that will be playing in 2010 for a while now, but just today they announced the full scheduled line up of bands, and the running order. Well, sort of. They list which day each band will be playing on, but the set times are not listed yet. The website says the set times will be listed “no later than 1 month before MDF.” Individual day tickets are now on sale too, though I think I’m going for a 3 day pass (I’ll save a whopping $4, fuck yeah!). You can get them here. One nice thing is the ticket price listed is the actual price, no service fees ($40 for the shorter day Friday, $47 for either Saturday or Sunday or $130 for a 3 day pass). There are going to be multiple stages, and if they run things similarly to last year, the headliners won’t actually play last. Last year they had an outdoor stage on the street in front of the venue. That stage is where the headliners played, but their sets ended before midnight and the indoor main stage still had a few bands play after that. Since Maryland Deathfest VIII is still a while off you can bet some bands will cancel by then, or have visa troubles (like Marduk did last year) or maybe even break up before the show. It’s not set in stone and things can change by then. Hell, their website even has a post dated with tomorrow’s date that DRI has been added to the line up. A message from the future, creepy. Anyways, the bands are all listed below under the day they’ll be playing, and you can click any band’s name to go to their MySpace page and give them a listen if you want to check them out.

Friday 28 May 2010
Gorguts
Possessed
D.R.I. (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles)
Watain
Coffins
Nazxul
Trap Them
Gride
Birds Of Prey
Malignancy
Jesus Crost
Stormcrow
Tombs
Defeatest
Putrescence

Saturday 29 May 2010
Autopsy
Sodom
Repulsion
Asphyx
Blood Duster
Incantation
Wolfbrigade
Melechesh
Haemorrhage
Portal
Impaled
Sadistic Intent
The Chasm
Deceased
Verbal Abuse
Fang
Obliteration
Ingrowing
Total Fucking Destruction
Fuck The Facts
Sulaco
Jucifer
Howl
The Communion

Sunday 30 May 2010
Obituary
Entombed
Pentagram
Nirvana 2002
Eyehategod
Pestilence
Malevolent Creation
Necrophobic
Converge
Naglfar
From Ashes Rise
Sinister
Capitalist Casualties
Captain Cleanoff
Gorod
Rompeprop
Gridlink
Magrudergrind
Krallice
Circle Of Dead Children
Black Breath
Massgrave
16
Rottenness
Surroundings
Honkey Kong

Bands whose names are struck through have canceled and will NOT be playing Maryland Deathfest as previously reported. My most recent update of this page was on 27 April 2010.

The full schedule including set times has been released and can be seen on the Upcoming Concerts page.

December 14, 2009
Categories: Sonar, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

Jaxx Redesigns Its Website

Northern Virginia’s best metal club, Jaxx, gave its website a long due update. The site is no longer tagged “DC’s Euro-Metal Home” and gone is all the neon green. The site seems to be much cleaner and better laid out, though it seems to have lost almost any sense of its distinction. The old site was really dated and ugly, but it at least looked like you imagined a Jaxx site would. That said, I can’t blame them for trying to update their image some, the website being a part of that. They painted over all the glam rock band names they used to have in the main room and I sure didn’t complain about that. With the recession really hitting the entertainment industry in general, combined with bands scrambling to figure out how monetize their music with CD sales plummeting, there just aren’t as many tours going around. So Jaxx has become more diverse to make up for it. I’ve seen reggae and j-pop and various other completely non-metal events on the calendar, and I think they want to adjust their image to something that isn’t tied directly to metal in order to reflect that. On one hand this seems reasonable, I just hope it doesn’t backfire and alienate the dedicated fan base that’s already there. I’d imagine it won’t too much, as long as Jaxx continues to get some of the best metal bands that come to the region. I wonder if they’ll bring back parts of the page like the Jay Page and the staff photos page, I thought they added a more human element to the site and to the club itself, so it doesn’t seem like some faceless corporate entity (which it’s not). There’s a bit of talk about it all on the Jaxx forum. The website admin has been checking the forums pretty regularly and he responds quickly and helpfully to suggestions, comments and questions on there, so let him know what you do and don’t like. If you’ve gotten this far and haven’t check out the new site yet, well, do it now: www.jaxxroxx.com.

