Melvins, Napalm Death, Melt-Banana live at Boston, MA’s Paradise Rock Club
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Melvins and Napalm Death dubbed their co-headlining spring trek across North America the “Savage Imperial Death March Tour” – because honestly, what else would you call this insanity?
Across the dates, and particularly on April 16 in Boston, the Pacific Northwest metal weirdos and British grindcore pioneers brought their combined aural assault to venues that they likely wouldn’t have had much trouble filling individually (indeed, Melvins have headlined the Paradise a whopping nine times since 2008 according to Setlist.fm). With Japanese noise-punk duo Melt-Banana in tow for support, these shows truly did promise a spectacle – and deliver it.
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Melt-Banana’s opening set was a precision blast of technicolor rhythm and noise, both literally and figuratively. A side-stage projector intermittently cast vocalist Yasuko Onuki and guitarist Ichirou Agata in vibrant shades as they raced through a half-hour set of jackhammer pop. Onuki sang in earworm cadences and triggered drum machine patterns with a glowing remote control whilst Agata’s heavily processed guitar signal dodged and weaved through the mix. A mid-set suite of ultra-short songs, none topping a minute in length, were representative of the performance in microcosm: bright, brisk and leaving a crowd wanting more.
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Melvins then took the stage for an appropriately eclectic set spanning their own career and that of several other artists. The band’s current touring lineup sees permanent bandleader Buzz Osborne and percussionist extraordinaire Dale Crover joined by Steven McDonald of Redd Kross in the ever-rotating bassist slot, and the trio were in no particular mood to highlight any recent studio efforts under the Melvins moniker (of which there have already been two in 2016). Instead, they pulled from a repertoire that ranged from snapshots of their enormous back catalog – everything from Stoner Witch to Melvins & Lustmord to Kiss and Alice Cooper covers.
Clad in an eyeball-patterned garment, Osborne and his signature finger-in-a-light-socket hairdo enthusiastically churned out leaden riffs backed by Crover’s distinctly heavy percussion and the springboard energy of McDonald. Melvins have always been something of an anything-goes endeavor, willing to indulge all manner of bizarre ideas and collaborations over their 30-plus year history, and the performance had an off-the-cuff feel that reflected that spirit. The band exists at the experimental intersection of sludge, doom, hard rock and hardcore, and elements of all of that were on display. The set ran a bit short of a proper headlining, but the no-nonsense presentation crammed 15 songs (and snippets of others) into just over an hour. A consistent lineup has long been antithetical to the Melvins brand, but no alternating membership stopped them from performing with confident, ass-kicking efficiency befitting their legendary status.
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Though Melvins were perhaps the bigger name on the bill, the decision to hand off headlining duties to their British tourmates was a good one. In the tour’s press release, Osborne is quoted in describing Napalm Death’s sound as “a gorilla on LSD firing a machine gun…in a good way,” which effectively covers why even the Melvins wouldn’t want to follow up one of their sets. It took them a few (brief) songs to lock into a groove and a proper PA mix, but soon enough the quartet honed in on its explosive, breakneck-speed sound and proceeded to demolish the room. There had been a minimal amount of audience turnover once Melvins wrapped up, and the still-packed Paradise responded as one might expect. Stage-diving here – particularly for a security-heavy show with a stage-front barricade like this one – is nearly impossible, but more than one intrepid fan still managed the impressive feat of dashing down the balcony stairs and leaping over the shoulders of venue staff to do it anyway.
While longtime members Shane Embury and Danny Herrera held down the rhythm section (joined by a guest guitarist in place of the temporarily sidelined Mitch Harris), it was vocalist Barney Greenway who gave the band its magnetic charisma. Armed with an youthful stage presence and a thick Birmingham accent, Greenway alternately functioned as Napalm Death’s aggressive mouthpiece and affable spokesperson. Every burst of unrestrained fury he screamed song to song was matched with charming dialogue during the band’s occasional breathers. “[We’re] back once again to make a horrible fucking racket,” he playfully announced early in the set, and his addresses retained that tone as he skewered Donald Trump and organized religion, and jokingly demanded a shot of Grey Goose (which an audience member actually delivered), elsewhere.
Napalm Death wrapped things up after traversing from last year’s Apex Predator – Easy Meat all the way to 1987’s Scum and back again – with stops for Siege and Dead Kennedys covers in between. And with that, the sum of the evening’s experience left some 900 fans stumbling forth from the Paradise in awe.
Savage Imperial Death March indeed.
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Melt Banana
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Melvins
Who is John Frum?
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John Frum. Say the name out loud. John. Frum. You can hear the periods after both words. Both land with a dull thud. Those eight letters are a cover, an inviting bow wrapped around pandora’s box. When I asked bassist Liam Wilson how his new band, a collaboration with Matt Hollenberg (a guitarist for avant garde jazz legend John Zorn), Eli Litwin (Knife The Glitter) & Derek Rydquist (former vocalist of The Faceless) settled on the name, he tore the packing off of that box and turned it into a mobius strip of influences and allusions. Wilson is an odd duck. When we spoke to him over the phone about John Frum’s upcoming debut A Stirring in the Noos he referenced the Burning Man festival with the casual air of a retired WASP mentioning their latest trip to Martha’s Vineyard. He brought up panspermia and biodynamic wine like he was discussing flavors of ice cream. Wilson has a habit of starting sentences with “Again” regardless of whether he’s made the point before. At first it seems like a nervous tic, but the more he did it the more it felt a bit zen. Like the idea he’s trying to express existed before him, and he was only repeating it. It’s easy to read him this way because Wilson is a pretty heady dude. So why John Frum? “Because Portal was taken.” Wilson jokes....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QfQYWzS7zY...
Here’s the long answer. John Frum is a myth. A collectively agreed upon lie. John Frum is the central figure in what is commonly referred to as a Cargo Cult. During the WWII, the US Air Force would use islands in the nation of Vanuatu as base of operations in the Pacific Theater. To the indigenous people of the region, who previously had no awareness of Americans, the whole thing was somewhat inexplicable. The soldiers arrived from out of the sky on airplanes, deposited radios & spam, and vanished just as suddenly. Since then the people of the island of Tanna developed a religion around a messianic American that would bring them endless riches in the form of cargo. An article by Paul Raffael published in the Smithsonian on the John Frum phenomenon implies that the leader of this religion consciously used John Frum as rallying point to resist colonial rule....
“It’s possible that local leaders conceived of John Frum as a powerful white-skinned ally in the fight against the colonials, who were attempting to crush much of the islanders’ culture and prod them into Christianity.”
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This complicates the condescending idea that Cargo Cults are the result of naivety on the part of the cult. They aren’t just comical misunderstandings, they are symbolic, a deliberate way of reordering the world to express a community’s wants and needs....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFKfqrdP6xs A BBC Documentary on the John Frum Cargo Cult...
