Animals As Leaders ticket give away

Animals As Leaders at the 9:30 Club

Instrumental progressive band Animals As Leaders are headlining the 9:30 Club on Saturday, May 17th. This is a show will be an instrumental music fan’s dream come true as none of the three bands playing have a vocalist. I love instrumental bands and to help get you into them too we’re going to give away a free pair of tickets to this show. To enter: leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite instrumental song is. From Metallica’s Orion to Watain’s Lawless Darkness to Animals As Leaders’ own CAFO, any instrumental song will count as long as you love it! At 5pm EST this Friday, May 2nd, a winner will be chosen at random (using Random.org) from all valid entries to receive two tickets to 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 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 right now for $20 from Ticket Fly here.

Animals As Leaders members Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes were both from the DC area originally before relocating to California to form Animals As Leaders. Their incredible musicianship and technical prowess has earned them fans all over the world though you can bet this show will feel something like a home town show of sorts. Also playing is Conquering Dystopia, an instrumental band featuring guitar wiz Keith Merrow and Jeff Loomis (ex-Nevermore) on guitars, Alex Webster of Cannibal Corpse on bass and Alex Rüdinger, drummer for The Faceless. This band has quite the pedigree but their self titled debut album shows that they not only live up to expectations, but exceed them with a level of technicality and aggression few can match. The opening act is Chon, a progressive instrumental band from San Diego. All three of these bands can really play and this show is on a Saturday night so you don’t have the school-night excuse for missing this one. Now check out these killer tunes by the bands playing and tell me what your favorite instrumental song is!

Animals As Leaders – Lippincott

Animals As Leaders – CAFO

Conquering Dystopia album teaser

Chon – Sketch

Meshuggah ticket give away

Meshuggah at the Fillmore Silver Spring

Sweden’s technical metal masters Meshuggah are returning to the Fillmore Silver Spring for a second time this Saturday, February 16th, 2013. DCHeavyMetal.com has a pair of tickets to this show to give to one of you lucky readers. To enter just leave a comment on this post telling me why you want to come to this show. Maybe you saw them last year when they played the Fillmore and you want to see another killer Meshuggah show, or maybe you missed them last time or maybe you’re still waiting for your tax return from Uncle Sam and can use a night of free metal. On Friday, February 15th at 5pm EST I’ll pick one lucky winner from all valid entries at random (using Random.org) to win the pair of tickets. Please don’t enter if you cannot attend! The contest ends the day before the show so there isn’t time for me to contact additional winners if you win but can’t go. Be sure to enter with a valid email address you check regularly so I can contact you if you do win. Don’t worry, I won’t add you to any email lists or anything like that, I hate spam too. If you enter more than once then all of your entries will be disqualified. If the contest is over when you read this or you simply can’t wait to find out if you win the contest you can buy tickets from Live Nation for $26 here.

Meshuggah is on the second leg of their Ophidian Trek tour supporting their newest album, Koloss. As expected the album is a beast and they’ll be playing songs from it as well as older classics throughout their set. They have also just released Pitch Black, a free two track EP from Scion A/V that you can stream and/or download here. They’ll even have copies of Pitch Black on vinyl available at the merch booth at this show at the Fillmore! Also playing this show will be Animals As Leaders, an instrumental progressive metal band featuring former DC native Tosin Abasi on guitar. Let me tell you the guy can play! He is quite possibly the best guitarist in metal right now. The opening act will be the LA based trippy progressive metal band Intronaut. Don’t expect any slack instrumentation from them either. In all this should be another great metal show at the Fillmore. Check out the videos below by each band playing and tell me the reason you want to go to this awesome show in the comments!

DCHeavyMetal.com vs Inverted Umlaut

I was fortunate enough to be asked to guest co-host on the Inverted Umlaut pirate radio show/podcast last night for a special on heavy metal in the Washington DC area. DJ Young Padawan was really cool and let me pick the playlist too, which I’ve posted below. The show plays metal every Monday night from 9pm to 11pm on Radio CPR 97.5 FM on the radio dial if you’re in North West DC, or you can stream it from their website here (just click “listen live” on the right). If you missed the show last night don’t worry, they post every episode as a podcast the next day, and you can download the episode I was on by going here. Thanks to everyone who tuned in, I wish I could have played dozens more bands but I still think I got a good mix in the two hours I had. I tried to keep the playlist current and most of the songs are from the past year or two, some haven’t even been officially released yet. Check out the playlist below and feel free to click any of those bands’ names to find out more info on them, get more music from them, etc… Also, several of them are featured in my free local band downloads, which you can find version 1 here and version 2 here. Keep supporting our scene, there’s some great bands out there that are worth taking the time to check out.

Download the podcast here.

Playlist:

Oak – Saline

Pentagram – 8
Pig Destroyer – Loathsome
Animals As Leaders – CAFO

Deceased – The Traumatic
Loculus – Hacked Apart
Fierce Allegiance – Devil’s Knight
Magrudergrind – Incapacity Reigns/Stagnant/Heaviest Bombing

Balor’s Eye – Pissing Rainbows
Ilsa – Frosthrower
The Neologist – A Dress Rehearsal For A Funeral

Auroboros – Precarious
Division – Short Attention Span Society
Apothys – Venomcrest

King Giant – Burning Regrets
Wrnlrd – Moonlight Ride
Orgy Of The Damned – Feces Fiend
Gravewürm – Brought Before The Altar

Borracho – Concentric Circles
Hatred – Red Death

Wolfsschanze – Peering Through The Looking Glass Of Hatred