Metal Riot

Every day for the past five days I have sat down to tell you all about my weekend spent experiencing 15 hours of live, genuine metal from the hearts and souls of 19 bands. But how do you put into words one of the most unbelievable musical experiences of your life? I don’t think the mere words that I am about to put down will ever truly do it justice, but I will try my best.

The last weekend of April, 2012 had been a day I had been anxiously awaiting for months. It was Day 1 of the Gilead Media Music Festival and I was about to immerse myself in 2 days, 19 bands, 15 hours of live metal in its many varied forms. Adam Bartlett, the mastermind behind Gilead Media, has been busting his ass off for countless months to bring this unbelievable event to a small, relatively conservative community nestled in the bosom of the Midwest. This weekend was all and more than I ever expected.

Get the full Day 1 overview here. You can also check out our full Day 1 photo gallery on our Facebook page.

Prepare thyself for the most intimate of events where thou shalt partake in the glory and the majesty  of all that is doom, drone, sludge, and black. Heed the call and make the pilgrimage to the heartland of America (Oshkosh, WI) to join your brothers and sisters on April 28th and 29th in an unforgettable mass of heavy metal darkness.

Nashville’s funeral doomers Loss, true Baton Rouge droners Thou, the west coast’s lo-fi black metallers Ash Borer, Milwaukee’s doom-sludgers Northless, and many more are prepared to defile your ears and deface your flesh.

Get the full festival line-up and schedule here.

Tickets for the first ever Gilead Media Music Festival are on sale NOW! There are only 250 tickets available per day and are $40 for a weekend pass or $23 for a day (all ages event).

Get your tickets and further details right here.

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Known for the trash metal boom of the ’80’s, San Francisco has since become an often overlooked metal scene. But when you have a band like Nero Order creating their unique brand of visceral doom metal you better pay attention. Champions of the DIY ethos, Nero Order’s “The Tower” is a completely self-funded and self-released album of 4 mind-crunching and sludge-faced doom metal that heralds to the days of old school Neurosis. Believing in the art of metal and not to eek out a profit, the band is sharing “The Tower” as a free download. So, download it, listen to it, and head on over to their Facebook page and let them know what you think of their elephantine rhythms, expansive and tragic melodies, moody and severe vocals, their simultaneously abrasive and consonant, dynamic, cacophonous sound that is academic in scope and violent in delivery.

“For I am I: ergo, the truth of myself; my own sphinx, conflict, chaos, vortex—asymmetric to all rhythms, oblique to all paths. I am the prism between black and white: mine own unison in duality.” – Austin Osman Spare

How many of you Metal Rioters out there have gone to your local record store of choice and picked up a new metal album solely based on the art that graces its cover? I have found many a hidden gems and a few utter disappointments but there are few things greater in this world than gently cracking open the liner notes for the first time as the smell of ink and paper washes over you.

In the world of iTunes and Pandora, the art form that is the album cover is slowly dying. But we’re here to remind  you that in the world of heavy metal, the art of the album cover is alive and well! So each Tuesday we’ll present to you the best album covers of the week to declare what we all already know – Heavy Metal is art.

So welcome to another episode of: KICK ASS ALBUM COVERS OF THE WEEK!!! (insert blistering guitar shred here). Novembers Doom “Aphotic” (The End Records) dominated with 60% of the vote. The Gates of Slumber “The Wretch” (Rise Above Records) had a nice surge at the end to go from 11% to 27% over the weekend but alas, they just couldn’t quite catch up. So, congratulations to Novembers Doom and stay tuned for their return for May’s Cover of the Month voting in just a few short weeks.

But that’s so last week! Go and check out this week’s Top Five right here.

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!? GO! VOTE!

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Ever wonder where some bands come up with their band names?  Well, we do, and we’re sick of sitting around scratching our heads about it and we bet a lot of you Metal Rioters are sick of doing the same damn thing. So, we’re pulling our sleuth gear out to bring these heavy metal mysteries into the light and every Wednesday we’ll be pulling the curtain back to bring you sweet revelation.

This week’s origin story comes to you from the Pacific Northwest where Agalloch has been creating its unique progressive, avant-garde, black folk metal sound for over a decade. Revelation awaits you here.