Wilson made it clear that the band wanted to avoid addressing this origin too explicitly in their music. For one, they didn’t want to lock themselves into a single aesthetic. Also, John Frum is not interested in the risk of cultural appropriation. “I’m not saying that it won’t be full of inspiration, I mean shit look at the milage Nile has gotten off Egypt. However, I thought that it felt limited. I want it to be open sourced and a full on collaboration. Almost like how Hindu religions just invent different deities for whatever the situation calls for, I feel like John Frum songs in a sense are like H.P. Lovecraft short stories that all in some way riff off this idea of man’s relationship to god and the universe. I think if we went more narrow with the lyrics it would have just grown pretty stale.” Wilson says, “I really wanted to be sure that nothing about this seemed like I was just cashing in. The last thing I want to do is make a religion out of their religion. Or mock it in anyway. John Frum is not that.” Instead Wilson and his bandmates use the cargo cult surrounding John Frum as a roadmap, one that points at the malleability of reality. The band litter their social media with quotes that read like Assassin’s Creed outtakes. “There are no facts, only interpretations”. This isn’t the first time this concept, paraphrased from Hassan-i-Sabbah, has found its way into heavy music. Isis used a similar concept as the basis for In The Absence Of Truth. But what was an intellectual curiosity in 2006 is now an accurate reading of the temperature. Even though Wilson denied any intention of commenting on the mess of “alternative facts” or “fake news”, it’s undeniable that these themes resonate beyond the desk of Sean Spicer. Media saturation gives ammo to any and all viewpoints. Anyone can build a bubble that confirms their own beliefs, walling off anything that conflicts with their version of reality. John Frum plant C4 at the base of that wall and denote it with glee. To anyone unfamiliar with extreme metal, their music will seem just as alien as an iphone dropped into the jungle. Any sufficiently heavy metal is indistinguishable from magic. But to those in the know, John Frum are the latest in a string of bands pushing metal into highly dissonant and ugly places. Traces of Canadian acts like Gorguts or Thantifaxath weave through John Frum’s music, as well as American death metal weirdos like Baring Teeth. But the band that Wilson makes a point of mentioning multiple times is Portal. Not only when cracking jokes about their name, but in high praise for their theatrical live performances and their mind-bending approach to the genre. “I like them almost more as visual artists than as music. To me it’s almost like performance art. I remember Portal records the way I remember Mark Rothko paintings.” But even if Wilson is talking about his music in visual and conceptual terms, the result is more primal than professorial. John Frum aren’t exactly making calls to the pit, but given Wilson, Litwin, & Hollenberg’s backgrounds, they tend to lean on rhythms in a way that’s distinctly hardcore. Wilson doesn’t seem to view those distinctions, between hardcore and metal, real and unreal, as valuable. He accepts inspiration from wherever it comes, whether that’s Burning Man or Burnt By The Sun. This omnivorous attitude is in line with the way that Wilson has worked in the music. It may seem obvious, but Wilson occupies a lot of his time with music, and takes it seriously. “It’s my stock market. Some people watch sports, but I talk about Metallica like they’re my favorite sports team. I’m an only child, so there’s something about that, it gave me something to retreat into. I relate to the world through the eyes of music. Music is the torch to which I light everything. It’s how I see in the dark.”...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCVZU70IsWo&feature=youtu.be...
In addition to his long stint as the bass player for The Dillinger Escape Plan, Wilson also played in Starkweather, worked at local venues running the door and doing sound, and more recently spent time as a contributor to Talkhouse (his piece on the Rockabye Baby! series is legit great). “I work in the music industry and I want to use all the tools at my disposal to express myself.” Wilson explains, adding that the experience of working on the other side of the creator/critic divide has changed how viewed coverage of his own projects. “I’m really vigilant about what people say about John Frum. In the last few years I felt like Dillinger were kind of untouchable and I couldn’t really trust what people were saying. Not that I want to have my ego smashed but I am an artist and I like growth. I’m way more nervous about how John Frum is accepted, because it is different from what people would expect from me.” Wilson is right to make the distinction. Anyone expecting The Dillinger Escape Plan’s madcap time changes or full throated choruses is going to be thrown off by A Stirring in the Noos. The record is just as acrobatic as The Dillinger Escape Plan were, but John Frum songs aren’t balance beams, they’re crowbars. After two tracks of airtight death metal, “Memory Palace” pulls the hinges off the doors of perception. The song moves in inches, burying the listener under the weight of it’s lurching rhythm until going cosmic with a guitar solo careens across the track with no regard for its surroundings. “All the solos on the record, drum, guitar, everything, are all improvised. Most of them are not comped, it’s all single takes. We want to invite more of that in, that mystical muse-y-ness or a sense of something greater.”...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WuZAHo8cxI...
From that guitar solo, a reminder that Hollenberg’s position as a John Zorn sideman is no accident, the album embraces it’s woo-ness to great effect. Tempos splutter, bridges elongate, and the band take a lengthy instrumental diversion on “He Come”. All of this comes to a head when they snap back to reality on the fast paced “Wasting Subtle Body”. The dream ends, the trip fades, and we come back down to reality. A Stirring in the Noos is an impressive debut, but it’s important to remember that the members of John Frum aren’t some plucky gang of kids. “Eli’s a school teacher. Eli and I are both dads. There are certain hurdles to getting this off the ground. All of us are ambitious, obviously, I don’t think anyone throws down on a record like this without a certain drive. But in terms of how often we’ll get to play, I don’t know.” Even without the burdens of daily life, Wilson still has a world dominating hardcore band to tour with. Despite breaking up last year (something we were pretty bummed about) The Dillinger Escape Plan are still in the long process of winding down, playing shows, and narrowly surviving disaster. “This is my own personal, semi-superstitious view, but I think it’s kind of odd that we just got into a bus collision situation. That never happened to us before. And I know that it’s statistics or whatever, but it’s almost like the universe saw a chink in our armor and went for it.” Universal conspiracy or no, the long fade out on Dillinger’s career naturally lends itself to morbid thinking. Committing your life to a band that requires extreme musical output on top of a relentless touring schedule will take the life out of anyone, music junkie or no. “I really don’t know where I stand, it depends when you talk to me. If I just walked off stage I’ll look over at Greg [Puciato] and think ‘we’re going to not do this? This is insane! This is what I do. I was born for this shit.’ I’ve chased my dreams for 20 years. I still want to set an example for my kids. If you want to chase your dreams then I’m the dad for you. But there is a part where my wife and my kids carry a burden while I’m on tour. It’s taxing. You know, I don’t get paid for the hour that I’m on stage, I get paid for the 23 it took to get there, or the 23 that I’m away from home.” says Wilson “There are a lot of things about Dillinger ending that give me the opportunity to address some things I’ve left unaddressed. Like giving my wife a chance to actually restart her career, because she’s been on pause for my sake.” Even as the need to attend to his adult responsibilities increases, it’s clear that Wilson and company aren’t just doing John Frum as a one-off. It took them six year just to complete A Stirring in the Noos so timing isn’t an issue. Whether or not they tour extensively is a trickier questions, although Wilson’s allusions to Portal and Genesis suggest that any live shows will be a sight to behold. Again, who is John Frum? It isn’t clear yet. But if music is Wilson’s torch, then the answer will lie in the shadows he casts....
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Life of Agony & Wastelands @ Irving Plaza (pics)
Interview: Tony Foresta (Municipal Waste, Iron Reagan)
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The members of Municipal Waste are a busy bunch these days. Bassist LandPhil and frontman Tony Foresta just finished a tour last month in Iron Reagan, while drummer David Witte and Brain Tentacles wrapped their Spring Fling mini-tour mere days ago. Yet, amid all the band’s many side projects, they’ve still found time to record a new Municipal Waste album, Slime and Punishment. Slated for release in early summer 2017, it will be the band’s first since 2012’s The Fatal Feast. Invisible Oranges caught up with Tony Foresta by phone to discuss the new album, new band member, and the state of modern thrash metal.-Jason Gilbert
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paVC2vvMfUg...
