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.
Mother’s Day is a special day and this year it falls on Sunday, May 12th. There’s no better excuse for forgetting to call your dear ol mum than going to see the mother of all technical djent bands, Meshuggah, at the Fillmore Silver Spring on Mother’s Day! We’re pretty psyched every time Meshuggah makes the trip from Sweden to tour the US but this time around they’re bringing The Black Dahlia Murder with them so you know it will be a killer show from start to finish! To enter: just leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite Meshuggah or TBDM song is! Then on Friday, May 10th at 4pm the contest will close and I’ll pick the contest winner from all valid entries using Random.org. The winner will receive a free pair of 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 Live Nation here. Now check out these videos of the bands and let me know what your Meshuggah or The Black Dahlia Murder song is!
On Thursday, October 12th, The Black Dahlia Murder headlines a crazy death metal line up at Rams Head Live! We’re psyched to be giving away a free pair of tickets to the death metal tour of the year to one of you lucky DCHM readers. To enter just leave a comment on this post telling me what your all time favorite death metal band is. Then on Monday, October 9th at 5pm EST the contest will close and a winner will be chosen at random (using Random.org) from all valid entries. 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 AXS for $20 here.
The Black Dahlia Murder is releasing their new album, Nightbringers, this week and this will be their only area appearance on this tour to support it. Also on the bill is the legendary Suffocation! One of the pioneers of brutal death metal, Suffocation gets some of the wildest mosh pits going with just the twitch of the wrist. Tech death band Decrepit Birth released their first album in seven years this summer. They put on a killer set at Maryland Deathest this year, do not miss their return to Baltimore! Necrot is a new death metal band from Oakland featuring members of Vastum and Saviours. Opening band Wormwitch is also new. The crusty black metal band’s debut album just dropped in May. Now check out these videos of the bands below and be sure to leave a comment telling me what your favorite death metal band of all time is!
On Saturday, October 11th two of the fall’s biggest metal tours cross paths for one night only at the Fillmore Silver Spring for a show so big it can only be called Fillmageddon! Machine Head, Children Of Bodom, Epica and Battlecross are on tour together but The Black Dahlia Murder and Suicide Silence tour was looking to play the area on the same day so rather than have competing shows they’re all playing at the Fillmore! We’re so excited around here for this show that we’re going to give one of you lucky readers of this site a free pair of tickets to this epic show. To enter: leave a comment on this post telling me which band you want to see the most. At 5pm EST this Friday, August 22nd, 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 $29.99 from Live Nation here.
Robb Flynn’s Machine Head will be headlining Fillmageddon as they tour to support their upcoming new album Bloodstone & Diamonds. Finland’s neo-classical melodic death metal band Children Of Bodom always brings the shredding riffs and solos and this show will be no exception. The Black Dahlia Murder is still touring to support their excellent release last year, Everblack. Suicide Silence is still going strong with Eddie Hermida (formerly of All Shall Perish) taking over vocals after the death of Mitch Lucker in 2012. Simone Simmons has a beautiful voice that you can’t ignore when Epica is playing and openers Battlecross will get the pits started early with their thrashy melo death riffs and mega fun live show. That’s one hell of a line up! Now check out these killer tunes by the bands and tell me in the comments which band you want to see the most!
