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.
The legendary Swedish prog metal band Opeth is touring with Texas based doom metal masters The Sword which comes to the Fillmore Silver Spring on Friday, September 30th, 2016! We’re so psyched to see these two great bands together that we’re giving away a pair of tickets to this very show to one of you lucky DCHM readers! These bands are from two very different subgenres of heavy metal so to enter: just leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite heavy metal subgenre is. From traditional to funeral doom metal to crabcore to brutal slam sci-fi tech death metal, any metal subgenre is valid as long as it is your favorite! On Tuesday, Sept 27th at 5pm EST the contest will close and I’ll pick a winner at random (using Random.org) from all valid entries to win the tickets. 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 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 for $35 here.
Opeth have been one of the leading bands in the progressive metal world since they released their debut album, Orchid, back in 1995. The band’s 12th studio album, Sorceress, is being released on the very same day as this show. That means we’ll be some of the first to hear these new songs live, as well as some of the band’s older classics from throughout the years as well. But let’s not forget the opening act on this tour, The Sword. Normally a headliner in their own right, The Sword will be opening shows on this tour with their catchy brand of doom metal. It’s not every day you get to see two great bands from such different subgenres on the same bill so this is not a show to be missed. Check out these videos from the bands below and tell me what your favorite heavy metal subgenre is!
If you’ve ever been to one of our heavy metal nights at a brewery then you definitely know that we here at DC Heavy Metal love craft beer almost as much as we love metal! When DC Brau announced that their 5 year anniversary celebration was going to be an outdoor metal show we started counting down the days! On Saturday, April 16th the parking lot area at the brewery is going to be fenced off and a stage is going to be set up with a killer line up including The Sword, Kvelertak, Torche, Serpent Throne and locals Loud Boyz. In addition, the brewmasters at DC Brau have teamed up with the brewers at 5 different breweries to make 5 special collaboration beers just for this anniversary show! We hope you are as excited about this line up of excellent bands and beers as we are and so we’re doing a special give away for this one. One of you lucky DCHM readers will get a pair of general admission tickets to this very event and another one of you with even better luck is going to be getting a pair of VIP tickets to the event (you must be 21 or older to win the VIP tickets)! To enter: just leave a comment on this post telling me which band you’re most excited to see at this show (if you don’t know any of them check out the videos at the bottom of this post). On Friday, March 25th at 5pm EST the contest will close and I’ll pick two winners at random (using Random.org) from all valid entries. The first winner will get the pair of general admission tickets and the second winner will get the pair of VIP tickets. If you are under 21 please specify so because I will not be giving the VIP tickets to a minor but you can still win the general admission tickets. 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 a selected winner in 24 hours another winner will be chosen at random.
And what exactly do the tickets get you? The general admission tickets will get you into the event where you can watch all of the the bands perform, buy beer and food and generally have a great time. The VIP tickets include all of that as well as access inside the brewery for a VIP-only bar, catered barbecue, complimentary unlimited beer, and guaranteed access to all the collaboration brews. If you don’t want to wait to see if you win or the contest is already over when you read this then you can purchase tickets either at the 9:30 Club box office (to avoid fees) or online from Ticket Fly for $45 (GA) or $200 (VIP) here.