Where are you now as we’re speaking? I was standing over Sharon Tate's grave in Hollywood right now. It was pretty cool. I was just wandering around this graveyard. That's pretty wild. What are you guys doing in Hollywood? We just flew out here to do press for our new record. We played a show [Decibel Metal and Beer Fest] in Philly Saturday night and then just took a couple days to do interviews and finishing touches on the new album. Well, let's talk about the new album. It's the first for the Waste in a number of years. What's it like to be recording with Municipal Waste again? It's fun, man. We're all kind of doing our other projects so we know how it's done and we've been working with each other for so long so we just kind of got in there and busted it out, but it took a long time to write the damn thing. We wrote a lot of stuff that we didn't like and stuff that just didn't fit so we actually wrote a whole record and then scrapped it and then wrote a whole other album, so Slime and Punishment is the second attempt at writing an album. And this one, we're actually really pleased with it. It's always better to wait for a good project than rush a bad one. That's exactly what we were stuck with, you know? We were in that position where we first thought "We gotta get it done!" And then we were like, "Yeah, no we don't. We've just got to get it done right." The fans certainly will appreciate it. Let's talk about any lyrical themes or concepts on the new album. Art of Partying, and Hazardous Mutation had a sort-of theme going with Troma, comic violence, stuff like that. How about the new record? I would say it's a little mix of those two. We definitely took it back to Troma, the weird world of Municipal Waste song lyrics. It's kind of its own planet. It’s kinda fun, but it's still pretty pissed off sounding. We did dial it back to some of the older records, I think, but the sound of it has definitely matured. One of my friends said it sounded like our grown-up album. Between songs like "Bourbon Discipline", "Parole Violators" and the title track, I sense a pervasive theme of authority and consequence. What motivated the creation of so many songs that had that feel to them? I'm not sure. We've always been kind of rebellious, for lack of a better word. We definitely have had a "fuck you" vibe to everything. So I don't know, maybe just a lot of pent up stuff has happened in the past five years since we've written. The better songs that we wanted to keep for the album were the more pissed off ones. I don't think it was necessarily a thing we were trying to do, have this album say, "Fuck the cops, man," or anything like that. Let's talk a little bit about your new member, Nick Poulos. What motivated the search for a second guitarist? For me, it was for live purposes. I thought we didn't sound as heavy live as we did on the records. I wanted to have a bigger sound as far as the guitars went, and personality-wise it helped out a lot too because he's an old friend of ours and he's real laid back and he's just fun to be around. So having an extra person in the mix to mix our personalities up a little bit more was also helpful. I think that made the songwriting process go by a little easier too. He was a helpful addition in many ways, so we're glad to have him on board. We've known him for so long and it wasn't like, "Here's a new guy in the band." It was just like, "Oh, Nick's here now." We've been friends with him for so long. Ryan's in bands with him, Phil's been in Cannabis Corpse with him, we just all knew each other really well. When you decided you wanted a second guitar player, did you already have Nick in mind? Man, I've had Nick in mind for over five years. Probably like seven years. And then finally, when everybody came to the agreement of having another guitar player, it was obviously he was gonna be the person that we were gonna get. Everyone kind of just agreed on it. Municipal Waste brings everybody back from all their side projects to a thrash-metal center. What do you feel is the role of a modern thrash band in the broader metal community today? I think there's a lot more of it now than when we started. I think when we were a band it was kind of like almost a novelty to be a thrash band. People almost thought we were a joke band because it was so ridiculous and there weren't any new bands playing that sort of music. I think it's a lot more respected now. People just said, "Oh, well, this new thrash wave's gonna die," or whatever. They just didn't really take a lot of those bands seriously. But I think we kind of survived that whole thing just with being around for so long....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDSZuUg8WLQ...
I remember first hearing you guys when Hazardous Mutation came out and you're right, there weren't a lot of new thrash bands. But right after that, we had Evile and Toxic Holocaust. Toxic Holocaust are still gigging so I think you're right about thrash. Even the old guys are more relevant now, like Death Angel. They did The Big Four tour a few years ago and everybody was just so stoked about thrash music again. It was almost like something that people were embarrassed to say they liked when we were a new band. When we first started it was almost frowned upon and mocked to be a thrash band. It was really strange. But now the old guys are back at it again. A lot of those bands reunited. Exodus got Souza back in the band. Municipal Waste started when you were all younger and at different stages in your lives than you are now. How do you think growing older has affected your attitudes toward the music, the lyrics and the lifestyle? I didn't think that I'd still be doing this band 15 years later. I always thought I'd be playing in bands doing punk shows and all that sort of thing. I didn't think that this would be how my life would be right now, that, I'd be just all over the world, playing shows. I'm honored. I feel really lucky to do this. It's hard sometimes. We don't make a lot of money. You don't really make a lot of money nowadays playing music. You have to tour a lot to do that. So for a profession, just been in punk bands my whole life, it just kind of sucked me in and now I'm like, "I love it." I don't really care. It's just a part of me. You said that one of your friends said that this was certainly one of your more grown-up sounding albums, and I agree. What has led to the more mature sound for Municipal Waste? I would say that we're more conscious now, when we write shit, if we can play it live. Where we would just kind of like throw a bunch of shit together and see what would work, you know? And now it's like, "Oh, that would be difficult to play live. Let's try it this way, it would sound better." We just wanted to tighten up the songs for like a live setting....
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Between all the band's side projects you guys still found time to write two albums and record one new one. How do you find the time to do all this stuff? It's fucking weird. We just work on our demos and write shit while we're on the road. You’ve just got to take a certain amount of time out during the day and put time aside and make sure that shit gets done and accomplished and you do it right and you don't rush it. Both bands are important to me, so I’ve got to make sure that I'm not neglecting one of them. It's tough, but I think communication is key. You have to make sure that everybody's on the same page and nobody's surprised by anything. How does Municipal Waste fit into the hierarchy of all the things that keep everybody busy? Is it a huge priority or do you have to struggle to not pick between children? This band's definitely the priority. It's our biggest band and there's a lot of people relying on us. It's not just the band members, there's also the fans. There's a lot of fucking people out there that rely on us. They want this shit and you got to keep in mind not to let those people down as well. And you don't wanna let your band mates down and the people that are involved, that are close to you, your record label people that actually give a fuck and the people that work hard for you. It's not just a one-man show. A lot of people are behind this, it's a fucking team, so you kind of have that on your shoulders. You don't want to blow off one band for another. You've got to make sure that things are happening for everyone....
