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Deafheaven ticket give away

Deafheaven

San Francisco based atmospheric black metal band Deafheaven is touring this summer and they’ll be at the Rock And Roll Hotel this Sunday, June 30th and DCHeavyMetal.com is giving away a free pair of tickets to a lucky one of you readers. To enter leave a comment on this post telling me who your favorite black metal band from the US is. At 5pm EST this Friday, June 28th, a winner will be chosen 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 then you can get tickets from Ticket Alternative right now for $12 here.

Deafheaven plays a rather hypnotic style of black metal that fans of Alcest, Wolves In The Throne Room and Krallice will enjoy, though they’ve put their own California style take on the sound. Their new album, Sunbather, takes the standard frozen wintery darkness commonly associated with black metal and does a full 180 with its imagery of summer heat, blinding sunlight and sunburnt skin. Give the album’s title track a listen on the YouTube video below. The song is 10 minutes long but it goes to a lot of different places in that time and is definitely worth the full listen. Also on this tour is Marriages. They’re based out of LA and not really a metal band but two of the members, Greg Burns and Emma Ruth Rundle, are both from Red Sparowes. The opener is a electonic/doom band from Baltimore named Curse. I’ve posted a song by each band below so give them a listen and tell me who your favorite USBM band is!

June 24, 2013
Categories: Black Metal, Contests, Rock And Roll Hotel . Tags: Band, Black Metal, Concert, Contest, Curse, deafheaven, Free TIckets, Gig, Heavy Metal, Marriages, Metal, Music, Rock And Roll Hotel, Ticket Contest, Washington DC . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 23 Comments

Torche ticket give away

Torche

Miami Florida’s Torche is bringing their thunder pop to the Rock And Roll Hotel on Saturday, June 15th and DCHeavyMetal.com is giving away a free pair of tickets to a lucky one of you readers. To enter just tell me which song you’d like to hear them play the most in a comment on this post. If you need help then just check out their discography on Metal Archives (here). At 5pm this Friday, June 7th, a winner will be chosen 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 then you can get tickets from Ticket Alternative right now for $14 here.

Torche plays a sort of stoner metal and rock hyrbid that is full of great riffs, and they are really fun to watch live. This show should be a lot of fun! They’re playing with Canadian hardcore band KEN mode as well as the excellent Ohio based band Lo-Pan. Hell, even if you don’t win you should come out to this show, it’s going to be a lot of fun on a summer Saturday night! Now give a listen to these videos below by each of the bands playing and decide which Torche song you want to pick to enter!

June 4, 2013
Categories: Contests, Rock And Roll Hotel, Stoner . Tags: Band, Concert, Contest, Free TIckets, Gig, Heavy Metal, KEN mode, Lo-Pan, Metal, Music, Rock And Roll Hotel, Ticket Contest, Torche, Washington DC . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 12 Comments

Cannibal Corpse Ticket Give Away

Cannibal Corpse is one of the most infamous death metal bands in history and this Saturday, the 1st of December, they will be playing at the Rock And Roll Hotel in Washington DC! Because this show is going to be absolutely brutal DCHeavyMetal.com is going to give away a free pair of Cannibal Corpse at the Rock & Roll Hotel tickets to one of you readers. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment at the end of this post telling me which Cannibal Corpse song is your favorite (you can see their discography here, just click on an album to see the songs on it). Cannibal Corpse is known for having some of the most gory, disgusting, violent and downright offensive song titles in all of metal so I hope to see some interesting entries! On Friday, November 30th at 5pm EST I’ll pick a winner at random (using Random.org) from all valid entries to win the free 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. Please don’t enter if you cannot attend. Be sure to enter with a valid email address you check regularly so I can contact you if you 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 you simply can’t wait to see if you win the contest you can get tickets from Ticket Alternative for $20 here.

Cannibal Corpse originally formed in Buffalo, New York, but moved to Tampa, Florida to join in the growing death metal scene there. They’ve long been a center of controversy with their brutal lyrics and album covers, setting the bar of shock for countless death metal bands to strive to match. While metal fans tend to look at them, and death metal in general, as the musical equivalent of splatter horror films, politicians like Bob Dole and Joe Lieberman have tried to censor the band and in the 90s Germany and Australia both actually banned their albums from being sold. Despite this the band still continues on and their music has actually gotten faster and more brutal over the years, including on their latest release, Torture, which was released in March of this year. Also on this tour is Misery Index. The band was formed when several members of Dying Fetus left that band however only Jason Netherton remains from the Fetus days. The band has carved out its own sound since then and is one of the best live metal bands you’ll ever see, they absolutely destroy audiences live! Hour Of Penance is an Italian death metal band that is pretty similar in sound to Behemoth actually. Needless to say, they’re pretty damn brutal and should be a perfect opener for this show. You can listen to each of the bands playing in the videos I posted below while you decide which song you want to enter with. Keep it brutal everyone, cause this concert definitely will!