Now, here’s a little bit more about the bands and those special collaboration beers. The Sword is a groovin’ doom metal band from Austin, Texas, and they’ll be headlining this show. Kvelertak is a high energy rock/metal band from Norway that incorporates elements of punk and black metal into a unique sound that is all their own and they’re known for their wild live shows. Torche is a band from Miami, Florida, and they call their heavy yet catchy music thunder pop which actually makes perfect sense when you hear them. Serpent Throne is an instrumental stoner band from Philadelphia and they’ve got a ton of sick riffs. Loud Boyz are a local party rock band that formed from the ashes of the party thrash band Warchild. That’s a pretty sweet line up, but lets not forget those 5 exclusive collaboration beers. Cigar City in Tampa, Florida is known for making one of the best stouts in the world, Hunahpu Imperial Stout, so I’m pretty excited to see what kind of big stout they’ve cooked up with the DC Brau guys, a beer they’ve named The Wise And The Lovely. Alexandria brewery Port City‘s collaboration with DC Brau produced a dunkel, which is a German style dark lager (dunkel is the German word for dark) and while it won’t be a heavy as the aforementioned stout this beer, Zehn von Zehn, will surely be quite refreshing. They aren’t all dark beers though, for example the collaboration with Sun King in Indianapolis, Indiana is a double IPA brewed with rye and named Ripa the Dipa. The collaboration with Austin Beerworks in Austin, Texas is an India style lager (so expect it to be more hoppy than most lagers) named Celestial Garden. Last but not least the collaboration with St. Louis based Perennial Artisan Ales is a Belgian style saison with rose hips and hibiscus added to give Pink Pallet Jack a pink hue.
OK I know I’ve been more wordy on this post than my contests usually are but there’s a lot of info for this event! If you’d like even more info you can check out the official Facebook event page for it here or go read DC Brau’s announcement post here. Now check out these videos below and tell me which band you’re most excited to see on April 16th at DC Brau’s 5th Anniversary Celebration!
The Sword is the biggest and best doom metal band from Austin, Texas and they’re coming to DC on Friday, February 21st at the Rock & Roll Hotel on H Street. DCHM is pretty excited about the show and so we’re giving away a pair of tickets to see this very show! To enter: just leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite beer named for a band is. Maybe it’s the Iron Maiden beer, the Clutch Dark Sour Ale or even The Sword’s own Winter’s Wolves beer (more on that one below). You can enter with a beer even if you haven’t had it, maybe it’s your favorite just cause it has the best label. At 5pm EST this Friday, February 14th, 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 Ticket Fly right now for $22 here, they’ll be $25 the day of the show if they aren’t sold out.
The Sword burst onto the metal scene in 2006 but they play an old school style of doom with a stoner edge full of fat riffs and catchy hooks. This show is sponsored by DC Brau as well as Baltimore’s Oliver Ales and both will have special beers at this show. DC Brau will be debuting their new double IPA Solar Abyss (which is about 10%!) and Baltimore’s Oliver Ales will have their The Sword: Winter’s Wolves dark ale on draft as well. To make things even better both beers will have big discounts on price for the show. Drinking a The Sword: Winter’s Wolves while The Sword plays their song Winter’s Wolves live in front of you can definitely happen at this show! Let’s not forget about the other bands though, Big Business is a Seattle based sludge band featuring two members of The Melvins. This isn’t just some Melvins spin off though, they’re pretty damn good (and have a great sense of humor as well). The opening act is O’Brother from Atlanta, a heavy rock band that should be a perfect start to this show. Now get to thinking of which metal beers I should try you choose to enter with while listening to these killer tunes below by the bands playing.
That’s right, in celebration of DCHeavyMetal.com entering its third year of existence, I’ve decided to hold a mega contest giving away a pair of tickets to three different upcoming metal shows! There will be three different winners, not one person getting all three. Just leave a comment at the bottom of this post telling me which of the three concerts you’d like to go to and I’ll use Random.org to pick three winners, one for each concert, on Monday the 19th of September 2011 at 6pm EST to win tickets. You can only win for one concert but you can enter to win for all three or whichever ones you’d like. Be sure to use a valid email address when you enter so I can tell you that you have won, though it doesn’t have to be visible in the post itself. Don’t worry I won’t add you to any email lists or anything annoying like that. Read below to see what the three metal concerts are, and choose wisely!
Choice One
On Wednesday the 21st of September the West Virginia based Karma To Burn is coming to the Rock & Roll Hotel. Karma To Burn is an excellent sludgy stoner band and they play a lot of instrumental songs, though some have vocals. To make this show even better, DC’s own Borracho will be opening. They are an excellent stoner act that you should be sure to check out if you haven’t already. Borracho recently put out their first LP titled Splitting Sky and this show would be a great chance to save on shipping and pick it up after seeing them play live. Local act King Giant was supposed to play this show but due to an injury to one of the band members they have had to cancel their appearance at this concert. If you don’t win or you just can’t wait, you can get tickets to this show here for $10.
Choice Two
On Friday the 23rd of September the brand new 2,000 person capacity Fillmore in Silver Spring will host its first ever metal concert! British metalcore band Bring Me The Horizon headlines a night of some of the best core bands coming from the UK and Australia such as Parkway Drive, Architects, While She Sleeps and Deez Nuts. And come on, if you win you can spend all week telling people you won tickets to see Deez Nuts. The Fillmore will have just opened on September 15th so this will be the first chance to destroy the place with some insane mosh pits! If you don’t win or you just can’t wait, you can get tickets to this show here for $23.
Choice Three
Kyuss Lives!is the name of the reformed version of legendary stoner band Kyuss featuring all the original members of the band except Josh Homme (he’s busy playing with super group Them Crooked Vultures these days). So now the band has Bruno Fevery on guitar but what’s really exciting is that they have been working on a new album and, assuming they play some of that on this tour, this show will be the first chance this area is going to have to hear new Kyuss material in over 15 years! To make things even better Texas based doom masters The Sword and Atlanta’s Monstro are opening. This show is on Saturday the 24th of September at the 9:30 Club and you know it’s going to be awesome. If you don’t win or you just can’t wait, you can get tickets to this show here for $30.
Monday the 6th of December 2010 was a damn cold night, but not cold enough to keep me from going to see The Sword play at the 9:30 Club. It is Washington DC’s most well known non-seated music venue, and also the largest. They don’t get a whole lot of metal bands there, so when they do I usually try to get to the show. This concert was different than any I’d been to before at the 9:30 Club because I had been given a photo pass by the band. This meant I could get up in front of the audience and shoot pics with my “pro” camera, so I really spent a lot of the show focused on that. That’s not to say I wasn’t paying attention to the band, but I just wanted to get that out there as it changed my perspective of the concert a bit, and I generally try to write these reviews from the point of view of the average person in the audience, not some guy with special access or whatever. The show was a lot of fun, and it was cool getting a chance to test out a lot of the settings on my camera. I think I got some really great pictures, and while I see lots of room for improvement, I’m still proud of how some of them came out. Anyways, on to how the show went…
I missed the opening band Mount Carmel though I heard they were a bluesy band. When I walked in Karma To Burn was playing their first song. These guys are from West Virginia and I’ve heard a few of their albums. Mostly instrumental metal, and that’s great to me because I’m a fan of instrumental metal bands. They’re a very groove based sort of doomy or stoner band, and I’d say they are pretty similar in sound to Pelican. They did play several songs with lyrics, though I’m not familiar enough with the band to give you a set list or song titles. They put on a good show with some fun songs, they were a really good choice for a support act, really helped warm up the crowd. I shot a few pics of them from the second level, but apparently my photo pass didn’t allow me to shoot any video and I was told to stop after having captured just one song. This also means I have no video of the headliner, a first on this blog, sorry! I await the day that all bands stop telling their paying fans they can’t make their own pics or videos at concerts. People aren’t bootlegging/stealing from you, we’re trying to have something to remember the experience with, and share them with our friends. Hell, I’m trying to use them for the purposes of a review, which is promotion at best and fair use at worst. Well, before this turns into a rant, I’ll start talking about the Sword.