Interview + Stream: Alchimia – ‘Musa’
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Greek mythology tells of the Muses – nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, each of whom inspire a certain area of the arts, literature and science. Euterpe holds sway over music, song and lyric poetry, so it’s likely her hand that guides Musa the gorgeous debut full-length from one-man Italian outfit Alchimia. On it, Emanuele Tito combines gothic metal and Neapolitan folk music on an album that has some familiar elements—a bit of Jesu in the vocals, shades of Alcest in some of the heavier moments—but ultimately doesn’t really sound like anything other than itself. Part of what makes the album feel so unique is Tito’s focus on textures in his songwriting. Through its mix of acoustic electric instrumentation and mercurial shifts in mood from track to track, he makes use of a broad palate of constantly changing colors and a wide variety of brushstrokes. In his own words, he calls Musa a “mix of melancholic, fierce, moving, and romantic atmospheres.” Regardless of which mode he’s playing in, one thing remains constant throughout: the unflagging melodicism of the music. From the driving four-on-the-floor of “Lost” to the lovely fingerpicking on “Whisper of the Land,” the spacey Pink Floydisms of “Oceano: Tempesta,” or the gentle rhythms of “Waltz of the Sea,” Tito repeatedly demonstrates both his versatility as a musician and his skill as a composer and arranger. Musa will be released on May 5 by Nadir Music. Scroll down to hear an exclusive stream of the full album and to check out our interview with Emanuele Tito, who was kind enough to answer a few questions for us via email about the record.-Clayton Michaels
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I want to ask about your musical background. The album incorporates both folk and metal in almost equal measure – which did you start off playing? Do you consider yourself primarily a metal musician with an interest in folk, or are you a folk musician first? Excellent question. I started off playing just rock and metal, but then I opened myself to every kind of music: blues, jazz, folk, and so on. I think I would consider myself a musician who just plays and enjoys a lot of different genres in equal measure, it depends on the moment For those not familiar with it, can you talk a bit about Neapolitan folk music? What artists or albums would you recommend as a starting point for someone interested in learning more about it? Well, Neapolitan music is famous all over the world; it has a very ancient and variegated history. Napoli has been influenced by a lot of different cultures, so it developed a very unique sound. Check out the Neapolitan scale, it is one of my favourite scales of all time: it has this dark yet joyful sound at the same time, which reminds me of the Arabian scale, but with a baroque sound. I think it represents the spirit of Neapolitan people: how they suffered famines and wars, yet still able to put humor in tragedies. Amazing. Anyway, Neapolitan music began in the 13th century, and developed itself to the point that in the 15th century it led to the birth of the famous villanella and later the tarantella. Then it became very popular all over the world when Neapolitan opera music was born (Enrico Caruso is the best example), and with the sceneggiatia, which is the alternation between singing and dramatic acting, in order to merge theatre and classic music. After the Second World War, we had the great Carosone, who played a mix of jazz, blues and classic Neapolitan music, and finally, in the ’70s we can see how classic Neapolitan music merged with progressive and beat rock (Napoli Centrale, Osanna), and once more with blues through one of my favourite musicians ever: Pino Daniele. In the text that accompanied the promo of the record, you talk about the ‘recurring duality’ from one track to the next. It sounds like you achieve that duality a bit differently each time. For example, tracks like “Orizzonte” flow from one section to the next instead of following a verse-chorus-verse pattern, while other tracks do have more of a traditional pop structure to them. How much of that was the result of deliberate planning, and how much of that was instinctual or based on feel? Well, I have to be honest. Everything is based on feel: if I feel like I need a particular structure, I will focus on that. But if I feel that the song has to have only one chord progression the whole time, I will just play that chord progression (as you can hear on ‘’Oceano: Tempesta’’). In the credits, someone is listed as playing ‘ghost guitars.’ Can you elaborate on that? I’m guessing it ties into the album’s focus on texture. As you surely know, the whole Alchimia project is totally mine, I’m the only songwriter and the owner. Other musicians played drums and bass and another one played these ‘ghost guitars,’ which basically are those synth-sounding guitars you can hear for few seconds in ‘’The Fallen One’’, ‘’My Own Sea’’ and ‘’Waltz Of The Sea.’’ He is Gianluca Divirgilio, my great friend and very talented musician, the leader of Arctic Plateau. He worked on recording and mixing as an engineer and what happened in the studio is just this: we were listening the record after I recorded the guitars, and he said ‘’I feel like there should be some small arrangements here’’ and I said ‘’Fine, let me hear what you mean.’’ I really liked those small arrangements and decided to leave them on the record....
[caption id="attachment_54212" align="aligncenter" width="630"] Nunzia Passaro[/caption]...
Is there an overarching lyrical concept to Musa? The vocals are fairly low in the mix and sound like they’ve got at least one layer of effects on them, to the point where I have a hard time making out the lyrics. As a result, the vocals seem more like another textural element than the focal point in the songs. Was that the intention? Another good question. Lyrics are very intimate to me. I had to change them a lot, in order to make them as more cryptic as I could. Of course, there is an overarching lyrical concept. For what concerns the vocals, the intention was to use them as an arrangement, not to push them to the point that would be considered as a focal point, so yes, that was the intention and I’m glad you’ve noticed that. I sing both in Italian and English, in case you are wondering. Is there any significance in the name Alchimia? It translates as ‘alchemy’ in English – does it also tie into the whole idea of duality somehow? Yes, it does. What the concept means for me is too vast to be explained in a single interview, let’s just say that it is a metaphoric journey related to the spirit. Are there any plans for Alchimia to play live, or is it just a studio project at this point? Yes, of course. We will play in the next months in Italy, at the moment, but my plans are to play all over the world in the near future. I love the cover art – it’s a pretty perfect visual representation of the music. I notice that you and the artist share a last name – is there any relation there? My father’s family last name is Tito, and the whole family live in the same place where Ettore Tito, the painter, was born. I think he is a relative of mine, though my researches still haven’t proven it 100%. Actually I have a strange and kind of creepy anecdote about this. I was just doing some researches on my family, I’m very interested in finding out who my ancestors are. At that moment I already had finished every song, lyrics included. I discovered this painter and I really loved his paintings. But when I saw ‘’Le Ondine,’’ I could not believe my eyes: it was the exact representation of the lyrics I wrote for the songs. Every concept was there: onirism, romanticism, a small recall to the esoteric, languid female figures. All surrounded by the sea. That one really had to be the cover, definitely....
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Northwest Terror Fest Adds Void Omnia, Crowhurst
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Northwest Terror Fest has announced a lineup change. Pilgrim and Amigo the Devil will not be playing. Instead, Crowhurst and Void Omnia will be play on Thursday, June 15 on the Highline and Barboza stages, respectively. Crowhurst the LA-based solo project of one Jay Gambit blends harsh black metal, goth rock, industrial and other styles into a seamless and modern urban-nihilistic sound. a prolific artist, Jay Gambit constantly experiments and creates. There's no telling what his next song will sound like. Void Omnia Oakland CA's prime cosmic black metal export, Void Omnia's riffs evoke both the widescreen cinematic expanse of distant gas giants, and the suffocating airless terror or unfathomable deep space. The three day music festival will be held in Seattle, Washington at Neumos and Barboza from June 15th through 17th. Late shows and after parties will be held at The Highline. There's already a Facebook event. Weekend passes are now available at this location. $150 per pass. Individual stage passes will go on sale next Monday. Follow Northwest Terror Fest on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter....
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Napalm Death
Who is John Frum?
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John Frum. Say the name out loud. John. Frum. You can hear the periods after both words. Both land with a dull thud. Those eight letters are a cover, an inviting bow wrapped around pandora’s box. When I asked bassist Liam Wilson how his new band, a collaboration with Matt Hollenberg (a guitarist for avant garde jazz legend John Zorn), Eli Litwin (Knife The Glitter) & Derek Rydquist (former vocalist of The Faceless) settled on the name, he tore the packing off of that box and turned it into a mobius strip of influences and allusions. Wilson is an odd duck. When we spoke to him over the phone about John Frum’s upcoming debut A Stirring in the Noos he referenced the Burning Man festival with the casual air of a retired WASP mentioning their latest trip to Martha’s Vineyard. He brought up panspermia and biodynamic wine like he was discussing flavors of ice cream. Wilson has a habit of starting sentences with “Again” regardless of whether he’s made the point before. At first it seems like a nervous tic, but the more he did it the more it felt a bit zen. Like the idea he’s trying to express existed before him, and he was only repeating it. It’s easy to read him this way because Wilson is a pretty heady dude. So why John Frum? “Because Portal was taken.” Wilson jokes....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QfQYWzS7zY...
Here’s the long answer. John Frum is a myth. A collectively agreed upon lie. John Frum is the central figure in what is commonly referred to as a Cargo Cult. During the WWII, the US Air Force would use islands in the nation of Vanuatu as base of operations in the Pacific Theater. To the indigenous people of the region, who previously had no awareness of Americans, the whole thing was somewhat inexplicable. The soldiers arrived from out of the sky on airplanes, deposited radios & spam, and vanished just as suddenly. Since then the people of the island of Tanna developed a religion around a messianic American that would bring them endless riches in the form of cargo. An article by Paul Raffael published in the Smithsonian on the John Frum phenomenon implies that the leader of this religion consciously used John Frum as rallying point to resist colonial rule....
“It’s possible that local leaders conceived of John Frum as a powerful white-skinned ally in the fight against the colonials, who were attempting to crush much of the islanders’ culture and prod them into Christianity.”
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This complicates the condescending idea that Cargo Cults are the result of naivety on the part of the cult. They aren’t just comical misunderstandings, they are symbolic, a deliberate way of reordering the world to express a community’s wants and needs....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFKfqrdP6xs A BBC Documentary on the John Frum Cargo Cult...