Sunday the 13th of April 2014 marked the final night of the 2014 Decibel Magazine Tour and it was at the Fillmore Silver Spring. The headliner was Carcass, making their first DC appearance since reuniting in 2008, though they have played Baltimore twice since then. Each stop on the tour had a local opener and for this show it was Coke Bust, a straight edge hardcore band. I got there in time to see them but there was a problem with my photo pass at the box office and I didn’t get the pass in hand until Coke Bust had finished their set. A shame since I’ve seen them before but never on such a big stage. The second band to play was Noisem, a band of very young guys from Baltimore. I don’t think any of them are even old enough to drink yet. Noisem wasn’t another local opener though, they were on the entire tour, and as such they’ve certainly been getting a lot of exposure outside the area as well. They play a rather catchy style of death/thrash that’s a throwback to the 90s. Their vocalist Tyler Carnes was pretty high energy on stage, at least when he wasn’t fighting with the mic chord that was wrapped around the stage monitors. He jumped down into the photo pit area several times during his set, you may have seen me trying to avoid running into him while photographing him down there, and he ran up to people and would scream lyrics at them. This must have been pretty cool to people close up but for anyone not right in front, well, they probably had no idea what he was doing. Their set was good though and the band looked good on the Fillmore’s nice, big stage. A cover of Terrorizer‘s “Fear Of Napalm” with guest bass by Alejandro Corredor of Nausea was fun and gave Noisem’s regular bass player the opportunity to stage dive.
The next band to play was technical death metal band Gorguts. The Canadian band only has one member from its pre-reunion days, guitarist/vocalist Luc Lemay, but the band was always really his to begin with. For some reason he was off to the left of the stage most of the time, an odd place for a lead vocalist even if he was also playing guitar. Two members of the techy instrumental band Dysrhythmia, a personal favorite band of mine, are in Gorguts so I’m definitely a fan of the current line up. They were absolutely crushing on Sunday at the Fillmore. They are probably the most brutal band to ever play there and while Gorguts only played five songs, each one was performed expertly. They closed out their set with their classic song “Obscura” which was punishing. This is the band I was most excited to see at this show and they did not disappoint! Luc Lemay was manning the band’s merch table most of the night and was very friendly with fans, shaking hands and taking photos with them. If you missed their incredible set don’t worry, they’re playing the final day of Maryland Deathfest this year, Sunday, May 25th, and they’re playing on one of the big outdoor stages so tickets won’t sell out.
The next band to play was The Black Dahlia Murder, a melodic death metal band from Michigan that, I’ll admit, I’ve never really been a fan of. I’ve seen them several times over the years since they tend to play with bands I like but I’m not really familiar with their music. A lot of people seemed to really dig their performance but I just wasn’t one of them so this part of the show was, for me, used to talk to various people I knew that were there. This isn’t to say that their set was particularly bad, though I could have done without the “big titties” comment from vocalist Trevor Strnad, it just wasn’t my kind of music and it wouldn’t really be fair of me to judge their overall performance.
The next band to play was the headliner, Carcass. They played Maryland Deathfest last May as one of the headliners, but that was before they released their new album, last year’s Surgical Steel. Sunday night’s set list (see it here) was fairly similar to the one they played at Maryland Deathfest, except a few older songs had been removed to make room for several new songs. While Surgical Steel seems to have been well received by most fans, I didn’t like it at all so the loss of older songs in the set list for newer ones was a bummer for me. Overall the audience didn’t seem to mind and I suppose if you’re really into the new material this was your first chance to hear it live. The new song “Captive Bolt Pistol” certainly got a bigger mosh pit than “Exhume To Consume” did, and only hearing three songs from Necroticism: Descanting The Insalubrious was a bummer to me, but overall I got what I expected, mostly songs from Heartwork and Surgical Steel. I thought Carcass’ performance was much better here than at Maryland Deathfest where they seemed a bit rusty. Part of this might be due to the band having played so many more shows recently. Bill Steer and Mike Amott replacement not Bill Steer Ben Ash traded solos seamlessly and the band just seemed tighter overall this time. Jeff Walker sure talked a lot between songs and speaking with people after the show there seemed to be two sets of thought on this: some people loved it and found it very entertaining while others found it rambling and annoying. Sometimes he had some interesting or funny things to say about the band’s origins or the Chicken Man, but sometimes he said things that had me wondering why he was still talking. Like when he made a comment about how being vegetarian or vegan is a choice like being gay is (what?) and how the last time the band was in DC his only memory was of how confused he was by an overweight, black, lesbian Neo-Nazi at the 9:30 Club (again, what?). It didn’t take away from the show too much I guess but I certainly don’t remember him talking that much the last couple times I’ve seen them live. Anyways, even if this Carcass show wasn’t my ideal show, they did play material from every era of the band to at least have something in there for every Carcass fan. Plus a show like this brings out a lot of people and it’s always awesome running into so many familiar faces. Be sure to check out my photos and videos from the show below and feel free to leave a comment telling me about your experience at the biggest metal tour to come through our area this April.
Carcass is a band that started as vegetarian grindcore and evolved over the years into one of the pioneers of melodic death metal. They broke up in 1995 only to return recently with last year’s release of Surgical Steel and now, on Sunday, April 13th they’ll be playing songs spanning the entire history of the band at the Fillmore Silver Spring as they headline the 2014 line up of the Decibel Magazine Tour. We here at DCHM are pretty damn excited about this tour and so we’re going to give away a free pair of tickets to this show to one of you lucky readers. To enter: leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite Carcass album is. If you need help you can find their discography listed here. If you’re not a huge Carcass fan but more into one of the other bands on the tour, then tell me what you favorite album by one of them is instead. At 5pm EST this Friday, April 4th, 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 $26.50 from Live Nation here.
Not only are death metal legends Carcass playing this show but a ton of other great bands as well. The Black Dahlia Murder is from Michigan and the melodic death metal band’s 2013 release Everdark might be their best album yet. Canadian techdeath masters Gorguts have also reunited and they’ll be destroying eardrums at this show as well. Gorguts may be the most brutal band to ever grace the stage at the Fillmore Silver Spring! Baltimore’s death/thrash upstarts Noisem are really starting to take off and they’ll be on the entire tour, not just our date, and for good reason: their high energy live show slays audiences! And for this date of the tour only straight edge hardcore band Coke Bust will be opening the show. Now that’s what I call a killer line up! Be sure to check out these killer tunes by all the bands playing the show and tell me what your favorite Carcass album is in the comments!
If you’re a metal head and you’ve got a TV then you’ve probably seen Metalocalypse on the Cartoon Network‘s Adult Swim. The humorous show is about the fictitious metal band Dethklok which Brendon Small, the show’s creator and song writer, brings to life using animated back drops behind live musicians (including the legendary Gene Hoglan on drums!) playing the Dethklok tunes. Well Dethklok has just put out a new release, Dethalbum III, and so they’re hitting the road again. On Friday the 2nd of November 2012 they’ll be playing at the Fillmore in Silver Spring, Maryland and DCHeavyMetal.com wants to give you a free pair of tickets to this show! To enter just tell me who your favorite member of Dethklok is and why by leaving a comment on this post. Just to help remind you, the members are: Nathan Explosion, Skwisgaar Skwigelf, Toki Wartooth, William Murderface and Pickles. On Friday, October 26th at 5pm EST one lucky winner will be picked at random (using Random.org) from all valid entries to win a pair of tickets to the show. If I don’t hear from you in 24 hours then I’ll pick another winner to get the tickets so be sure to use an email address you check regularly so you’ll be able to claim your prize. 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. And if you cannot make it to the show please don’t enter because I want people who can actually attend to get the tickets! If you simply can’t wait to find out if you have won or not, or the contest is already over, you can buy tickets to the show for $35 from Live Nation here.
Dethklok is the headliner but don’t think they’re the only band worth seeing on this tour because there are some killer support acts as well. Direct support comes from Boston’s All That Remains. Their new album, A War You Cannot Win comes out on November 6th and I’m betting you’ll be able to hear some of those new songs live at this show before it is even released! Machine Head will also be playing and these Bay Area shredders will be sure to bring the heavy. Be sure to get there early to check out opening act The Black Dahlia Murder as this Michigan band plays some of the songs from their latest album, Ritual, live for the first time in this area. Still not convinced this show is going to kick ass? Then check out the music videos below, one by each band, and enter the contest while you’re getting your headbang on!
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