Cannibal Corpse – Encased In Concrete

Misery Index – The Spectator

Hour Of Penance – Sedition Through Scorn

November 26, 2012
Categories: Contests, Death Metal, Florida Death Metal, Rock And Roll Hotel . Tags: Cannibal Corpse, Contest, Death Metal, Free, Free TIckets, Heavy Metal, Hour Of Penance, Misery Index, Music, Rock And Roll Hotel, Washington DC . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 45 Comments

Last Minute Earth Ticket Give Away

Earth at the Rock & Roll Hotel

Friday, November 9th, that’s TOMORROW, is Earth Day! Ok, not the real Earth Day where musicians fly around the world putting on lavish concerts in praise of their appearance of environmentalism. However you can see Earth play at the Rock & Roll Hotel with Eagle Twin and Stebmo. This is a special ticket contest for those of you who pay attention to this site regularly so it is only running for 24 hours and will end at midnight Thursday night/Friday morning. To enter just leave a comment below telling me why you want to see Earth. I’ll pick a winner at random (using Random.org) when the contest ends to win the pair of tickets. If you can’t make it to the concert then don’t enter! I want the winner to actually go to the show. Be sure to enter with an email address you check regularly so I’ll be able to contact you if you win. As always, 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 you can’t wait to find out if you’ve won (then you’re really damn impatient!) or if the contest is already over when see this, you can get tickets for $14 from Ticket Alternative here.

Earth is basically the father of drone bands like Sunn O))). They formed in Seattle in 1990 in the midst of the grunge movement, although they don’t play that style of music. In fact Dylan Carlson, Earth’s main songwriter, was the best man at Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love’s wedding. As bonus trivia, it is said that he gave the shotgun to Kurt Cobain that he later ended up killing himself with. Crazy. Anyways, Earth is instrumental, mellow, somewhat abstract ambient and pretty damn awesome. There aren’t any big metal shows this weekend so you’d be smart to come out to this one. Direct support comes from Eagle Twin, a doomy sludge band from Salt Lake City that should be a great warm up for Earth. The opening act, which goes on at 9pm, is Stembo, the solo project of Steve Moore. He is most known for being in the band Zombi but he has also worked with Sunn O))) in the past. In all that’s a pretty cool line up and I’m excited to give a chance to win some free tickets to this show to you regular readers of DCHM! Now check out these songs by each of the bands as you enter the contest below.

November 8, 2012
Categories: Contests, Drone, Rock And Roll Hotel . Tags: Contest, Eagle Twin, Earth, Free TIckets, Rock And Roll Hotel, Stebmo, Ticket Contest, Washington DC . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 8 Comments

Saint Vitus at the Black Cat

Thursday the 27th of September 2012 saw the Black Cat in Washington DC drawing a pretty good sized crowd for one of the legends of doom/stoner metal, Saint Vitus. This was the first of two major doom/stoner shows in just a few days as Down and Pentagram played the Fillmore three days later (my review of that show is coming next). However, the first band to play on this rainy Thursday night was Sourvein, a stoner/doom/sludge band that was a decent opener. They didn’t do anything that really stood out that much to me but they were heavy and fuzzy and made for a good band to open this kind of show. The second band to play was a three piece stoner band from North Carolina named Weedeater. Their bass player, “Dixie” Dave Collins, also does the vocals and he’s a pretty entertaining front man. When he wasn’t swigging whiskey from the bottle on stage he was giving all kinds of crazy cross eyed looks to the audience and stomping around his side of the stage. You may have seen him before in the bands Buzzov•en and Hail!Hornet but Weedeater was definitely his band and as such, they were a lot of fun to watch play. Their songs ranged from faster paced catchy riffs to slow plodding doom all with a bit of humor to them. Their closing song, the humorous yet epic track Weed Monkey, was a perfect showcase of their range and a great set up for the final band of the night, Saint Vitus.