Wilson made it clear that the band wanted to avoid addressing this origin too explicitly in their music. For one, they didn’t want to lock themselves into a single aesthetic. Also, John Frum is not interested in the risk of cultural appropriation. “I’m not saying that it won’t be full of inspiration, I mean shit look at the milage Nile has gotten off Egypt. However, I thought that it felt limited. I want it to be open sourced and a full on collaboration. Almost like how Hindu religions just invent different deities for whatever the situation calls for, I feel like John Frum songs in a sense are like H.P. Lovecraft short stories that all in some way riff off this idea of man’s relationship to god and the universe. I think if we went more narrow with the lyrics it would have just grown pretty stale.” Wilson says, “I really wanted to be sure that nothing about this seemed like I was just cashing in. The last thing I want to do is make a religion out of their religion. Or mock it in anyway. John Frum is not that.” Instead Wilson and his bandmates use the cargo cult surrounding John Frum as a roadmap, one that points at the malleability of reality. The band litter their social media with quotes that read like Assassin’s Creed outtakes. “There are no facts, only interpretations”. This isn’t the first time this concept, paraphrased from Hassan-i-Sabbah, has found its way into heavy music. Isis used a similar concept as the basis for In The Absence Of Truth. But what was an intellectual curiosity in 2006 is now an accurate reading of the temperature. Even though Wilson denied any intention of commenting on the mess of “alternative facts” or “fake news”, it’s undeniable that these themes resonate beyond the desk of Sean Spicer. Media saturation gives ammo to any and all viewpoints. Anyone can build a bubble that confirms their own beliefs, walling off anything that conflicts with their version of reality. John Frum plant C4 at the base of that wall and denote it with glee. To anyone unfamiliar with extreme metal, their music will seem just as alien as an iphone dropped into the jungle. Any sufficiently heavy metal is indistinguishable from magic. But to those in the know, John Frum are the latest in a string of bands pushing metal into highly dissonant and ugly places. Traces of Canadian acts like Gorguts or Thantifaxath weave through John Frum’s music, as well as American death metal weirdos like Baring Teeth. But the band that Wilson makes a point of mentioning multiple times is Portal. Not only when cracking jokes about their name, but in high praise for their theatrical live performances and their mind-bending approach to the genre. “I like them almost more as visual artists than as music. To me it’s almost like performance art. I remember Portal records the way I remember Mark Rothko paintings.” But even if Wilson is talking about his music in visual and conceptual terms, the result is more primal than professorial. John Frum aren’t exactly making calls to the pit, but given Wilson, Litwin, & Hollenberg’s backgrounds, they tend to lean on rhythms in a way that’s distinctly hardcore. Wilson doesn’t seem to view those distinctions, between hardcore and metal, real and unreal, as valuable. He accepts inspiration from wherever it comes, whether that’s Burning Man or Burnt By The Sun. This omnivorous attitude is in line with the way that Wilson has worked in the music. It may seem obvious, but Wilson occupies a lot of his time with music, and takes it seriously. “It’s my stock market. Some people watch sports, but I talk about Metallica like they’re my favorite sports team. I’m an only child, so there’s something about that, it gave me something to retreat into. I relate to the world through the eyes of music. Music is the torch to which I light everything. It’s how I see in the dark.”...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCVZU70IsWo&feature=youtu.be...
In addition to his long stint as the bass player for The Dillinger Escape Plan, Wilson also played in Starkweather, worked at local venues running the door and doing sound, and more recently spent time as a contributor to Talkhouse (his piece on the Rockabye Baby! series is legit great). “I work in the music industry and I want to use all the tools at my disposal to express myself.” Wilson explains, adding that the experience of working on the other side of the creator/critic divide has changed how viewed coverage of his own projects. “I’m really vigilant about what people say about John Frum. In the last few years I felt like Dillinger were kind of untouchable and I couldn’t really trust what people were saying. Not that I want to have my ego smashed but I am an artist and I like growth. I’m way more nervous about how John Frum is accepted, because it is different from what people would expect from me.” Wilson is right to make the distinction. Anyone expecting The Dillinger Escape Plan’s madcap time changes or full throated choruses is going to be thrown off by A Stirring in the Noos. The record is just as acrobatic as The Dillinger Escape Plan were, but John Frum songs aren’t balance beams, they’re crowbars. After two tracks of airtight death metal, “Memory Palace” pulls the hinges off the doors of perception. The song moves in inches, burying the listener under the weight of it’s lurching rhythm until going cosmic with a guitar solo careens across the track with no regard for its surroundings. “All the solos on the record, drum, guitar, everything, are all improvised. Most of them are not comped, it’s all single takes. We want to invite more of that in, that mystical muse-y-ness or a sense of something greater.”...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WuZAHo8cxI...
From that guitar solo, a reminder that Hollenberg’s position as a John Zorn sideman is no accident, the album embraces it’s woo-ness to great effect. Tempos splutter, bridges elongate, and the band take a lengthy instrumental diversion on “He Come”. All of this comes to a head when they snap back to reality on the fast paced “Wasting Subtle Body”. The dream ends, the trip fades, and we come back down to reality. A Stirring in the Noos is an impressive debut, but it’s important to remember that the members of John Frum aren’t some plucky gang of kids. “Eli’s a school teacher. Eli and I are both dads. There are certain hurdles to getting this off the ground. All of us are ambitious, obviously, I don’t think anyone throws down on a record like this without a certain drive. But in terms of how often we’ll get to play, I don’t know.” Even without the burdens of daily life, Wilson still has a world dominating hardcore band to tour with. Despite breaking up last year (something we were pretty bummed about) The Dillinger Escape Plan are still in the long process of winding down, playing shows, and narrowly surviving disaster. “This is my own personal, semi-superstitious view, but I think it’s kind of odd that we just got into a bus collision situation. That never happened to us before. And I know that it’s statistics or whatever, but it’s almost like the universe saw a chink in our armor and went for it.” Universal conspiracy or no, the long fade out on Dillinger’s career naturally lends itself to morbid thinking. Committing your life to a band that requires extreme musical output on top of a relentless touring schedule will take the life out of anyone, music junkie or no. “I really don’t know where I stand, it depends when you talk to me. If I just walked off stage I’ll look over at Greg [Puciato] and think ‘we’re going to not do this? This is insane! This is what I do. I was born for this shit.’ I’ve chased my dreams for 20 years. I still want to set an example for my kids. If you want to chase your dreams then I’m the dad for you. But there is a part where my wife and my kids carry a burden while I’m on tour. It’s taxing. You know, I don’t get paid for the hour that I’m on stage, I get paid for the 23 it took to get there, or the 23 that I’m away from home.” says Wilson “There are a lot of things about Dillinger ending that give me the opportunity to address some things I’ve left unaddressed. Like giving my wife a chance to actually restart her career, because she’s been on pause for my sake.” Even as the need to attend to his adult responsibilities increases, it’s clear that Wilson and company aren’t just doing John Frum as a one-off. It took them six year just to complete A Stirring in the Noos so timing isn’t an issue. Whether or not they tour extensively is a trickier questions, although Wilson’s allusions to Portal and Genesis suggest that any live shows will be a sight to behold. Again, who is John Frum? It isn’t clear yet. But if music is Wilson’s torch, then the answer will lie in the shadows he casts....
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Royalties: Music, the Industry and What it Means
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The last installment of this column assessed the song in its legal form. Just as a quick overview, songs break down into two components: master, and composition. Master royalties go to the label/master rights holder and the composition royalties go to the composer. Great! That’s it right? NO. It may be a shock to some, and an affirmation of the grim reality of life to others, but music royalty payments break down even more. In this article I will be discussing the different agencies and what they do to track, collect, and distribute royalty payments. I will also discuss how all of the agencies together produce an extremely intricate web of confusion which I hope to unwind for everyone - and then succinctly set that shit on fire. For those who wish to continue… drink that coffee now....
Master Royalties Master rights are fairly simple to grasp. As I covered previously, these are the royalties accrued by downloads, sales, streams, etc. A distributor will collect these royalties and give them to the label who will give them to the artist. There are exceptions of course, such as iTunes. Apple does not use a distributor and pays directly to the label, because they are all about vertical integration. Publishers These guys are basically the hustlers. They make sure that the revenue that the songwriter earned from having their tracks played goes directly to the songwriter. Before the songwriter creates a blood bond with one of these companies they will need to administer the composition rights to their publisher. Once the songwriter administers the rights over, the publisher is now the copyright holder of the music on the composition side. The publisher represents this piece of work for the songwriter, acting in the songwriter’s best interest. The publisher collects, pitches and basically does whatever they can with a song so that everyone involved makes as much money as possible from it. For example, publishers place songs in TV shows or films. These types of licensing deals are called sync’s (synchronization licensing for placement in television and film). When these types of deals happen the parties first agree upon an advance, but we can cover the in’s and out’s of synchronization licensing in another article. From my past experience in working in production music, the target market for heavy metal right now is reality TV that’s edgy, video games, and online media. Bands that gain notoriety can try for commercials. The publisher that got Mastodon and Darkest Hour played during Christian Bale’s scenes in ‘The Big Short’? That’s probably the guy young bands want to try and talk to....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BETKJq7tY5Y...
PRO (Performing Rights Organizations) PRO’s collect money on the songwriters behalf and serve as an intermediary between the copyright holders and the parties using the music in a public space. For example, songs played on the overhead speakers in stores. PROs tracks every time each of those songs iss played. Royalties are generated from those plays, and the PRO gives that money to the copyright holder. Publishers and PRO’s are buddies. The PRO will go to music users (say, a department store) to get payment and the publisher’s will distribute that payment. Let’s say you, dear reader, have recorded and commercially released an album. PRO’s such as ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GEMA, PRS, etc. will pay publishers and songwriters as a single unit equivalent to 200%; 100% to you and 100% to your publisher. This does not mean they will issue double payment, but wouldn’t that be nice? Going back to our handy idea of a song, it now splits between master and composition, and then splits even further so composition has its own messed up math of two sides equalling 100%. Funny enough, these companies have only been around for the last hundred or so years, when recorded music playing in a public space has been an option. The first PRO was established in France during the 1850’s. U.S. based PRO’s, in typical American fashion, came later in 1914....
Performance Royalties (AKA Public Performance) PRO’s collect royalties when a song is broadcasted or performed publicly. By legal definition this is any music performed in a PUBLIC SPACE that isn’t your family or friends. No, the whole bar is not your friend. And yes, so many businesses/venues break this law. You see that sticker on the door of a bar that says ASCAP or BMI? That bar tracks their plays to give royalties to musical artists....
Mechanical Royalties This is the royalty artists receive from duplicating a sound recording. Think of it as the mechanical duplication of the song. Every time a label presses a CD of a song, for example, the artist is due a mechanical royalty although there are other kinds of duplication besides pressing a record. The Statutory Rate is the amount paid for each duplication composition. In 2017 the rate for an average 3:30/4ish minute song is 9.1 cents. Any song over 5 minutes adds 1.75 cents per extra minute. Typically no one needs to know that, but I realize I am talking to a bunch of metalheads who have at least 20 riffs that all are slammed into one 8 minute anthem. For that I applaud you. This mechanical license will grant the rights to reproduce and distribute music compositions physically, on interactive streams, ringtones, and other configurations. These mechanical royalties will also be paid when music is streamed because streaming is replicating the sound recording. This about sums it up for 101 in the royalty business of music… in it’s physical form. Streaming is a entirely different beast. We’ll cover streaming royalties in a future column.-Emily McCafferty
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Metal’s Patient Zero: Helter Skelter
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Palm muting, screamed vocals, dissonant guitar lines, highly compressed drum sounds, and actual blood on a drumkit. No, I’m not describing Aborted’s latest recording session, I’m describing the recording of “Helter Skelter” by The Beatles. The Beatles are credited with numerous “firsts” in music history. The rise of heavy metal and the mentality of being heavy for the sake of heavy, however, is one of the more overlooked ones. Most would give these accolades to fellow English groups like Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple or possibly their american counterparts in Blue Cheer. However, it was the Beatles who recorded the song that would become the blueprint for heavy metal in September 1968, one year and one month before the recording of Black Sabbath’s eponymous first album. The Beatles beat Black Sabbath to the punch thanks to Paul McCartney’s disappointment with the Who’s single “I Can See for Miles” and his newfound ambition to make the loudest song recorded to date....
https://open.spotify.com/track/2nlSeJ6CgvWeVOkrLmadf6...
McCartney was elated when he heard Pete Townsend of the Who proclaim that his band’s October 1967 single, “I Can See For Miles,” was the loudest, dirtiest song ever recorded. Unfortunately, he was disappointed upon hearing it, and appropriately so. There’s no denying it’s a catchy tune, but heavy? Not really. The guitars are highly distorted but they’re paper thin. They have no oomph or power whatsoever. The drum sound is all cymbals with an almost inaudible kick drum. The vocals are sung with the cleanest possible delivery and the lyric focuses on an all-seeing jilted-lover, standard fare for a sixties rock song....
https://open.spotify.com/track/0Bs0hUYxz7REyIHH7tRhL2...
“Helter Skelter” is heavier than “I Can See For Miles” in every area and possesses aggression, an essential component of metal, in spades. The dissonance of the opening guitar riff creates an atmosphere of unease and tension before Paul screams, “and I see you again,” at the top of his lungs while the guitar drones on an open E struck with such ferocity that the note goes audibly sharp. Where the guitars on “I Can See For Miles” sound brittle, the tone on “Helter Skelter” is full. This chunky guitar tone adds a level of aggression to the bluesy chorus riff absent from the guitars on “I Can See For Miles” and features down-picked palm-muting, a staple technique of metal guitar playing. McCartney’s viciously-delivered vocals add further heaviness to the performance. Though the lyrics appear to be nothing more than a nursery rhyme about a trip up and down a slide, McCartney revealed to biographer Barry Miles that they symbolize the inevitable fall of empire, a topic that fills entire albums by metal bands like Megadeth on Peace Sells...but Who’s Buying, Lamb of God on Ashes of the Wake, and countless others. Ringo’s ferocious drumming provides the final nail in this proto-metal coffin. McCartney insisted so adamantly that the drums be as loud as possible that he nearly drove the recording engineers insane according to Barry Miles’s 1997 biography of McCartney. Ringo pushed himself to the breaking point as well, striking his kit with such force that he screams in pain at the end of the song, exclaiming that he has blisters on his fingers. His bodily sacrifice provides the track with the punchy, high-compressed drum sound that propels the tune forward into full-on headbanging territory. The final result is a song which polarizes and unsettles listeners. Some critics, like Ian MacDonald who wrote “Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties,” described the song as “thrashing” and “unlistenable.” While not terms commonly used to describe Beatles songs, these adjectives are now badges of honor within the metal community. By screaming where The Who sang, riffing where The Who strummed, and causing bodily harm to themselves for the sake of performance, The Beatles had created the blueprint for heavy metal. Through the Beatles, competition conceived heavy metal and it’s only natural for a genre born out of competition to retain a competitive mindset. The Beatles combined all the heaviest elements of rock in an attempt to be louder and dirtier than The Who, and in doing so, finally molded rock music into the blueprint of heavy metal. Since then that model copied and tweaked further by the first true heavy metal bands like Black Sabbath, who were avid fans of the Beatles, but strove to make heavier music than their peers. After the dawn of thrash metal, Slayer sought to show the world what heavy really was with Reign in Blood. Cannibal Corpse later aspired to be heavier than thrash metal with their gore-obsessed brand of punishing death metal. Perpetually chasing this white dragon has led us into an age of detuned nine-string guitars, ridiculously high-gain amps, pig-squeals and the “I’m more brutal than thou” attitudes common in sub-genres like deathcore and slam death metal. Clearly, the idea of being heavy for the sake of heavy that started with “Helter Skelter” is alive and well. As a fan of heavy metal and in the interest of the continual evolution and longevity of the genre, I hope we never get to the bottom of that slide.-Chris Butler
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Live Report: Berserker IV Day 1
Photos by Chuck Marshall[/caption]
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Detroit’s Berserker festival returns this year, marking the return (and coincidentally 50th birthday) of Eyehategod frontman Mike IX after a liver transplant surgery late last year. Started three short years ago by Detroit couple Shawn and Veronica Knight, the festival has grown by leaps and bounds every year and this is perhaps the biggest leap so far. Like a hermit crab on growth hormones, the festival finds itself in a new and larger shell; this year filling every room of the Crofoot Ballroom in Pontiac, Michigan. this year, the festival hosted over thirty bands, ranging from fresh faces such as Law and Nightkin to classic titans like The Obsessed, Negative Approach, and GWAR.The Knights are major supporters of local metal, and the showing of Michigan and Ohio bands on this year’s bill is strong....
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Euphoria A mom in full Wonder Woman getup moshes harder than most as local sci-fi enthusiasts Euphoria open the Pike Room stage, the first act of the night. Vocalist Justin Kelter’s growl does rethrash proud, as does riffage from lead guitarist Bubba Colonna. Despite having formed in 2012, their debut album was released just last spring and received good reviews from several websites. Here in the crofoot, with a large turnout of Michigan’s metal scene regulars, they look the part of a rising star in modern thrash....
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Law A bald beef-a-saurus leads a group of young guys in opening the Vernor Room. Law are relatively new on the Detroit hardcore scene, but they’ve already released a demo and a 7” to the delight of The Sanctuary & friends. The vocalist makes controversial statements about the new Star Wars trailer to audible boo’s. Thenceforth, his soapbox declarations are mostly concerned with current political affairs: a far less divisive subject....
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Hollow Earth Rounding out the first wave of Berserker’s onslaught is another Detroit band. Hollow Earth open the Ballroom main stage to a sparse but dedicated crowd with their unique style of “way hard alt rock”. Moshpit music it may not be, but this is early in the evening and few are a moshy mood yet, anyway. By the time their first song finishes dropping like a bag of cement mix, the ballroom has filled all the way back to the merch tables. Hollow Earth is one of the few truly “modern”-sounding bands on the bill tonight, and would not be out of place on tour with Intronaut or Mastodon. Their slow, heavy and serious sounds fill theCrofoot as the crowd stands transfixed, spellbound by vocalist Steve Muczynski’s mesmerizing sway and the hypnotic tone of the string section. Nobody moves much except for Wonder Woman, who headbangs enthusiastically to the pounding drums....
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Horrible Earth Steve Milionis sings on a Pike Room floor commanded by a wheelchair-bound fanatic. Moshes are had, beers are spilled, and Steve apologizes to the offended party with the explanation that “it’s all just theatrics” and the promise of a replacement beer on him. Top tier human being. Fans object to a quick reset between songs, proclaiming “there’s no tuning in grindcore!” Steve expresses concern that the band’s cover has been blown. Around this time, Wonder Woman enters with a cocktail in one hand and an “is that it??” expression in the other announcing her intention to throw down. Horrible Earth’s set consists of short stretches of banter & silence perforated by brief moments of sheer sonic intensity. A smiling Mike IX goes unnoticed at the back of the room until Steve sends him a birthday shout out at the end of the set....
[gallery ids="54389,54391,54390" galleryid="846:54290" galleryindex="4" enablefullscreen="yes" showthumbs="no"]...
Artillery Breath The Columbus, OH, thrashers are underway when I arrive to a packed Vernor Room. The pit up front is dominated once again by the dangerous duo of Wonder Woman and Wheels. Artillery Breath are full of frantic riffage and equally vivacious energy but the moshpit stays at the very front. As surprising as the small pit is in Artillery Breath’s huge metal storm, what’s even more surprising is the reason why: the Vernor Room is absolutely sardines-in-a-can full from the pit all the way back past the end of the bar, all while Ringworm’s set on mainstage is at its energetic and chronological peak....
[gallery ids="54395,54394,54393,54392" galleryid="846:54290" galleryindex="5" enablefullscreen="yes" showthumbs="no"]...
Ringworm While their fellow Ohioans lay claim to the entire Vernor Room, Ringworm have a similar commanding presence on the Ballroom main stage. The quintet occupy the stage like a formation of football players: rehearsed, coordinated, purposeful. Ringworm say they’re keeping the banter at a minimum because set times are so short, even for main stage bands. The crowd makes the most of their time with Ringworm by maintaining a constant circle pit which spans the entire gap between the Ballroom’s flanking balconies. The pit may yawn wide, but the crowd is just getting started....
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Cemetery Piss Cemetery Piss play to an enthusiastic but moshless crowd in the Pike Room. Fun-club kids jostle and headbang on the left spider-goths with crossed arms and cross makeup sway on the right. Wonder Woman pushes through them, looking for a mosh. Finding no challengers amidst the Piss, she leaves. The band weaves a xanthic tapestry of 2nd-Wave black metal worship with all of the sleaze and cock-rock elements that most of their progenitors failed to take from Venom. Crowd-favorite songs “Sex and Metal” along with “Rest in Piss” are representative of the aesthetic. Frontman Adam Savage (no, not that one) ends the set curled up and screaming on the floor, a circle of mourners around him....
[gallery ids="54400,54401,54402,54403" galleryid="846:54290" galleryindex="7" enablefullscreen="yes" showthumbs="no"]...
Snafu Rushing downstairs from the end of Cemetery Piss, I enter the Vernor Room to a flurry of bodies and riffs mirrored by frontman. Alex from Horrible Earth is up front at the edge of yet another moshpit which waves the flag of Wonder Woman’s conquering swagger. SNAFU are twice the band tonight compared to when I saw them open for Iron Reagan and Power Trip a few short weeks ago. With home field advantage in the Vernor Room, they command an energy and crowd response beyond any of their prior tenants tonight....
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Negative Approach In the center of the Ballroom stage, Negative Approach frontman John Brannon stands as a symphony conductor and we, the berserk, are his Philharmonic Mosh Pit Orchestra. In short, savage bursts, he directs us to swell into action and then lull into a hush. The band plays the largest, best-equipped stage in the venue with no fog machines, no fancy laser show, not even any colored lights. Just a set list packed with damn-near every song they’ve ever written delivered through a coordinated front of mean-mug expressions which confirm their no-frills-no-bullshit attitude. The pack of fist-pumpers up front is five bodies deep all across the Ballroom’s wide stage as the night’s meanest band plays more major chord progressions than anybody else all weekend. I have a personal weakness for bands who can play large stages and still replicate the intensity of a packed show at a tiny venue; Negative Approach has this in spades. Somewhere in the symphony of circle pits, I lose many of my notes from earlier in the evening. Considering them a worthy sacrifice to the divine forces of punk rock, I send them off to the beer-stained beyond with a four-count prayer from bassist Ron Sakowski as Negative Approach rip into another half-minute banger....
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Nightkin Mike McKenzie (The Red Chord) shrieks an adventurous vocal style as he leads a flood of drum triggers and death metal riffs. Outside of McKenzie, the band has extensive Michigan metal pedigree as well, and the crowd includes several familiar faces from the Detroit and Lansing metal scenes. The sound quality in the Pike Room is unfortunately poor during Nightkin’s set, but the crowd doesn’t seem to mind and support for the band runs high....
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Fuck You Pay Me The third in a strong showing of Ohio bands, FYPM cut short my interview with Artillery Breath as they unleash their own salvo of furious hardcore below the media lounge. The Vernor Room instantly fills to the brim with moshing bodies, still hungry from Negative Approach’s main stage set which has just ended and their energy continues well into FYPM’s performance as well. The band plays with similar intensity to their Detroit counterparts, although this time the songs are supplemented with stories from frontman Tony Erba’s long history in the hardcore scene. Of particular note is a story about a gig in the 80’s at a Detroit Blondie’s full of skinheads. A song chorus of “I’m just like you” echoes the sentiment of unity at the show tonight as fans of heavy music from all walks of life mingle and mosh up front....
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Off! As punk rock supergroup OFF! take to the main Ballroom stage, the crowd up front is packed predictably tight. Yet the center and sides of the Ballroom are made noticeably sparse by the absence of an entire Vernor Room full of Fuck You Pay Me fans as the set times overlap. The end of Nightkin upstairs brings many of the perennial Michigan metalers down to the Ballroom, but the floor still looks a reflection of Detroit, herself: growing, but still peppered with vacant holes. With the end of Fuck You Pay Me, about 15 minutes in, the punks and hardcore kids swarm the Ballroom floor and OFF! really get going. The band is thankful for the turnout, and the crowd is thankful for the music as the huge pit suggests that even though it’s approaching midnight, the berserkers have enough energy left for a great show....
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Blurring When I arrive in the Pike Room for Blurring, the crowd is sparse; OFF! having gone slightly over schedule. The sound quality continues to get worse on the small stages over the evening, adding to the feeling of wear that comes from a six hour show. Here and now in the Pike Room the dedicated fanbase doesn’t seem to notice. Neither does a bearded muscle-dad who is falling asleep at a table in the back; en the most blistering metal assault can turn into a soothing jacuzzi of sonic texture after sitting in it long enough. The fans up front are wild with delight as Dan Lilker (ex-Anthrax) sports a grin as big as his bass tone. The end of OFF! on the main stage downstairs is made evident by a sudden influx of new people just as Blurring’s set is coming to peak intensity....
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Nuke The crossbred product of Michigan’s incestuous metal community, Nuke, play to a half-full but mostly moshless Vernor Room. As with Blurring and Nightkin before them, the sound quality on the side stages is suffering as we draw nearer to midnight. Nuke’s frontman Richie Riot (Shitfucker) demonstrates an exciting variety of daring vocal styles, but much of the rest of the band is lost in a bad mix. The sound cleans up about halfway through the set, but many are still moshless and fatigued....
[gallery ids="54430,54432,54431,54428,54429" galleryid="846:54290" galleryindex="14" enablefullscreen="yes" showthumbs="no"] Eyehategod All other bands are done playing. There are no side stage spectacles to draw attendance away from the Ballroom main stage and the true size of Friday night’s crowd is shown in full force. A tangible excitement hangs in the air as the Ballroom fills to the brim and those who can’t find space on the floor pack into the balconies above. Eyehategod take to the stage to swells of cheers and chants of “Mike! Mike! Mike!” The band express great thanks and praise for all their supporters and proceed to drop a 16-ton bag of sludge on our heads. The mosh moves through the crowd like waves of fanaticism: isolated and small at first, they draw huge sweeping shapes through the Ballroom floor before subsiding for a moment, only to begin anew elsewhere. Mike IX may be showing some signs of his age, as are many on and off the stage tonight, but he also looks energetic and healthy. He is visibly moved by supporters chanting his name en masse, but tries to laugh it off by assuring us that “nothin’s changed, we’re still retarded!” Before the energetic peak of their set in “Agitation!Propaganda!”, Mike explains: “I fought to stay alive so I could see the end of the world…” which, he assures us, is coming very soon....
[caption id="attachment_54291" align="aligncenter" width="630"] Image courtesy of the Eyehategod Facebook page.[/caption]...
Near the end of the set, a birthday cake is presented in the shape of a bandaged liver along with a framed picture of Mike from the first EHG tour which includes a check from their then-record label for “zero dollars and zero cents”. The crowd sings the worst, most fitting rendition of “Happy Birthday” that Weedeater frontman Dave Collins says he’s ever heard.-Jason Gilbert
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All photos by Chuck Marshall. Special thanks to Metal Wani for their help in making this report a reality....
White Ward – “Black Silent Piers” (Song Premiere)
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Saxophone-infused metal must contend with the garish abrasion of brass's warm sexuality against the colder, edgier distortion possible with guitar. Generally, bands either shoot for full integration (actively utilizing saxophone throughout like Sigh) or supplemental usage (relegating saxophone to occasion like Ihsahn). Full integration can lead to excessive discord, overpowering the music whereas supplemental usage can reduce saxophone to an insignificant afterthought, spoiling its charm. Recognizing that truth is usually found in the middle, Ukrainian band White Ward's successfully finds balance on their upcoming debut full-length Futility Report. A massive, ascending ballad, “Black Silent Piers” integrates well-timed saxophone melodies into its build-up and resolution, leaving climax duties to candid post-black metal rhythms and blast beats. The vocals blacken the mood and sets a semi-depressive tone (think sullen, but sultry), veering away from the sometimes trite "uplifting" feels of bands like Ghost Bath. A well-vetted drum performance sets the methodical but patient pace necessary to offer listeners a journey rather than just a singular sensation or experience. Intense mood plays the primary role, and “Black Silent Piers” lacks any damaging hyperbole. This whole multi-dimensional approach is tinged with satisfying noir and eccentricity. Futility Report's tracks are immediately discernible from one another, recognizable by distinct moments of abstract expression or unusual shifts in cadence and tone. The package feels something-core in its straightforwardness, but allows intimate access to the velvety and more vulnerable emotions which surface bands can only offer in representation. As a true modern "lighters up" act, White Ward exercised the important senses of duty and restraint in locating perfect moments for saxophone to either dissolve or coagulate Futility Report’s dusky aesthetic. Stream "Black Silent Piers" below. Futility Report releases May 12 via Debemur Morti Productions. Preorder the album here....
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Suffering Hour – “In Passing Ascension” (Song Premiere)
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What excellent debut albums can lack in maturity they usually make up with ambitious experimentation and unbridled gusto. That is to say, innovation and high energy are key to offsetting any spoiling amateurism. Minneapolis-based blackened death metal band Suffering Hour shines in this department. Their upcoming debut album In Passing Ascension rips furiously, and you can stream the penultimate track "Procession To Obscure Infinity" below. With its shrieking intro and blast beat-laden climax, "Procession To Obscure Infinity" traverses a non-linear path toward groovy impact. Behind the scenes, a dynamic drum performance leans not on repetition but sprawling passages that gel in motion with the deathly growls and howls. Suffering Hour nail the precise midpoint between black and death metal -- the overlay of death metal constructions on black metal intensities -- carried on continuously varied guitar licks which return to catchy hooks for maximum excitability. There's even a breakdown-esque moment that substitutes slamming rhythms for a high-pitched breakaway. In Passing Ascension attacks listeners with quick-shifting barrages and unexpected turns. It's an involved listen while still resolutely jammable, meaning the musical content is well-embedded in the overall flow. Live, the album's tracks are bound to stir mosh pits, but there is also plenty to decode and deconstruct during more careful listens. Suffering Hour innovates with overt technicality (progressive in its self-involvement) while also maintaining a clear, almost classic feel. Long-time fans of blackened death metal will relish in all the necessary throwbacks, and newcomers will discover a fresh take on the always interesting intersection of these two genres. Stream "Procession To Obscure Infinity" below. In Passing Ascension releases on May 26 via Blood Harvest Records. Preorder the album here....
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