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.
Sadly, the Mandatory Metal shows at the State Theatre have ended, but in their wake comes the first heavy metal show that wasn’t part of the Mandatory series to be booked at the historic venue in Falls Church, Virginia. That’s right, on Saturday the 29th of January 2011 Arlington’s southern stoner metal band King Giant will be headlining a killer line up at the State Theatre. Also playing at this concert will be stoner rock band The Crimson Electric coming up from Virginia Beach, as well as DC’s ghetto metal act Throwdown Syndicate and Falls Church’s own thrash band Death Penalty.
To celebrate this milestone for metal at the State Theatre, King Giant, Death Penalty and DCHeavyMetal.com have teamed up to give one lucky fan an awesome prize pack. The winner will get a copy of both of King Giant’s CDs, a Death Penalty men’s XL t-shirt (or girlie shirt in different size if preferred) and a free pair of tickets to the concert. All you have to do is pick one song you want to hear King Giant play during their set at the concert. Just leave a comment below with a single song title before Saturday the 22nd of January at noon EST, which is when the contest will end. 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, and I promise I won’t spam anyone). The guys in King Giant will pick a song to play from those in the comments below and the person who picked it will win the prize package! If multiple people pick the winning song, one of them will be selected at random to win the prize. Multiple entries will be disqualified, so don’t be a jerk and enter multiple times. Since this concert is ages 18+ only, you must be 18 to win the prize. If for some reason you don’t know any of King Giant’s songs, check them out on Bandcamp (here) to download and/or stream their latest album, Southern Darkness, and come back to pick your favorite song in the comments below. If you’d just like to go ahead and buy tickets, you can get them online from the State Theatre here for $10 each. Good luck everyone, I can’t wait to see which song the band picks. And in case you haven’t seen it yet, check out the awesome video for King Giant’s song 13 To 1 below.
UPDATE: The band has spoken and has decided to play commenter Jon’s song choice, Needle And The Spoon, a Lynyrd Skynyrd cover that is a bonus track off their album Southern Darkness. Jon wins the prize pack and in addition to having his choice of song played at the show on Saturday, he has won a pair of tickets to the show, a copy of both King Giant CDs, Southern Darkness and Identity, and the Death Penalty shirt as well. Congrats Jon, I’ll see you Saturday at the show! And for those of you who didn’t win, you can still get tickets at the State Theatre box office or online here (just $10 before the day of the show). Thanks everyone and keep checking back for more contests here on DCHeavyMetal.com, including ticket give aways for Darkest Hour as well as Apocalyptica that will be posted on the site soon!
This isn’t a full review of the Metal Monday show on 10 January 2011, but a quick recap of the night.
The show was supposed to start at 8 but didn’t start til after 9pm. Lunar Frost dropped off the bill and was replaced by Akris. The BCS football championship was on the TVs that night too, Auburn beat Oregon.
The first band up was a black metal band from Chantilly named Dragon Wing Begonia. They weren’t bad, though some of their songs were a bit too long. I did enjoy them though. No bass player, but they had a stuffed purple dragon on the mic stand, wtf? They were giving away copies of their demo and I should have those posted to the Downloads section soon.
The next band was Croatoan, who I’d seen at the State Theatre back in August. I enjoyed this set a lot more. Their State show seemed a bit too eclectic of a mix of styles, they seemed more focused this time around. They said they’d be recording their first demo in February, and I’m looking forward to that.
Putrid Servant played after them, a black metal band from Baltimore with ex-members of Corporeal. I’d been meaning to catch them for a while and they were the main reason I came out this night. They didn’t disappoint, I really enjoyed their dissonant set and was happy to finally see them. I’d have bought a shirt or something afterwards but they didn’t have any merch with them.
Wolfnuke is a blackened thrash band from Gaithersburg, Maryland. They brought out some big stacks of amps and really wowed the crowd with their relentless energy and shredding riffage. I’d never heard of them before but I hope they play around here again soon, they were really fun live and impressed everyone in attendance. I definitely recommend see them if you get a chance.