Saint Vitus formed in the late 70s in Los Angeles as one of the first doom metal bands (after Black Sabbath of course). However it wasn’t until 1986 that their legendary vocalist, Scott “Wino” Weinrich would join the band. Wino has been in several other noteworthy bands such as The Obsessed, Spirit Caravan, Shrinebuilder, Premonition 13 and too many more to list, however he is most famous for his time in Saint Vitus. This is why the influential Saint Vitus got all the old school doom heads out to the show, as well as many younger fans. Saint Vitus put out a new album, Lillie: F-65, back in May and made an appearance at Maryland Deathfest that same month, however Thursday’s concert was the first time Saint Vitus had played any of that new material actually inside the District. They kicked off their set with one of the new album’s best tracks, Blessed Night, and played several more from the album through the night. They also played several older classics from the three old albums with Wino and even played a couple songs from before he joined the band. You can see the actual set list here if you’d like. Despite the band’s age they had great energy on stage. Guitarist Dave Chandler went crazy with the solos all night sometimes playing with his teeth or even behind his head at times. He really did a good job of bringing the crowd up while Wino’s painful lyrics and trademark weathered, raspy voice brought everyone back down. Towards the end of the set Dave Chandler even said that this was definitely the band’s best gig in DC and he thanked the audience for being so into the show. I guess that wasn’t good enough for him as he later jumped off the stage and played a solo while walking around in the audience! Saint Vitus eventually walked off stage and came back to perform two of the band’s most well known songs, Dying Inside and Born Too Late. I’ve got video footage of the entire encore, and some other songs too, posted below so check that out if you can handle the doom. My only complaint with the show was having to watch the band in that awful pinkish orange lighting the Black Cat has. It’s long past time they upgraded the lighting on the upstairs main stage and this show was just another reminder of that. Even so, Saint Vitus put on a killer show that night no matter how you look at it. Thanks for reading this post and be sure to get out to some of the great metal shows coming to the area to help support the scene you’re a part of!

Sourvein:

Weedeater:

Saint Vitus:

October 2, 2012
Categories: Black Cat, Concert Reviews, Doom Metal, Stoner . Tags: Black Cat, Concert Review, Concert Reviews, Doom Metal, Saint Vitus, Sourvein, Stoner Metal, Washington DC, Weedeater . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: Leave a comment

Vektor and Battlemaster at RAS Hall

So last Sunday, the 16th of September 2012, the Philadelphia based thrash band Vektor was finishing up their tour with an afternoon matinee show at the RAS Hall in Washington DC. People often mistakenly call the venue an Ethiopian restaurant however it is actually Jamaican, or more specifically, Rastafarian. Their religion believes that former Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie was the second coming of Christ and that is why his image was plastered all over the interior. Anyways, there was a good turn out even though the early show was competing with the Redskins game. Luckily they had some TV’s over the bar that showed the game. The music began with a Chicago based grind band called Worn Out that I didn’t hear but from outside of the venue. They seemed a bit out of place for this show’s line up. The next band up was Midnight Eye, a great local metal band that really started the riff fest that the rest of this show would be. The band’s frontman/guitarist, Simon, is a friend of mine and he set up this show, along with many others around the area. If you want to keep up with the awesome DIY metal shows he puts on you can join his Metal Squad Party Force group on Facebook (here) to be sure you get invited to them all. I don’t have photos of Midnight Eye from Sunday because I hung out at the bar to watch the Skins game while Midnight Eye played and I’ve shot them several times before anyways. However you can see older photos I’ve shot of them here. They were good and it looks like they’re starting to get a more consistent line up now. After they played the Richmond based Battlemaster slayed the place with their Dungeons & Dragons themed thrash metal. Their songs were about things like displacer beasts and cursed boots of perpetual dancing which might have been a bit too nerdy for most in attendance to understand (however I did play some 2nd Edition AD&D back in the day and I got most of their references I think). Regardless of their lyrical content the band can really shred and they were really fun to watch play. You may recognize their vocalist, Andy Horn, as being the recently departed original frontman of another Richmond band, Cannabis Corpse. You could tell he was having fun up there and it was a good show for the band’s first time in DC in about 5 years. Battlemaster’s set was a good lead in for the final band of the evening, Vektor.

I’d never seen Vektor live before and while they are coming to Empire in late October, they’ll be playing a shorter set I’m sure since they will have three bigger bands playing after them (more info on that show here). So that meant the chance to catch them do a full headlining set was a don’t miss opportunity. The band’s main man, David DiSanto, looks like Morbid Angel‘s Trey Azagthoth circa 1990. He was even wearing a cut off Morbid Saint shirt! He also had various metal parts and what seemed like a grate and a circuit board on his guitar which totally fit with the band’s futuristic lyrical imagery. Did I mention they totally killed the place? Vektor has some awesome riffs and the shred factor was off the scale at this show. I like their recorded music but hearing it live just added another whole level of energy and excitement to the songs. They didn’t have a set list for the show so after a few songs they just took requests from people in the audience for what to play next, a sure fire way to please any crowd. I really can’t say enough about how good they were live, just total face melting thrash! If you’re into thrash metal and you missed this show then you fucked up big time. However there’s another great thrash show happening this weekend: The area’s wildest live thrash band, Warchild, will be chugging beers and thrashing people’s faces off Saturday the 22nd at DC9. You can get more info on that show here or give the band a listen here (I recommend the song Every Position, that song rules!). It’s great to see such quality bands playing the area so be sure to get out to some of these great metal shows and support the scene you’re a part of!

Battlemaster: