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Review of Cannibal Corpse gig at Jaxx

So Friday night, the 23rd of April the infamous death metal band Cannibal Corpse was coming to Jaxx. Awesome, I hadn’t seen them since they played the 9:30 Club in October of 2007, so I was pretty pumped. Somewhere there was a communication breakdown between the bands and the venue though, as 2 different set times were announced the day of the show, the final one saying that Cannibal Corpse would be hitting the stage at 9:30 pm because they had a early load in time the next morning in Boston. Pretty shitty for me since I didn’t get off of work til 8! I really wanted to see Diabolic play, but since the show started so early, Skeletonwitch was already playing by the time I got there. Since 1349 wasn’t able to get into the country at that point (apparently due to the volcano Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland) that meant Cannibal Corpse was going to be the next band to play. For those of you outside the area, 1349 will rejoin the tour on April 25th in Long Island.

Skeletonwitch put on a good show. I had meant to catch them at The Red And The Black in DC back in February but I had gotten sick and couldn’t make it. I think they were just starting when I got there so I did catch most of their set. They’re pretty fun to watch live, great thrash with catchy riffs and death metal style growling vocals. Though most of the band didn’t do much but head bang in place, the vocalist, Chance Garnett, had great stage presence and really got the audience into the show. They really were a good band for warming up the crowd, though I’d have like to have seen Diabolic and/or 1349 too. I ended up buying a Skeletonwitch pint glass at the merch stand after they played, hard to pass up at just $5 (by comparison Cannibal Corpse was selling a bottle opener for the same price).

There was a rather long delay before Cannibal Corpse started to play. The crowd was getting anxious and started chanting “Corpse!” and within a minute of that the band got on the stage. They came out shredding and the crowd was eating it up. I’ve seen Cannibal Corpse many times before, and this set included the least amount of Chris Barnes era songs, though they did play 2 songs from their debut album Eaten Back To Life, A Skull Full Of Maggots and Scattered Remains, Splattered Brains (someone in the audience was screaming for Born In A Casket during most song breaks though, which they didn’t play). Also of note, they played The Cryptic Stench, from Tomb Of The Mutilated, which I thought was sort of out of left field (they of course played Hammer Smashed Face also). Despite the audience’s requests for songs like I Come Blood and Fucked With A Knife, they didn’t really play many of their more sexually disturbing or misogynist songs, though they did close with Stripped, Raped And Strangled. They also played a couple songs from their latest album, Evisceration Plague, and most of the rest of the set was a sampling of the material from 1998 on. Regardless of what songs they were playing, they played them fast and tight, and the audience was losing it. I did see a couple crowd surfers, a rarity at Jaxx, and the pit was pretty much constant. Their vocalist, Corpsegrinder, talked a bit more between songs than the last few times I saw them. At one point someone yelled out to play the Barney The Dinosaur theme song, which he did not find funny and he went off on a rather entertaining rant about people requesting “retarded songs” before going right into A Skull Full Of Maggots. Still, it probably would be pretty hilarious if they actually played a song like that in the classic Cannibal Corpse style. As usual they didn’t do the typical bullshit encore thing bands seem to always do, which is cool. So lame when you plan your own encore ahead of time. They announced that Hammer Smashed Face would be the final song of the night just before they played it, though just like the last time I saw them in 2007, when they finished playing it Corpsegrinder immediately said they had lied and the band went right into Stripped, Raped And Strangled, which the audience went crazy for.

After the show I hung out a bit talking to some of the people I had met up with for the show in the first place (didn’t have a whole lot of time to talk to them earlier due to the show being early and my late arrival). Local thrash metal band Cab Ride Home apparently played after Cannibal Corpse got their stuff all loaded out, but I didn’t hang around long enough to check them out. I had lots of pics and vids to sort through and the Caps game to watch on DVR. You can see the videos I shot at this show below, though I have 2 more that YouTube is having trouble with for some reason. They both keep getting hung up at about 80% when I try upload them and I don’t know why. I’ll post them here if I can get them to upload correctly, not sure what the problem is. Not a big deal as these vids should give you a good idea of this brutal concert regardless. Enjoy!