December 4, 2009
Categories: Jaxx Nightclub . Tags: , , , , , . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 2 Comments

Review of Marduk gig at Sonar

Monday the 23rd of November 2009 was a rather grim and rainy day, perfect for a black metal show. Luckily Swedish black metal band Marduk was playing at the Talking Head Club inside Sonar in Baltimore that night, the closest stop to Washington DC on their US Plague Tour. I had a couple friends flake out on me, but since Marduk failed to get into the US for Maryland Deathfest back in May, and I missed their Baltimore stop on their 3 show mini tour back in August, I was determined not to miss them for a third time this year. So I drove up to Baltimore in that dreary cold rain by myself blasting metal all the way. When I got there Nachtmystium was setting up. They’re ok, sort of a thrashy black metal band. Not my favorite but worth checking out while drinking a beer or two. The final song of their set was a cover of GG Allin‘s song I Kill Everything I Fuck, which I gotta say was pretty fucking cool. Wasn’t expecting that one, wish I’d had my camera ready, I’d like to have that one on video. They’re scheduled to play with Kreator and Voivod at Jaxx in early March, so maybe I’ll get my chance then.

When Nachtmystium’s set ended I moved up to the front of the stage as everyone was clearing out to go smoke, order more beer, piss, etc… Got right up there and was chatting a bit to the people around me during the final sound check. Glad I did cause 2 of the guys next to me were throwing mad elbows all during Marduk’s set and fucking people up from the pit, but I got in good with em before that so I didn’t have any probs. Kinda dick of them, but it did keep people from the pit from fucking up my camera. Plus that latino guy wearing eyeliner and a shirt with the sleeves cut off looked like he could use a few bruises. Marduk’s set was pretty good, they played a good assortment of songs from a variety of albums which was cool. I’m not a huge fan of when bands play most of their new album and a few classics live, I much prefer the career spanning classics with a couple songs from the new album thrown in approach. This show was a pretty good example of that. During their long set they played songs off just about every album except for, oh yeah, my fucking favorite Marduk album Heaven Shall Burn… When We Are Gathered. Seriously, the whole time I was driving up there I was thinkin to myself how it’ll be worth all the stress of dark, rainy interstate traffic just to hear Infernal Eternal or maybe even Glorification Of The Black God live (basically a cover of Modest Mussorgsky’s classical piece A Night On Bald Mountain as arranged by Leopold Stokowski for the Disney movie Fantasia). Well, that didn’t happen. They did play some classics like Wolves, Funeral Bitch, and Baptism By Fire, but still, Infernal Eternal fucking rules. What the hell? If you like black metal and you haven’t heard those 2 songs do yourself a favor and listen to them right now by clicking their names up there. Fucking brutal! Anyways, the show was still fun and if not for the events on my drive home I’d probably say it was totally worth the trip to Baltimore on a Monday night (even tho the show ended after midnight on a weekday and I had to drive home afterwards). About 5 minutes outside of Baltimore on 95 my car decided it was going to stop running. Seriously, of all the times? I’ve had very few problems with this car in the 3 years I’ve owned it, but dying in Maryland was not awesome. A $200 tow truck ride got me back home at about 5am, plenty of time to be fucking exhausted for work the next day. Still, the set was good, the show was fun and I think I got some good pics too. I thought it was odd the drummer, Lars Broddesson, didn’t use 2 kick drums but instead had 2 petals set up on a single bass drum. That’s pretty uncommon for metal bands. By the end of their set, which was about an hour and a half, their corpse paint was smeared and the audience was running out of energy. They did the typical walk off stage encore thing but came back really quick, like 1 minute later, to play the final song of the night, Panzer Division Marduk. You can watch that video below. Overall I’d recommend any fan of old school black metal to go see Marduk, it’s a brutal show definitely worth the money.

