I recently spoke to KEN Mode vocalist Jesse Matthewson at their St. Vitus gig in Brooklyn opening for the venerated Orange Goblin. It was a crazy show and the noise rockers did not let the crowd down, slaughtering the room with unbridled fury. These talented Canadians can’t be kept down. We discussed their new record ENTRENCH, other cool bands, touring with Torche, soundtracking a film and more. Check it out by clicking HERE!
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Progressive blackened folk metal group Agalloch (did I just invent a new genre name?) are streaming their entire new EP Faustian Echoes over at their Bandcamp page. Faustian Echoes is a two-part song based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s epic masterpiece Faust. It is by far the longest song the band has written so far. The album is being released on the band’s own label, Dammerung Arts.
You can find the EP streaming right here.
This EP will be available as a digital download at the Bandcamp site starting on July 11th when the band begins their Summer tour in Portland, Oregon. Both the LP and CD versions will be initially only available during the band’s tour and will then be made available to the world following the tour. You can find the dates so that you know when to look for the album right here.
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Welcome to Metal Riot’s Cover Art Battle! Every week we try and show the best-of-the-best in metal cover art, ranging from the fantastically illustrated to hauntingly photographed and everything in between.
Another week, more album cover art to discover. New bands. Tenured bands. Enough shenanigans. Time for you to go and vote.
That is all.
***WINNER*** Bilocate – Summoning The Bygones (Code 666)
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“We fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land. We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess—across the night, eastward over the Plains…” – Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Oregon’s progressive / folk / black metal-foursome, Agalloch, have announced that they will be embarking on a US summer tour. Get the band’s official Facebook announcement and current tour dates here.
I don’t know about you but this news made me jizz in my pants.
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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.
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Oregon blackened folk/doom legends Agalloch have revealed that they are not just releasing a new album in the near future, but that the album is already recorded and ready to go. They haven’t set a release date as of yet but promise to keep us updated via their Facebook page.
Agalloch are calling the album Faustian Echoes and have apparently made some kind of a photo album documenting the recording session. To read the full statement from the band click here.
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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.
Oregon doom metallers Witch Mountain have been signed to Profound Lore Records.
The band is preparing to enter the studio in the spring to record with legendary producer Billy Anderson. Their third full-length is slated to be released via Profound Lore Records in the summer.
In the meantime, in early 2012 Profound Lore will issue the band’s album “South of Salem” on CD in a limited run. “South of Salem” is the follow-up to the band’s debut album. It was self-released by the band in April 2011 on vinyl only.
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Canadian metalcore band KEN mode have recently announced that they will be going on a massive European tour at the beginning of 2012. They will be touring with Kylesa and Circle Takes The Square.
Click here to see the list of tour dates, cities and venues.
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New Jersey funeral-esque death/doom metallers Evoken are entering the studio this week to record their next full-length album. No title has been given yet but we’ll keep you posted.
The album should be released in the spring of 2012 via Profound Lore Records. This will be the follow-up to 2007′s “A Caress Of The Void.” It will be the band’s fifth and most significant full-length album to date.
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Chicago’s The Atlas Moth are one of the very best bands in the underground and synergy is their forté. Leaping tall genre boundaries in a single beer/riff, the Moth truly kill (listen to their Doors cover so I don’t have to explain). Several of the best records of 2011 came out on Profound Lore and “An Ache For The Distance” by The Atlas Moth is one of them (certainly in my top 666 for the year along with Gigan, SubRosa, Conny Ochs, The Haunted and USX). “An Ache…” captures the band’s love of noise and black metal AND really starts to capture the melodic expansiveness of their Deftones appreciating side. Grooves and grinding attack meet waves of psychedelia and hissing steam combined with sheets of brittle yet melodic black ice. It’s fascinating as all get out and to top it off they are some of the coolest dudes going.
Click here for an interview with Stavros of The Atlas Moth about the new record, doing things your own way, working with James Murphy and more.
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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
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Dark Castle is a duo consisting of singer/guitarist Stevie Floyd and drummer Rob Shaffer and as it was the case with their 2009 debut album “Spirited Migration,” their new album “Surrender To All Life Beyond Form” seems more the making of some crazed doomsday cult than a duo from Florida. Dark Castle is all about the exploration of musical space, rather than traditional track-after-track linearity. It is baffling how so much sound is generated with a line-up as shaved down as Floyd and Shaffer’s.
Read the full review here.
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!
Utah’s SUBROSA have stunned the doom laden corners of the metal world with their latest release NO HELP FOR THE MIGHTY ONES (Out now on Profound Lore). This is music with a gorgeous ache to it that can impact you like a bluesy avalanche. Earthy and real yet also fantastically surreal, SubRosa have set the mark high for 2011 and are reaping well-deserved critical acclaim. I spoke with Rebecca Vernon about the elemental power and themes of this release, working again with Magnus Devo Andersson (Marduk) plus collaborating with my band Antidote 8 on a song of ours recently (a huge treat for such a big SubRosa fan as myself).
Click here to read the interview.
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Orange Goblin are pure rock n' roll... feared, respected and mentioned in whispers by awed rock fans and youngsters across the world. Orange Goblin are the modern UK metal heroes who never give up and always keep kicking ass. Back with their first live album, the pants-seat scorching A EULOGY FOR THE FANS (Candlelight), "The Goblin" just get better with age. Seriously, could this band be any more awesome? I think not.