Akris was the final band, but they didn’t start setting up until well after midnight and I was already yawning looking at a 45 minute drive home. I should have stayed though because 495 was shut down for construction and I sat in park for 30 minutes there, so annoying. Really wished I had stayed for Akris after that. Hopefully they’ll play again soon because I’d like to see them.
A fun night for $5 and it’s always nice seeing some of the random people from the local metal scene who show up at So Addictive for Metal Mondays there. I shot some video, all of which is horribly dark, but should give you a chance to at least hear three of the above mentioned bands.
What a great show! I’m usually rather weary of concerts at larger venues like this, but I’m really glad I went. I didn’t get there in time to catch Anthrax, but I’m not a huge fan of theirs anyways so I wasn’t too upset about it. I was there for Megadeth and most of all Slayer. I hadn’t seen either of them play in several years. This tour, originally called Leg 2 of the American Carnage Tour was renamed the Jagermeister Music Tour and there were some random college girls walking around giving out Jagermeister merch, and Kerry King even did a shot of Jager on the stage between songs at one point. It was weird seeing product placement in the middle of a Slayer gig like that. The main draw to this tour though was that Megadeth was playing their classic 1990 album Rust In Peace from start to finish and Slayer would be playing their album Seasons In The Abyss, also from 1990, straight through also. It was in Baltimore, and I’d never been to the 1st Mariner Arena before, but I couldn’t miss that.
I was coming to the show after work, where a friend had met me. I had called the venue ahead of time and they told me Megadeth would be hitting the stage around 8pm and Slayer at 9:30 so I had a frame of reference on how to get there. There was a bit of traffic when I left around 6:45 and we were sweating making the gig on time. When we got to Baltimore we parked in a garage directly across from the venue and booked it inside. Just by sheer luck we had parked on the side that was general admittance tickets only, which is what we had. So we quickly got down there, realized Megadeth wasn’t playing yet and got beers. As soon as we walked back out onto the main floor the lights dimmed and the show started, you can’t plan timing that good! Megadeth started with the Rust In Peace album right out of the gate. Holy Wars… The Punishment Due was the first song but people weren’t getting into the show right away. A lot of heads kinda bobbing and fist pumping but I don’t think I even saw a mosh pit until half way through their set. Megadeth’s main man Dave Mustaine switched out guitars several times through the night, even pulling out some double neck flying V (does that make it a flying W?) guitar at one point. He also mentioned the problems with their last concert in Baltimore, the one where someone poured a drink on the mixing board three songs into their set so the show was canceled. More info on that fiasco here. He also called that venue, Rams Head Live, a piece of shit, which got people laughing a bit. They had the Rust In Peace album cover backdrop up while playing the songs from that album, but switched it to an image with Megadeth’s mascot Vic doing a sort of fist bump thing with background artwork from their latest album, Endgame. They also had a guy wearing a suit and a Vic mask with skeleton gloves come out on stage during Dawn Patrol, I suppose to distract people from the weakest song on Rust In Peace. One thing that sucked was Dave’s vocals during Megadeth’s entire set were shitty! They weren’t consistent at all and just sounded awful, which you can hear in the videos I posted below. I don’t think it was his voice as much as the PA not working correctly or something. The band seemed to be having a lot of fun up there and even did an encore. I always think it’s kind of odd when a band does that who isn’t the headliner. Especially since Slayer did not do the encore gimmick this show. Regardless, it was fun seeing Megadeth play some of those killer though less played songs on Rust In Peace like Five Magics and Poison Was The Cure. I didn’t see them last March when they came to the 9:30 Club playing the same album, so this was great. After they had played the album they played Head Crusher from their latest album in a mix of Megadeth classics like Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying? People were really into the show by the time they finished and everyone knew the intensity was about to go up once Slayer hit the stage. Another odd thing, Dave said “God bless you” to the audience as he left the stage, which wouldn’t be that weird (we all know he’s become a born again Christian) except for the fact that fucking Slayer was up next.