The Sword is a doom metal band from Austin, Texas. Their sound is almost 70’s rock-ish with fantasy, and on their latest album, science fiction themed lyrics. You’d almost think this band spawned straight from a Frank Frazetta painting. They have caused a bit of a stir among music critics, some praising their classic style of metal with it’s epic heavy riffs and crushing grooves, while others say they’re basically reinventing the wheel and haven’t really done anything to deserve all the attention. I’d never seen them live before, and while I like their music, and their latest album, Warp Riders, has really grown on me, I wouldn’t say I absolutely love their studio work. That said, I really enjoyed their live show, much more than the studio material. Maybe it’s just the studio producer they’ve got, but the songs really came alive on stage in comparison. You could tell the band was glad to be playing and having a blast up on stage, and the songs just seemed to have an extra energy that seemed to be lacking in the studio. While I was there to take pics, sometimes I just had to put the camera down and headbang to some of those tunes. The setlist was very heavy on Warp Riders material, they played eight of the ten songs on it, though they didn’t play the song “Lawless Lands.” I find that odd since they just released a music video for that song (see it at the bottom of this post). I really liked how the song “Night City” sounded live, and their encore performance of “Winter’s Wolves” was fantastic, a perfect way to end the show. The new drummer, Kevin Fender, did a great job executing, especially considering how short he’s been playing with the band. In case you didn’t know, this concert was supposed to happen back in October but the old drummer abruptly quit and the tour had to be rescheduled. Also, this was the first concert I held a ticket give away for on the site (here), and I hope the winner Matt had a blast! It did so well I’ll be holding another contest with free tickets for the Gwar concert coming up on December 29th, also at the 9:30 Club. I’ll have a post with details about that up soon, so check back in a few days. Now, here’s the one Karma To Burn video I managed to get before I was told to stop shooting video, followed by the Sword’s official video for “Lawless Lands.” If that’s not enough you can check out some more of my pics of the Sword on Flickr here. Enjoy!
The fantasy themed doom metal band The Sword is coming to the 9:30 Club on Monday, the 6th of December (yes, that’s this coming Monday). The folks at the 9:30 Club have awesomely decided to let me give away a pair of tickets to this concert to one lucky DCHeavyMetal.com fan! Will it be you? All you have to do is leave a comment on this post below that tells me what your favorite metal concert at the 9:30 Club was and why. If you haven’t been to a metal gig at the 9:30 Club before, then tell me why you’re excited to see the Sword there. Be sure to use a valid email that you check regularly when you post your comment as that is what I will use to contact the winner (you don’t have to put your email in the comment itself though).
I’ll pick one lucky winner at random from all the valid entries at 11:59pm on Friday night (Dec 3rd) to win the pair of tickets. Multiple entries will be disqualified, so don’t be a dick. I’ll know if you’re using multiple email accounts! If I haven’t gotten a response back from the winner within 24 hours, I will pick another winner Saturday night at 11:59pm. Note that this concert is at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC so if you cannot make it to the show there Monday night please don’t enter. Also of note, I will not add your email address to any mailing list or sell it to junk mail spammers or anything annoying like that. I hate that shit too. I just need it to get in contact with the winner.
This concert was originally scheduled for Oct 20th as part of the tour supporting their new album, Warp Riders. The tour was abruptly halted when their drummer suddenly quit the band, but a new drummer, Kevin Fender, has joined the Sword and the tour has been rescheduled. Tickets from the previous date will still be honored. Also appearing is West Virginia instrumental metal band Karma To Burn and openers Mount Carmel from Ohio. Tickets are available from Ticket Fly here for $20 ($28.75 after fees) and the doors will open at 7pm. Please help spread the word about this contest, I’d like to give as many people as possible a chance to win. Now check out this video the Sword just released for their song Lawless Lands:
UPDATE: Congratulations to 7th commenter Matt! I used the website Random.org to generate a random winner from the 17 commenters below, and he was the lucky winner. I have already contacted him and he has responded with his info so there will be no Saturday night drawing. Don’t worry though, you can still get tickets to this show here. And keep reading DCHeavyMetal.com because I’ll be holding another contest soon that will be giving away a pair of tickets to see Gwar at the 9:30 Club on December 29th. It was a blast reading all the great stories you guys have of metal shows at the 9:30 Club, thanks to everyone who shared one!
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