It has been announced that legendary local independent alt rock heroesThe Replacements will be getting the Rock Band treatment within the next few weeks, along with other greats such as Elvis Costello & Social Distortion (and “meh”-inducing artists Steely Dan and Disturbed). In fact, this isn’t the first Replacements song to be translated into a video game; “Alex Chilton” (from their 1987 album Pleased to Meet Me) was part of the initial Rock Band 2 release last September. This time, though, we can thank the game’s weekly downloadable release series for making the rebellious rocker “Kids Don’t Follow ” (from their earlier 1982 Stink EP) playable worldwide on consoles on May 12 (XBOX360) and May 14 (Playstation 3). Have fun with this one!
All of the tracks added in this round include:
Social Distortion, “Bad Luck,” “Ring of Fire”
Social Distortion, “Story of My Life”
The Replacements, “Kids Don’t Follow”
Elvis Costello, “Radio Radio”
Disturbed, “Stricken”
Disturbed, “Stupify”
Steely Dan, “Black Friday”
Steely Dan, “My Old School”
I just stumbled upon the page of Degross Punk Photography, a supreme quality photographer based in my own Minneapolis who seems to share a taste for some of the most revered and respectable names in hardcore and punk; I thought it was important to pass along my new knowledge to everyone else, hence this post. Recently, Degross shot at shows for HR (solo show from frontman of Bad Brains) and Destruction/Krisiun at Station 4 (that I also attended), as well as local sets from Agonstic Front, Have Heart, Suicidal Tendencies, The Bronx, Trash Talk, and the brilliant show that a rejuvenated Disembodied put on at the Triple Rock Social Club on Cedar a couple weeks ago. Click the link to go to his blog, and book mark his RSS or something. I’m certain his page will be updated quite frequently as the spring/summer heats up with the future ENR showcases and all other types of madness. Stay tuned!
Sonic Youth graced Jools Holland’s stage last week for a performance of “What We Know” from their new album The Eternal, but what we didn’t know was that they also recorded a performance of “Teenage Riot” for the show that day. Watch above to see the band dominate through their classic in ways that I didn’t know possible anymore!
If this is any clue, the band look like they’ll be playing their old songs with a renewed fervor on their world tour this spring – I hope we can expect them to embrace all their classics as beautifully as this revamped “Teenage Riot” sounds to my ears. Don’t forget, we’ll be getting our own Sonic Youth performance at First Avenue in June. Tickets are available now. VIDEO:Sonic Youth, “Teenage Riot” (Live on Jools Holland)
When I came down with a cold this weekend, the first thing that everyone kept saying to me was that I should get checked out for Swine Flue. Seriously, I’m not joking when I say that I had around 20 people suggest that I may have contracted H1N1. In my mind, all I could do was laugh; to me this flu scare is nothing more than a media frenzy cooked up to district the world from the global financial meltdown that’s still taking place, and people should be embarrassed by legitimizing the problem as much as they have with their overreactions. (personal opinion)
That’s why I was so stoked to log on to the interwebs this morning and see that my main man Mike Skinner from The Streets was on the same page as me. At least, I think we’re on the same page; he’s got a wit that I can’t quite match. Skinner is back, sounding as fresh as ever, and in the hilarious new track “He’s Behind You, He’s Got Swine Flu” he likens the swine flu “pandemic” to a zombie takeover; the metaphors are spot on, as you can see from the glorious, classic cult zombie visuals that were sync to the outlandish rhymes. The Streets end each verse by suggesting you just “decapitate your mate” and don’t worry about becoming a zombie, sharply taking a jab at the governments around the world that are blindly sacrificing so much to adhere to the precautionary principle. It’s great to hear Skinner spitting with a spark again…
Everyone else has been belly-achin’ on this site for a solid week now about the insane amount of homework that’s on their plate (along with too many paid work hours to count) leading into the final week of school, and for me the situation is no different. I’ve had my head buried in schoolwork for nearly two weeks now, and it doesn’t look like I’ll be completely free for the summer for a few more days yet.
However, this afternoon after my ethics presentation, I was able to spend a few minutes combining all of the best free metal media I’ve collected over the course of the last month into a single, easy-to-digest post for you all to enjoy. It’s not often that I make a post that is packed this full of goodies, so feel free to thank me for catching you up with all these incredible new headbangers. Sit back, and just be ready to keep hitting play! We start thing off with a sweet new super-psychedelic music video from our friends in Torche…
Video:Torche, “Across Shields” (music video) – I’ll start things off with my favorite metal media post of the month. Really, I have no clue what Torche is doing in their new video for “Across Shields” from Meanderthal (available now), but either way it’s hilarious. This stuff makes me feel like I’m a kid again, and I can’t hate that!
Video: Chimaira, “Destroy and Dominate” (music video) – Chimaira is back with The Infection, and their first music video for “Destroy and Dominate” is their most satsifying visual accompaniment yet. Finally, the band’s has a video that gives proper treatment to the tremendous grooves and riffs they crank out. They deserved a video that can convey them as the behemoth metal juggernaut they have truly become, and this is it.
Video: Black Dahlia Murder, Majesty dvd trailer – The dudes in Black Dahlia Murder are coming out with a DVD called Majesty that will finally prove they are as funny as every interviewer says they are. I’m not sure what they mean at the start when they say that they can’t use any copyrighted songs, so I’m hoping that there’s still plenty of ass-kicking death metal to go around.
Video: Heaven and Hell, “Bible Black” (music video) – Everyone in the world knows that Ozzy spends most of his hours making a fool of himself, but what no one’s probably aware of is that the rest of Black Sabbath is still busy making classics without him. Former Black Sabbath vocalist Ronnie James Dio is back with his old bandmates and are now dubbed Heaven & Hell (to avoid confusion), and they are making new rockers such as “Bible Black” that stack up admirably against their legendary back catalog.
Video: Toxic Holocaust, “Nuke The Cross” (music video) – The young Portland thrashers Toxic Holocaust release “Nuke the Cross” their second video from their Relapse debut An Overdose of Death – and they mean business! Ripping video!
MP3: Orcustus, “Asphyxiokenisis” – Underground duo (formerly featuring Infernus and Tormentor from Gorgorth) strongly tied to the legendary Norwegian black metal scene released their self titled debut in March. Download the Mp3 courtesy of Southern Lord to become familiar with their brutal contrubition to the art of black metal.
It’s hard to believe that these guys have been playing together for nearly two decades, but that’s the truth. From the looks of the band on their new video for “Black Heart Inertia”, it’s hard to tell if they’ve aged a day since the first time I remember coming across their music. Either way, as with every other time they release something new, Incubus continues to sound refreshingly renewed with this new song…
On June 16, Incubus will be celebrating their extensive back catalog with a greatest hits release entitled Monuments and Melodies – the 2xCD will also include two new Brendan O’Brien produced tracks (one of which gets the music video treatment seen here) and plenty of bonus material to satisfy (including a cover of Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy”). For those of you who already own most of the first album, I’d recommend looking to digital downloads to handpick the ones you’re missing.
Keep reading for the full tracklist for Monuments and Melodies… Continue reading →
Kylesa just came to Minneapolis last week for a performance at the Fine Line, but with all the lavish attention thrown at Mastodon, it maybe was unfortunately too easy to overlook the incredible show that these Savannah, GA natives put on that night. This post is here to straighten out anyone who can admit to this shame.
“Said and Done” is a grandiose track that showcases all this brilliant band’s best qualities; bombastic cascades of drum thunder are the anchor to some of the thickest guitar grooves this side of Entombed and enough nasty psychedelic metal embellishments to make anyone’s jaw drop. Kylesa is clearly firing on all cylinders these days, and they sound they best I’ve heard from them so far! Check it out for yourself – courtesy of SXSW.
Jon over at Sound Verite was kind enough to clue us in to a new Mars Volta track, the first to surface from the band’s upcoming Octahedron album. This album announcement kind of blindsided me, and the fact that an Mp3 is already on the net is the cherry on top of any already satisfactory dessert. It will hit the streets on June 23rd, but in the meantime, I’m on the edge of my seat for any more morsels of this prog rock perfection to drop on the interwebs. Stay tuned…
Last night, April 29, 2009, the the conceptual prog/thrash/stoner metal masters in Mastodon came to the Fine Line Music Cafe in the heart of downtown Minneapolis’s club district to support of their brilliant new album Crack the Skye, and they put together a gripping set that had the MN crowd salivating for more. It’s one thing to make every one of your albums into a separate concept piece, but it’s an entirely different story when you are able to execute that concept, front-to-back, in front of the live audience. However, Mastodon did just that by dedicating the entire first half of their set to the new release, and it didn’t end there they treated each of their releases with the same type of reverence, playing back through their career with mini-conceptual sets devoted to Blood Mountain, Leviathan, and Remission.
Crack the Skye was played in order, and it couldn’t have sounded better than it did at the Fine Line on Wednesday. The guitars were thick, loud, and crunching over the insane drum textures of Brann Dailor, sounding heavy as hell at times and lush and beautiful at others. Mastodon has the unique ability to play heavy rock that tends to get tripped out never loses sight of the fact that it’s main purpose is to fuckin’ rock! Fine Line’s sold out crowd certainly appreciated the heaviness throughout the night, and the moshing only subdued a few times during some of the most Pink Floydian moments.
However, things really kicked into high gear when the band stepped back onto stage for their second set of the night. As the band roared into the first notes of the psychonaut thrasher “Bladecatcher” from Blood Mountain, a renewed fervor hit the pit that didn’t let up until the end. Fans seemed to celebrate each time a new song began, a sure sign that of the future trouble the band might have in putting together albums that can stack up against their back catalog. Nevermind that though, because tonight the band has a more control of their sound and their crowd than any other band I’ve seen all year. The show was an ambitious one, but in the end it brought things full circle, beautifully introducing fans of the old the the new and vice versa.
Not to be outdone, the underground pyschedelic sludge metal vets Kylesa is came into town supporting their new album Static Tensions and played a set that left most of the crowd taking serious note of who was on stage in front of them. To anyone in metal band, Kylesa’s dirty headbanging psychedelics sonic presence is quite enviable, and the fact that they’re the direct support to Mastodon’s sold out tour is probably even more enviable. To sum it up succinctly, this is a “band’s band”, if you know what I mean; everybody sings, they’ve got two drummers, males, females, and they play some very, very, very sick metal.
The underground prog/sludge heavyweights in Intronaut started things off right with their poly-rhythmic doom metal. Most of the set was focused around Prehistoricisms and The Challenger EP, with only a single song taken from earlier material. All around, the band sounded extremely tight and super heavy last night, and for as technical as their music is, they still came across as a pretty carefree group of musicians. If I would’ve found them in the venue, I would’ve gladly offered to roll one up with the dudes (but I might have had to make that conditional on a personal request for “Fragments of Character” next time they’re in MN – it’s a song that brings back great personal memories!).
And now on to the media presentation! We owe a big thank you to Chris, Erik, and the guys at CultureBully.com for the spontaneous “partnership” that spawned the vimeo hosted video in this post (and they were nice enough to include some of the shots that I took with their own, much better and more detailed writeup of the show)! Check out all the great photos of Mastodon, Kylesa, and Intronaut and FIVE videos of Intronaut and Mastodon. Happy viewing!
“After 3 1/2 long years, Cave In has decided to end its hiatus. Please join us for an EP release show at Great Scott’s (1222 Commonwealth Ave., Allston MA) on Sunday, July 19th @ 9PM. Also playing will be our friends Disappearer and Phantom Glue. Copies of the Planets Of Old limited 12″ (recorded by Adam Taylor, Alex Hartman & Johnny Northrup @ Camp St. Studio) from Hydra Head Records will be available that night.
We hope to see your lovely selves.
Steve, Adam, J.R., Caleb
CAVE IN”
Hell yes! I knew it would be long (seriously, this band sounds too awesome live to be separated forever). The visionary indie/space/hardcore/roc/metal legends are back and it’s good to see that J.R. Connors is in the saddle for the ride.
Expect a preoder of Planets Of Old to be up on Hydra Head’s online store any time now..
When I came down with a cold this weekend, the first thing that everyone kept saying to me was that I should get checked out for Swine Flue. Seriously, I’m not joking when I say that I had around 20 people suggest that I may have contracted H1N1. In my mind, all I could do was laugh; to me this flu scare is nothing more than a media frenzy cooked up to district the world from the global financial meltdown that’s still taking place, and people should be embarrassed by legitimizing the problem as much as they have with their overreactions. (personal opinion)
(Mastodon)
(Mastodon)
(Mastodon)
(Mastodon)
(Mastodon)
(Mastodon)
(Kylesa)
(Kylesa)
(Kylesa)
(Kylesa)
(Intronaut)
(Intronaut)
(Intronaut)
MIND INVERSION 