November 27, 2009
Categories: Black Metal, Concert Reviews, Sonar, Talking Head Club . Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

Review of Baroness gig at Rock And Roll Hotel

On Wednesday the 18th of November 2009 I got off my ass and headed up to the Rock And Roll Hotel in the Atlas Theatre district of North East Washington, DC to go see Baroness play. I’d been to the Rock & Roll Hotel before, but not to see a band play. The venue wasn’t great, not very wide but deep, which must have been a bitch for the people in the back trying to see. The stage lighting was pretty poor and they don’t allow flash photography and since I can’t afford a $3k camera my pics aren’t the greatest. They did allow you to shoot video, but again since the lighting was so bad it all came out pretty dark (though the audio isn’t too bad) which you can see for yourself at the bottom of this post. It was $4.50 for a Miller Lite bottle which I guess is pretty standard for DC. The bar was crammed on one of the side walls to the back of the room, and the merch stand was crammed into the other side in front of the mixing console. Apparently they don’t allow moshing of any kind because a couple songs in when some guy started pushing people a bit the security came right up and put an end to that. The shift actually helped me get a little closer to the stage. Even though I’m usually holding a camera up front, I really don’t mind moshing at concerts (hate crowd surfers tho). If you don’t want people moshing at your venue, maybe you shouldn’t book metal bands at let them play somewhere more fun instead. Anyways, on to the band’s performance…

This was the first show of the tour supporting Baroness’ new album, Blue Record. I’m not certain but I’m betting this was the first time those songs were being played live. On the stage they had a cool looking fabric backdrop of the cover art from the new album. Their show started off a bit disorganized, they had some intro song playing, then it stopped, then after several minutes of silence they walked onto the stage and started playing. I noticed the lead guitarist had changed from a St. Vitus shirt to a Dark Castle shirt in this time, for some reason. I really like the energy of a lot of their songs on their new album. I’ve listened to their first one, Red Album, a few times but it has never gripped me as much as these newer songs do. The one thing I don’t like about the new album is all the intros and instrumentals, there’s a lot of them. Unfortunately for me, they play them live too. I guess that’s cool for people who enjoy them, but it’s really just a pause in the energy to me and honestly I don’t find theirs particularly interesting. Their show was pretty loud for a club this size, which is never a bad thing to me. The kick drum was really pounding, though the microphones didn’t seem to work well for the live show. They seemed to be very tight uni-directional microphones, which means if you’re not directly in front of them, you might as well be in the next room. This made the vocals just disappear completely from the mix a few times when the band members were particularly excited on stage. This was especially a problem for the lead guitarist and bass player, who were helping with backing vocals from time to time, since their mics were not as loud in the mix to begin with. The show was pretty good for the most part, they played most of the songs I really wanted to hear. The stage was pretty cramped but they still did a few theatrics to make things interesting. I thought it was kinda cool when the drummer poured water on his cymbals before a big entrance in a song, spraying the water everywhere in a cool visual effect. At the end of the show they did the typical encore thing where they walked off stage and waited a couple minutes to come back and play their final song of the night. I don’t understand why every headliner band seems to feel the need to do this, regardless of genre. It’s not an encore if it’s scripted! Anyways, they did play for almost an hour and a half, which might be a bit long for them. I mean I do enjoy their music, but since they’ve only got 2 full length albums out, they started running out of material to play that’s of the same caliber. This made the show start to drag on a bit for me. I really think these guys are a great up and coming band and I think with some better exposure they would be playing much larger venues. On the other hand, watching concerts at the 9:30 Club has become quite a drag, so I hope they don’t get too big too quick! It was a really fun show and for $12 it was well worth attending.

One more thing, if you’re planning on buying the Blue Record on vinyl at the concert, try to do it early. They ran out of copies to sell at this show. They said they were getting more the next day, but who knows how long those will last. I spoke to the bass player, Summer Welch, after the show, and the band seemed to think the vinyl was available on their record label’s website, Relapse.com. I had checked earlier that day and knew it wasn’t, so that means this vinyl is going to sell more than they’re expecting since people can’t buy it anywhere. They were selling all vinyl for $20, all t-shirts for $15 and CDs for $12, cash only of course.

November 19, 2009
Categories: Concert Reviews, Rock And Roll Hotel, Sludge Metal . Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 1 Comment

Ticketing Changes

So the 9:30 Club is changing it’s ticket company from Tickets.com to Ticket Fly. All shows from 1 Jan 2010 onward at the 9:30 Club will be using the new service for ticket purchases. What does this mean for you? I tried comparing the differences of the two from a consumer standpoint, and I didn’t find a whole lot to be excited about. I was hoping with a new ticket vendor maybe service fees would go down, but that doesn’t seem to be the case really. The first show at the 9:30 Club with tickets that will be sold by Ticket Fly is Gogol Bordello on Sat 2 Jan 2010. The cost listed on the 9:30 Club’s website is $30. Of course if you’ve ever bought tickets to a concert before the day of the show, you know the cost will actually be more due to various fees tacked on. To compare, I found a concert also for $30 at the 9:30 Club, but since it’s before Jan 2010, it’s still on Tickets.com. The show is Devendra Banhart (whoever that is) on Weds 25 Nov 2009. Ordering the $30 tickets through Tickets.com gave me a $6 “service charge” per ticket. They didn’t charge any other fees, but they do charge you $4 for mailing you the tickets, or for will call (yes, they charge you $4 to NOT mail your tickets to you). They do have 1 other shipping method, for $22.50 you can get FedEx shipping. It doesn’t say if this is 2 day, overnight or what, but for $22.50 it had better be delivered the next day in Megan Fox’s ass crack. Anyways, assuming you opted for the $4 shipping (or will call) that brings your $30 ticket to $40, a 33.3% increase (also known as: ridiculous). Did I mention that beers in the venue cost $7 before tip?!?! You can also pre-pay for their shitty parking service (another $10) for any show. This is retarded for 2 reasons: 1, you can usually find free parking on the street around there if ya look long enough. Secondly, they stop watching your car “15 minutes after the last song is played” but even that I think is bullshit as the last time I went there (to see Motörhead in September) I left right after the show ended and nobody was there watching the cars. And as a side note, Tickets.com also does this thing where they time how long it takes you to enter various info. If you don’t fill out your info on any particular page in time (and there’s several), they make you start the whole process over, which I find extremely annoying.

Now if you use the 9:30 Club’s new ticket company, Ticket Fly, to buy a ticket at the same list price of $30, you don’t really save any money at all, but there are a few differences. They charge you a $6 “service fee” per ticket again, and then on top of that a $4 per ticket “order processing” fee. It boggles my mind how these companies charge you for service and order processing when it’s a god damn website doing all the work for them. Do they need to pay it’s ridiculous overtime wages from it always working 24/7? Hell no, they just want to charge you more for them doing less, the fuckers. At least they don’t charge you for shipping (or will call, wtf Tickets.com?). They don’t have any other shipping options though, so no more Megan Fox’s ass delivery for 9:30 Club tickets. Awesomely they don’t have a timer on the site for how soon you need to buy your tickets in either. So your $30 ticket still costs $40 from them, they’ve got less shipping options but at least they don’t time your transaction either. Supposedly they’ve got some new “social media tools” for customers, which is just part of that annoying corporate marketing trend where every company wants us to promote them by posting their spam all over our Facebook and Twitter pages. According to the press release about the switch (you can read it here) this was a main factor in the switch. Fucking wow. I really wish it was cheaper for the customers though. With all the various ticket options popping up these days you’d think they could manage that. I guess you can always still buy tickets at the door ahead of time with cash. Of course, I found out when buying my Motörhead tickets that the 9:30 Club will charge you $1 per ticket for that too. No, I have no reason (other than greed) why they would charge you anything extra for buying presale tickets in cash, MOST clubs make presales a few dollars less. At least they’re not doing what DC9 is with their ticketing service…

DC9 has changed their ticketing service from Etix to the generically named Ticket Alternative (also used by the Black Cat and Rock & Roll Hotel). This change is actually going to cost the customer, aka you, more money. Currently, for a $10 ticket to a DC9 concert, Etix will charge you a $1.92 convenience fee. They don’t charge you for will call, but if you want the tickets mailed it’ll cost you $4.50 for a stamp and envelope. There are no other mailing options available. You can also buy a ticket at the door with cash and DC9 won’t charge you any fee, just the flat $10, though sometimes the day of show price is a few bucks higher than the presale, and sometimes they sell out. Still, it only brings the cost of the $10 ticket to $11.92, or 19.2%, if you buy your ticket ahead of time and choose the free will call option. Some shows on DC9’s calendar still use Etix, but all further shows to be added will be using Ticket Alternative. For a $10 ticket to a DC9 show from them, they’ll charge you a $2.73 fee. They do have many more options for ticket delivery, will call, print at home and standard mail all are free. They also have various forms of FedEx delivery, ranging in price from $13.50 for 2 day delivery to $35 for Megan Fox’s ass crack covered in honey delivery. Still, a 27.3% increase over list price is pretty steep for a small club like DC9. This means if you got the free will call option from either service, for a $10 ticket, Etix would charge you $11.92 and Ticket Alternative will charge you $12.73. Since Etix is being phased out, you don’t have a choice in the matter but to pay extra. Now, I know it’s less than a dollar increase per ticket, but still, when you go to a lot of concerts (like I do) it adds up, especially if you also find yourself buying tickets for other people a lot. Ironically, Ticket Alternative’s slogan is, “the cheaper way to buy tickets!”. Yeah right! I’m sure these changes are helping the clubs, probably costing them less to sell tickets than the previous companies were, I just wish there was someone trying to lower the fees tacked onto concert tickets for us, the customers.

November 13, 2009
Categories: DC9, Nightclub 9:30 . Tags: , , , , , , , , . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 2 Comments

More Info On Modulus

This is a follow up post to my previous post titled New Modulus Song. Since I wrote that there have been a few developments, namely that local death metal band Modulus wrote a blog post with more info and also I wrote them a message and they answered a few of my questions. Their new album will be called Perfection Through Manipulation and I currently have no idea when that will be officially released. Considering it’s taken 3.5 years to get it finished, who knows how far off a release date is. They did tell me that it would probably be on iTunes first, then available on CD. The track listing for Perfection Through Manipulation will be:

1. Intro
2. Compromising The Bio-Wall
3. Self Replicating Virus
4. Post Traumatic Enhancement Disorder
5. Neural Processor
6. Terminal Addiction
7. Chemical Stimulus Emulation
8. Emotional Limiter
9. Outro

As you can see, tracks 2, 4 and 5 are all from their Prototype EP. These seem to be re-recorded versions of those songs though. A few of the questions I had in my previous post have now been answered also. Here’s a quote from their message to me:

“Currently, the band only consists of the two guitarists Mark [Weathers] and Juan [Somarriba]. Jim [Richman] left to spend more time with his family. Eric [Snyder] left to concentrate on work. Ben [Kelly] left to concentrate on his other band Brave. We tried to find a drummer but unfortunately could not find anyone of Jim Richman’s skill. We painfully recreated drum beats from old songs and videos to bring as close as possible a human experience.”

They also told me that they don’t have any upcoming shows scheduled due to a lack of band members (I’m sure the biggest hurdle being the lack of a drummer). Anyways, you can listen to all the new songs they posted on their MySpace site or you can download them here. They said they will be posting more songs at some point, but until then you’ve got these four.

October 28, 2009
Categories: Death Metal, Local Band Info, Upcoming Album Releases, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: , , . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

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