A white curtain was dropped to hide the stage while Slayer set up. The crowd was in a state of anticipation when they started projecting the Slayer logo onto the curtain. I worked my way to the front as close to the center as I could get, ended up about 3 or 4 people back the entire show. I saw Slayer play Reign In Blood in 2003 at the now razed Nation so I figured I’d see them play Seasons In The Abyss too, since that album is also awesome. Maybe they’ll play Show No Mercy straight through for the next tour! I had assumed that Slayer would start their set with War Ensemble, the first song on Seasons In The Abyss, but they surprised me and played a couple songs off their latest album, World Painted Blood. The title track and Hate Worldwide are decent songs I guess, but that’s not what people were here for. Just as the crowd’s enthusiasm started to wane Slayer burst into War Ensemble and got the show really going. The audience instantly came to life and the pushing and shoving up front started and didn’t stop until the end of the show. I’d say War Ensemble is one of Slayer’s more “mosh friendly” songs, but really how many Slayer songs aren’t great for moshing to? For those who have not seen Slayer before, their mosh pits are intense! They have one of the most rabid fan bases in all of metal, which is really saying something. And let me tell you it’s not easy taking pictures or shooting video in the middle of all that! Hell, just keeping yourself relatively still while Slayer is 10 feet in front of you playing Raining Blood or Angel Of Death is not an easy task even if nobody else was there. But I’m no rookie to mosh pits, I love this shit. I did see a few kids getting pissed about all the pushing and elbows they were getting, but I mean it’s Slayer, what were you expecting people to be standing around staring blankly like it’s a fucking Fugazi concert? They actually had the security pull them out of the crowd to leave the front and avoid having to go back through the mosh pit. Those kids could not handle the Slayer! This was the first time I’d seen Slayer since Tom Araya had his neck surgery, after which he no longer head bangs. Kind of weird but not a huge deal, it did mean I could get more good pics of him throughout the show though. They played Seasons In The Abyss as advertised and again it was great hearing them play some of those awesome songs that never get played live from that album. Temptation really got people going crazy too, which I wasn’t really expecting. The sound seemed better for their set than the Megadeth show, though you can judge that for yourself with the videos below. They finished the set with just a few of their classics, South Of Heaven and the like. The only odd thing was after playing Raining Blood they immediately went into Aggressive Perfector, which is a bonus track from the Reign In Blood album. They didn’t do an encore and you could tell when the show rather abruptly ended after Angel Of Death the audience still wanted more. Some people started chanting Slayer for them to come back but really that wasn’t going to happen. I was covered in sweat and bruises but damn if that wasn’t a fun show. I really liked this venue too, they had an open setup and the fact they let me shoot video the entire time was great too. After the show someone told me that somebody had broken a leg or something in the pit, apparently toward stage left. I’m definitely glad I got the floor tickets instead of seats, the intensity of being up front at a Slayer show is second to none, though I’m glad I wasn’t the one with anything broken! Now check out the two Megadeth and six Slayer videos I shot last night that are posted below. Enjoy!
Friday the 30th of April 2010 I found myself at Jaxx again, this time to see Overkill headline the Killfest Tour. Well, not so much Overkill as the openers Vader, God Dethroned and Warbringer, so maybe this review’s title is a bit misleading. Unlike the previous Friday’s Cannibal Corpse concert, or Monday’s Amon Amarth gig (which I missed because they started so early), this concert’s headliner wasn’t scheduled to hit the stage until 11pm. That’s great for me as I work later than most on weekdays and I really wanted to see some of the opener bands too. I got to the venue but couldn’t find any parking, so I had to cross the street and park by the Shell station in the Giant’s parking lot. Of course as I was walking to the venue I saw a car pull out of a spot that was actually, you know, in the correct lot. Always frustrating when that happens. Anyways, I proceeded to walk to the venue.
Warbringer was on stage when I got there, so I went straight to the main room and got up front. I thought they’d be done playing by the time I got there, but apparently things were running a bit late so I got to catch a decent amount of their set. These guys were really a lot of fun to watch live. I’ve enjoyed their studio material but this was the first time I’ve been able to catch them play. In the past week I’ve seen a lot of these modern thrash bands (Skeletonwitch, Toxic Holocaust and Municipal Waste) and Warbringer might have had the best stage presence of all of them. Their lead singer, John Kevill, really got the crowd into it, but on top of that the other guys in the band did a good job of getting the audience excited. This isn’t a band where the singer gets everyone into the show and everyone else just sits there playing their instruments. There was a lot to watch no matter where you were looking on the stage.
Next up was God Dethroned. I saw them headline a show at Jaxx back in October 2009 and they really impressed me with their live show so I certainly wanted to see them again. The last time I had seen them they had a woman on guitar, Susan Gerl, but this time they had a new guy, Ian Jeckelis, who is apparently also a member of Abigail Williams. This show performance wasn’t as good as their headlining gig in October. They were plagued with technical problems, and actually played almost an entire song without vocals nor one of the guitars as Henri Sattler tried to find a solution to the problem. There was a pause for a few minutes after that song while the equipment was set back up, I figured they probably had to cut a song out of their set because of the time it took. The final song also seemed to have a problem as about 90 seconds into it the other guitar seemed to go out and Ian stormed off the stage and didn’t return. A shame the show didn’t go better for them, as they’re a good band and people should pay more attention to them. I did talk to the bassist for a couple minutes after they had played, and he said that after the tour they’d be working on a new album and would probably come back to the US after that was out, though he said he didn’t know if it would be as headliners or as support. He said it would be another album about a battle in World War I, but he didn’t say which it would be this time.
The next band to play was an old favorite of mine, Vader. They’re an old school death metal band I’ve been a fan of since I first heard their album The Ultimate Incantation. They are from Poland and are actually one of the first bands of any genre, not just metal, that broke through the iron curtain to the west, due to their early demo material being highly praised on the old underground tape trading scene (for the young people reading this, that’s what people used to find out about new metal bands before the internet had things like Napster or bit torrent, where people would actually trade copies of demo cassette tapes through the regular mail). Unfortunately Vader wasn’t headlining this concert so they didn’t play all the songs I wanted to hear, though they did play some older material like Sothis and Carnal as well as a good amount of newer songs too. They didn’t play my favorite Vader song Silent Empire, which sucks because that song is so damn brutal. The line up has completely changed, except for main man Peter Wiwczarek, since the last time I saw Vader live (in December 2007). They still played very tight and really got the mosh pit going. I’m glad I got to see them again as they always seem to impress with their high speed death metal assault. And I don’t say that lightly, Vader is one of those bands that’s fast even by death metal standards. I had an entertaining time talking to some of the younger guys in the audience while they set up too. One of them told me how he wished he had gotten to see Damageplan with Dimebag Darrell before he died as Pantera was his favorite band. I really felt old when he stared at me wide eyed when I told him I’d actually seen Pantera play several times!
The next band set to play was going to be the headliners Overkill. I’ve never really been a fan of theirs, they’re a bit too “Waaaaah!!!!” for me, if that makes sense, haha. Since the guys who were in front of me on the railing left after Vader played, I got to stand in the front row and figured I’d give em a shot live since I was there anyways. They took longer to set up than any of the other bands, and before they played Jaxx owner, Jay Nedry, came out onto the stage to talk to the audience for a while. He thanked the all bands playing, the roadies, sound and light techs, bartenders and staff and the people in attendance for coming to shows for all these years. He promoted a few of the concerts coming to Jaxx soon (which you can always find out more about on the Upcoming Shows page here on this site) and gave a toast to the war veterans in the audience. After a few more minutes Overkill hit the stage. Their lighting set up was rather impressive I must say, one of the better ones I’ve seen at Jaxx. I took a few pics and figured I’d shoot a video of one of their first songs before I got out of the front and let someone else up there who really wanted to be there. While I was shooting footage on my regular camera something strange happened that I’ve never had happen at Jaxx before (and I’ve seen over 60 concerts there). Security asked me to put my camera away. What the fuck? I wasn’t shooting with a camcorder (though most clubs don’t mind that these days anyways, but I know that’s a no-no at Jaxx). It really took the fun out of the show for me. If I couldn’t use my camera (which I wanted to use to post material here for my review) then I surely wasn’t going to stay to watch a band I didn’t care about otherwise. I gave the guy behind me a chance to take my spot in the front and then headed to the back of the venue. I bought some merch and a ticket to the upcoming Dark Tranquillity gig and left the venue with a really bad taste in my mouth. Maybe Overkill played a great set but from the 2 or 3 songs I saw them play I wasn’t really impressed with much besides the lighting. I’m hoping Jaxx doesn’t turn into another camera-nazi venue like the 9:30 Club and hopefully this was just a 1 time thing, maybe brought on by the band or something. Anyways, the footage I did get of Warbringer, God Dethroned and Vader is all viewable below.
So Sunday the 25th of April I decided that instead of going to the Earth Day Climate Rally on the national mall, I’d much rather go to see the bands Municipal Waste and Toxic Holocaust at the Rock & Roll Hotel. No I’m not some hipster just trying to be ironic, I really couldn’t give a shit about Sting, I want some thrash! When I got to the venue the opener, Black Anvil had just finished playing, so I didn’t get a chance to see them. After talking to a few of my friends who had already gotten there I moved up to the front of the stage. There wasn’t much of a crowd in there when I got inside, but the place was filling up by the time Toxic Holocaust finished their set. They played a really good set and they’re one of those bands who not only plays their material faster live, but with much more energy. They didn’t talk much between songs and really just came out to shred it seemed, and the audience seemed to get into it a bit. It was a great set to warm the crowd up, though I’m not sure if they really needed it.
After a rather long set up time, Richmond natives Municipal Waste hit the stage. The crowd was ready and it didn’t take long for people to start running onto the stage and stage diving back into the audience. The security was not happy about this and had its hands full trying to kick people out. Several times between songs Municipal Waste berated the security for kicking people out and I noticed the bouncers had started to just throw people back into the pit when they were crowd surfing. That was a pretty intense mosh pit, I did my best to stay out (moshing with my cameras = not good!) but you could tell it was made up of a lot of DC hardcore kids and they were ready to get brutal. People were singing along with catchy chorus lines and just all out having fun. Their set was a good mix of songs from all their albums, though I don’t think the audience cared what they played really, as long as it was fast. That’s because their vocalist, Tony Foresta, had such great stage presence. He was jumping around and instructing the circle pit which way to spin and turning the mic around so the people could help out. He told people to all jump up on stage for the final song so it wouldn’t matter if people got kicked out by security, and they did! It looked like maybe a dozen people were crammed on the stage by the time the song ended. The only gripe I really had about the show was that they did the typical “walk off stage and wait for the crowd to chant for an encore” rock star bullshit thing. I thought that was kinda glam, especially considering they’ve got such a punk influence. That’s really not a big deal, and the show was a lot of fun for everyone except security!
Below I’ve posted the videos I shot with my normal camera from this concert. If you saw me there you may have noticed I also had a palm cam that I was shooting with. It’s actually a friend of mine’s and he was letting me borrow it. The video quality came out great though the audio was terrible, complete overload once the guitars started up so I didn’t post them to YouTube with these other vids. There is a recording volume control but I didn’t know how to use it until I looked it up after the concert. That’s ok though because really this was just a test run for when I bring it to Maryland Deathfest next month. It really did a good job of adjusting to the dark setting though, which if you look at the third video below, you can see my normal camera does not. The audio is still good on those though, so I hope you enjoy them.
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.
have to do is pick one song you want to hear King Giant play during their set at the concert. Just leave a comment below with a single song title before Saturday the 22nd of January at noon EST, which is when the contest will end. 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, and I promise I won’t spam anyone). The guys in King Giant will pick a song to play from those in the comments below and the person who picked it will win the prize package! If multiple people pick the winning song, one of them will be selected at random to win the prize. Multiple entries will be disqualified, so don’t be a jerk and enter multiple times. Since this concert is ages 18+ only, you must be 18 to win the prize. If for some reason you don’t know any of King Giant’s songs, check them out on Bandcamp (here) to download and/or stream their latest album, Southern Darkness, and come back to pick your favorite song in the comments below. If you’d just like to go ahead and buy tickets, you can get them online from the State Theatre here for $10 each. Good luck everyone, I can’t wait to see which song the band picks. And in case you haven’t seen it yet, check out the awesome video for King Giant’s song 13 To 1 below.
DCHeavyMetal.com 