Metal Reviews

Jeff Loomis guitar clinic tonight
Ensifer-fuckin'-em tomorrow
Wolf and Cauldron on Sunday

Austrian Death Machine tonight!!!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway the Loomis clinic last night was cool.

Amusing live review of Alestorm in this month's Terrorizer (the one with Immortal on the front), if anyone has it.

Let me guess:
-oh this folk metal stuff's stupid isn't it?
-it's all about image, but they don't even bother dressing up, losers
-ah, but the kids seem to like it

Not so, T-Rex!

Although yes, it was generally anti-Alestorm.

Hmm, can't have been written by that worthless trout Louise Brown then. How she ever ened up the editor of a magazine like Terrorizer is beyond me.

I know its never been the most inclusive mag, but for all the recent "if you don't like Slipknot/Machine Head/Generic Deathcore Band X then you are just a sad would-be elitist wanker get a life try smiling for once" shite that has been creeping into their articles lately the amount of snide folk metal bashing that goes on is ridiculous.

Kinda agreed, but...



Surely they could rectify the former without losing any of the treasured snide folk-metal bashing?

Neither are THAT bad, jeez.

Well, metal with folk influences? Yes please.

Metal with people dressing up as pirates or trolls or whatever for the purposes of gimmickry? Argh get it away!

Well I say either defend both or bash both, but don't try and be all open-minded one hand and then on the other dismiss scores of bands as trend-hoppers not worthy of the divine attention of the Terrorizer readership.

Yes that is true.

I wish it would be more confrontational in its editorials. Editorials should be one of the most interesting parts of a magazine but they're always just "Yeah we've got a great interview with Slayer!". I'd like to see them being opinionated and saying f.ex., "we encourage deathcore and discourage folk metal because...". Then it's like they'd have a position that their readers could argue with, rather than just having general attitudes that are inconsistent or never get explained.

Yeah. It all comes down to the individual writer as well of course, I wouldn't expect a music magazine to have a set political stance like a tabloid anyway.

Anyway, Ensiferum were completely out of this world last night. Guardians of Fate!

Frig the local symphony was playing Holst's The Planets and I missed it >:[

Last weekend @ Noctis III

Kilyakai
Ares Kingdom
Slough Feg
November's Doom
Truck

I'll let you in on a little secret .. the band I (and everyone I was with) enjoyed the most was Truck. They play progressive metal that sounds like a stoner version of early Fates Warning mixed with Tool (or something like that). After November's Doom who were a bit on the boring side of doom, this is exactly what I needed. Interesting and complex music played extremely tight. Alas, they don't yet have a CD. http://www.myspace.com/truckstopahead

Kilyakai had the best frontman of the evening, he is quite good. The band itself is technical death with hardcore tendencies. Very tight, had the most crowd movement.

Ares Kingdom was absolutely pummeling. A relentless wave of ear splitting black/thrash. This is the reason my ears were ringing the next day. The lead singer's voice has been described by some as 'gaseous' which fits pretty well. Enjoyable.

Don't get me wrong, Slough Feg was good. I didn't think their setlist was the best (they didn't play Simian Manifesto?) and Scalzi's voice was hard to pick out in the mix, but they were definitely unique and Scalzi has a great stage presence. If some Neandertals had survived to this day and started a rock band, I imagine they would look something like Scalzi with his crazy hair, primitive tatoos and ape-like postering.

Going to see Napalm Death in a few weeks hopefully, very excited.

WAIT I DIDNT. Totally seeing that shit Nov 1st or 2nd

CAULDRON - Get a good singer and a second guitarist please. Then write better songs.

WOLF -

Protest The Hero and Propagandhi are playing together in December, so now I've got three or so weeks of quality gigs coming through.

Saw Mastodon and Converge last night. Converge was simply amazing, during songs Jacob Bannon was all over the place and screaming his face off, while in between he was incredibly gracious to the crowd and did a cool little intro to each of the songs. As a supporting band, their set wasn't as long as I would've liked, but oh well...they closed with Concubine, which was heavy as fuck.

Mastodon played Crack the Skye in its entirety, which was fucking awesome. I don't know what it was, but they started out a little shaky with Oblivion--I think it's just not a great live song. But by The Last Baron they looked as excited to be up there as the crowd was to be there, and then they came back out to play some stuff from earlier albums, which was epic. Overall GREAT performance from Mastodon.

Dethklok was also headlining...it was interesting, they had a live band performing the songs with videos for each song on the screen behind them. I didn't really take them seriously but a lot of people looked like they had actually come to see Dethklok...they do have real talent, with Gene Hoglan on drums and Metalocalypse-creator/guitarist/vocalist/Berklee-grad Brendon Small absolutely tearing it up. But yeah, music obviously wasn't THAT great, but they still put on a good show.

Go see this tour if you can.