April 25, 2010
Categories: Concert Reviews, Death Metal, Florida Death Metal, Jaxx Nightclub . Tags: Band, Cannibal Corpse, Concert, Concert Review, Death Metal, Heavy Metal, Jaxx, Music, Skeletonwitch . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 4 Comments

High On Fire and Doomriders Reviews

Well, this evening was a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure style night. It was a Sunday night, the 11th of April 2010, and I had a small problem, 2 bands I wanted to see were playing the same night at different venues. High On Fire at the Black Cat and the Doomriders at the Rock & Roll Hotel. I called up a couple friends of mine to see if they wanted to try to squeeze in both shows. They were up for the double feature and we headed off to the Rock And Roll Hotel to catch the Doomriders first. The show was running late and when we got there the first band, Fang Island, was still setting up. I only watched them for a single song before heading upstairs. They weren’t too interesting to me, and not very metal anyways. For some reason they had 3 guitarists on stage, and their bass player switched off to play they keyboard. After a couple beers we went back down while the Doomriders were setting up. The crowd wasn’t too close together and we basically just walked right up to the front. One of the friends I was with had another friend at the Black Cat who was updating us on the status of the bands playing there. We decided that when Priestess was playing their last song we’d have to leave, regardless of if the Doomriders were done or not. Anyways, the Doomriders finally did come out and they were really energetic. I’m sure they won over some new fans who were really just there to see the headliner Red Sparowes, people were getting into them. I also saw a little kid (pic) up there in the front row, he was even throwing horns and headbanging to the music. Their show kicked ass so you can’t blame him! One thing though, their bass player, a really tall guy named Jebb Riley, was actually too tall for the stage! His head was hidden from most of the crowd during the show because the overhead speakers were blocking him. I’ve never seen that kind of problem before, haha. The mix was pretty good I’ve got to say, though the lighting was pretty crappy (the R&R Hotel doesn’t have good lights so that’s to be expected). They were playing their last song of the night, which was apparently also their slowest and longest, when we got the message that we needed to head over to the Black Cat. We didn’t wait for the long song to end and promptly headed straight for the door.

We piled into my car and headed over to the Black Cat. I found a good parking spot on the street right next to the venue, and we went right into the club. We could hear High On Fire had already started playing Frost Hammer, though the ticket guy said the band had just started. We rushed up the stairs and headed into the crowd. We got up there pretty close fairly easily, I guess people were scared of the mosh pit? As usual the lighting wasn’t great, but I still got some good pics I think. The sound mix was terrible though, I mean really bad. I’ve posted videos below and they’re actually a pretty good representative of the sound. It’s not my camera that makes it sound muffled, it’s the mix. I even heard a few random shouts from the crowd between songs demanding the guitars to be turned up. The vocals were really low in the mix too, at least from where I was standing. Matt Pike (of Sleep fame) really had a hold of the crowd though, people were going crazy and his stage presence was a big part of that, even if you could see his beer gut and ass crack (depending on which way he was facing) the whole time. Regardless, the show was really fun and they played a lot of the songs from their new album, Snakes For The Divine, which is cool because that album is pretty awesome. I was trying to shoot a video of the title track but some guy with a flash light told me I wasn’t allowed to take video. I don’t think that is the Black Cat’s usual policy, so maybe the band requested that. Strange. I still shot the 3 vids below before he told me to stop, though I thought Snakes For The Divine was the best song they played all night. Still, the show was a blast, the crowd was going crazy and the metal was loud!

In all the entire night was a lot of fun, I haven’t done the concert hopping thing in a while and it was a great night for metal in DC (even though I missed the first ever metal show at DC Star, but there was no way I could fit that in too). I haven’t been to a whole hell of a lot of concerts so far this year, but I should be seeing several awesome gigs here up through Maryland Deathfest, for which I’ve already got a 3 day pass. This is going to be a good spring for metal heads in the DC area.

April 12, 2010
Categories: Black Cat, Concert Reviews, Doom Metal, Rock And Roll Hotel, Sludge Metal . Tags: Concert, Concert Review, Doomriders, Gig, Heavy Metal, High On Fire, Music . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 5 Comments

Maryland Deathfest The Movie Presale

Maryland Deathfest The Movie is now available for presale at this location. If you order a copy before the first day of Maryland Deathfest 2010 on May 28th, you will get the DVD as well a poster and you will be entered into a drawing for the entire Handshake Inc. DVD library and a 3 day pass to Maryland Deathfest IX in 2011. It’s price is $15 presale but I couldn’t find out what the shipping costs are. Apparently they will have a booth set up at this year’s MDF and if you preorder you can pick up your DVD and poster there. As far as I can tell the movie was not made by the group who runs Maryland Deathfest, but it is sanctioned by them. (UPDATE: I’ve been informed that Handshake Inc. is the creator of the movie, and Maryland Deathfest curators Ryan Taylor and Evan Harting are the executive producers). And in case you’re wondering, I have no affiliation with it either, nor do I make money on this post in any way. I just think it’s cool!

Maryland Deathfest The Movie was filmed in 2009 at Maryland Deathfest VII. It has interviews with bands and fans attending MDF VII as well as over 3 hours of perfomance footage by the following bands: Abscess, Absu, Antigama, Asphyx, Atheist, Aura Noir, Birdflesh, Brutal Truth, Catheter, Cattle Decapitation, Cephalic Carnage, Complete Failure, Crowpath, Despise You, Drugs Of Faith, The Endless Blockade, Flesh Parade, General Surgery, Gnostic, Hail Of Bullets, Hero Destroyed, Immolation, Jig-Ai, Kill The Client, Krallice, Lair Of The Minotaur, Magrudergrind, Maruta, Misery Index, Napalm Death, Phobia, Pig Destroyer, Pigsty, Pretty Little Flower, The Red Chord, Rotten Sound, Sayyadina, Sigh, Splitter, Trap Them, Triac, Unearthly Trance, Venomous Concept, Victims, Weekend Nachos, Wolves In The Throne Room and Yakuza. Notably missing from this list are Mayhem, Bolt Thrower and Pestilence, 3 of the most popular bands to perform at last year’s fest. Regardless, alongside some of the popular bands that did make it onto the DVD, there are also some good local bands like Misery Index, Pig Destroyer and Magrudergrind. For more info you’ve got a few options, the official Maryland Deathfest: The Movie website, Twitter page, and blog. You can also watch a trailer for the movie below:

March 23, 2010
Categories: Black Metal, Death Metal, Grind, Local Band Info, Shameless Promotion, Sonar . Tags: Baltimore, Black Metal, Concert, Death fest, Death Metal, DVD, Festival, Gig, Grind, Grindcore, Heavy Metal, Maryland, Maryland Deathfest, Maryland Deathfest The Movie, Movie, Music, Video . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

Review of Kreator gig at Jaxx

Wednesday the 3rd of March 2010 I headed over to Jaxx in Springfield, Virginia to go catch Kreator. It had been over a month since I’d been to a metal show, far too long! This was the first show of Kreator’s 2010 North American tour and I was pretty excited. Back in early January Kreator posted a message on their MySpace blog saying they would play a special “old school” set list on this tour since 2010 is Kreator’s 25th anniversary. This being the first show of that tour those of us at Jaxx were going to be the first to hear it. Also, the last time Kreator played Jaxx, back on the 17th of May 2009, it was the final concert of that tour and the guys from Exodus dressed up in drag as cheerleaders during Kreator’s final song of the night. The 300+ lbs singer for Exodus, Rob Dukes, did a stage dive on my head during the fiasco and I was shooting video at the time, which you can see on YouTube here. So all that stuff meant I was pretty pumped to see Kreator play!

When I got to the venue I was told opener Voivod had just started their first song. I’ve never been a huge Voivod fan, though I was curious to see them play live. I was surprised to find that they did not have Jason Newstead (of Metallica fame) playing bass for them. He’s been a member of the band since 2003. I guess he doesn’t tour with them though. Their set wasn’t bad, but the mix was a bit rough and it was hard to hear much over the drums and vocals. They put on a good show and the crowd’s energy wasn’t bad considering they were a support act. Still, you could tell everyone was waiting for Kreator to hit the stage and by the time Voivod announced the start of their final song, I was heading to the bar to beat the rush.

Kreator took what seemed like a very long time to set up the stage. They had a lot of banners hanging on all kinds of scaffolding style metal piping and they brought their own lighting rig too. The lights went down and a recording of Choir of the Damned started playing. When the band finally took the stage the crowd was ready. They opened with The Pestilence and people were going crazy. The rather thin mosh pit for Voivod was now most of the dance floor area, and it was getting hard to keep my camera shooting straight with all the bodies flying around. The show had a lot of energy, as is to be expected from a Kreator show, and of course the lights were intense. The “old school” set list there had been so much talk of wasn’t that different than the last time I saw them. They did only play a couple songs off their latest album, Hordes Of Chaos and Demon Prince, and they threw in a few older songs like Endless Pain, but overall the setlist wasn’t much different than the one they played last time. I took a picture of the setlist from a guy who pulled it off the stage at the end of the show, and you can see it here and if you want to compare it to the picture I took of the setlist from May 09 you can by going here. I don’t want to say the show wasn’t fun, it certainly was, but I had been hoping for more older songs to be thrown in and less of the same staple songs you kind of expect them to play. I guess that was a bit of a let down, but still, it’s always a blast to see Kreator. Oh, and in case you were wondering they didn’t have any guys in drag dressed as cheerleaders on stage this time either, haha. Overall I’d say the show was a lot of fun but still, the let down of the set list sort of left a bad aftertaste in my mouth. I still recommend seeing them if you get a chance, especially if you never have before. They really get every bit of energy out of the crowd they can. Oh, also of note, got my videos from this show posted in a Blabbermouth article, which is always pretty cool when they do that. You can check that out here. I’ve also posted one of them below.

March 4, 2010
Categories: Concert Reviews, Jaxx Nightclub, Thrash Metal . Tags: Band, Concert, Gig, Heavy Metal, Jaxx, Kreator, Music, Review, Thrash Metal, Tour, Voivod . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 4 Comments

February 2010 has not been my month

Well, this month has been pretty shitty for me here. First it just kept fucking snowing more and more killing most plans for anything. Then Nile decided to play Jaxx on Valentines Day, and even though it got bumped to an early hour, I still couldn’t see them without having to sleep on the couch for a month. So I missed that, fine, at least I was going to get to see Skeletonwitch the 21st at the Red and the Black, right? I’d finally have some new pics and a nice gig to review for my blog which has been silent all month. Nope, I got some virus and basically became useless for a week. Now I’m feeling mostly back to normal but the month has all but slipped past and I haven’t posted anything new recently. Sucks! I always try to see, at the very least, 1 live metal concert every month, not because of the blog but because I love going to metal shows. I haven’t seen anything this whole calendar month now and that blows. Now I haven’t stopped caring about the blog, and I’m not one of those people who likes making excuses for why they haven’t posted to my site, I’m pretty pissed about having to do this.

Regardless of my concert going and blog posting set backs, in this month I have been trying to make the site better and better. The Venues page on the site has gotten a big update, all venues now have a logo for them (if I could find one at least) making it easier to just skim and find the venue you want info on, a link to their location on Google Maps, their phone number, and I’ve done my very best to hunt down every venue’s entire web presence, including all official MySpace, Facebook and Twitter pages as well as their Yelp pages which have helpful reviews from people who have been there before. I’m trying to make my Venues page the best place in the DC area for people to find info on any of the venues they may see mentioned on this site.

I’ve also been working on my site’s most popular page, the Upcoming Concerts page. I’ve moved the posters to just before each listing instead of after, and for events I haven’t been able to hunt down a flyer or poster for, I’ve added the headliner’s logo. Again, this is to make it easier to scroll down the page and find the listing you want at a glance. I’ve started listing more info for each show, such as ticket prices including the price of the ticket before and after all the fees and shipping costs. I also include direct links to buy the tickets from the appropriate ticket vendor. I don’t make any commission off that, I just did it to make things easier for you who read this. I still recommend buying tickets at the venue pre-sale as soon as you can if possible. Most places charge you less for buying tickets at least a day early in cash, and they usually drop all fees when you do, making tickets much cheaper, especially when buying multiple. If you can’t do that because you’re out of the area or something, well, that’s what the links are for. I’ve also decided to start including more of the metal shows of sub-genres I don’t particularly like. For now that mostly means more power metal and metalcore (and variations on those sub genres) but I might expand it more if people seem to like it. I haven’t done a whole lot of this yet because when I was starting to I became ill, but expect to see more shows added soon (like in the rest of this week). I will not add any hair metal/glam rock at any point to the calendar, no matter what. That said, I do want this calendar to be the ultimate metal concert calendar for the DC and Baltimore area. I always stretch the rules for local bands, so I’ll add a local band of just about any metal genre to the calendar. If your band is playing a show somewhere, even at someone’s basement or whatever, let me know and I’ll add it to the Upcoming Concerts page.

Well, that’s it for this post which is basically a “sorry I haven’t updated in a while” thing, which I HATE seeing on other websites, even worse I now have one on my own. I really am not giving up on this site any time soon and I still have a lot of energy and ideas to put into it. I’m thinking about doing some interviews as posts, not sure if that will be audio, text or what yet. We’ll see if I do any at all. I updated my post with the running order for Maryland Deathfest VIII too. If you’re wondering who that N2k2 or N2002 band is that’s been added, it’s really an old Swedish death metal band named Nirvana 2002 that is reforming to play MDF. I guess nobody is allowed to use their real name due to some IP law bullshit but I don’t care about that. There have been some other adjustments to the line up also, mostly effecting Sunday/day 3’s line up. I have also added the recently leaked Burzum album Belus to the Downloads page, I highly recommend it. His screams are gone but that classic minimalist sound that hypnotizes with it’s repetition is still there. I plan on attending the Kreator show at Jaxx on March 3rd and should have photos and a review of that up afterwards too. As always, I love feedback from people reading this, so if you have any ideas or suggestions for DC Heavy Metal dot Com let me know in the comments or via Twitter or however else ya want. Now I’ve got to go take my car to the repair shop… Seriously, is it March yet?

February 23, 2010
Categories: Uncategorized . Tags: Blog, DC Heavy Metal, Heavy Metal, Metal, Music, Rant, Sorry, Washington DC . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 1 Comment

Pentagram at Jaxx

This isn’t really a full review of the concert, it was 2 weeks ago now, and I had been drinking a bit at this concert too so I decided not to review it. Due to a hangover I didn’t get all my photos and videos from the evening posted on time, then they just got kinda put on the back burner, but I finally got them all sorted through and ready to display today. Ol’ Scratch was setting up when I got to Jaxx. Everything must have been running late because I didn’t think I’d be able to get there in time to see them. I’d heard good things about them before and I like their latest album, the Sunless Citadel too. They weren’t the first band to play but they were a perfect local opener for this kind of show. They have more energy than a lot of doom bands, but that’s not a bad thing. They also have a lot of beards! I recorded 2 of their songs, one of which is embedded at the bottom of this post. I don’t know the name of that song so if you do please let me know so I can update the listing. Earthride was on next but they didn’t really hold my interest and that’s when the beers started flowing! They are most known for having the bass player from Spirit Caravan on vocals, but they just sounded rather generic to me, nothing I hadn’t heard before. By the time Gates Of Slumber came on I’d run into some old friends and was rambling away most of the set. I do like them and I’ll have to see them the next time they come around (sadly they’re dropping off the Weedeater tour before they come to DC9 in April). By the time Pentagram got on stage Jaxx was pretty packed. I don’t know if it was a sell out but it was certainly a good sized crowd and you could tell Bobby Leibling was happy to see so many people came out to support him in what is basically his home town. They put on a good show, though they didn’t play Buzz Saw, a personal favorite of mine. However, they did play 2 new songs from an upcoming release that is yet to be recorded. I actually video taped both of these songs, I’m Takin No More and South Of The Swamp and have put them on YouTube (just click their names to see/listen, the visual quality isn’t the best because it was so dark, but the audio isn’t bad). This might be the first time those 2 songs were played live in front of an audience since this was the first show of the tour. There were people of many different age groups all coming out to see the local very-old-school doom legends Pentagram and they really did put on a fun show (and it wasn’t just the beer making me think that). I can’t wait to get to see them again on day 3 of Maryland Deathfest this May. Well, sorry it’s taken so long to get all this stuff posted (the show was on Friday 15 January 2010), but you can see the pictures I took on Flickr here and the videos I shot on YouTube here. Enjoy! Oh, and if you’ve got a review, pics, videos or whatever else from this show, feel free to link to it in the comments section of this post.