Ideally, the role of the critic is to approach the subject from a place of impartiality, to examine its relative merits and flaws, and to offer and render an honest and unbiased review for the edification of the audience.
Right up front, I feel I should let you know that this ain’t gonna be that. Continue reading
Halestorm
After being forced into a flood-induced sabbatical last year, LOUDER THAN LIFE 2019 roared back to life the last weekend of September. Over 50 artists and nearly 130,000 fans descended on Louisville, Kentucky’s Fair and Exposition Center, making Derby City the undisputed capital of the hard rock world (for at least a couple days). Your intrepid METAL NEXUS away team braved the teeming throngs and the suffocatingly oppressive heat, chasing slivers of shade while soaking in the sights and sounds in order to bring you these dispatches from the front lines of the biggest rock festival in America. Continue reading
After being forced into a flood-induced sabbatical last year, LOUDER THAN LIFE 2019 roared back to life the last weekend of September. Over 50 artists and nearly 130,000 fans descended on Louisville, Kentucky’s Fair and Exposition Center, making Derby City the undisputed capital of the hard rock world (for at least a couple days). Your intrepid METAL NEXUS away team braved the teeming throngs and the suffocatingly oppressive heat, chasing slivers of shade while soaking in the sights and sounds in order to bring you these dispatches from the front lines of the biggest rock festival in America. Continue reading
We’re a scant week-and-a-half from the return of LOUDER THAN LIFE, one of the nation’s premiere hard rock/heavy metal events. After flooding cruelly scuttled last year’s festivities, Danny Wimmer Presents worked with the city of Louisville to find a new home for the festival, settling on the Kentucky Expo Center’s Highland Festival Grounds (with “highland” being, hopefully, the operative word). 2019’s potent lineup packs some major firepower, with headliners GUNS N’ ROSES, SLIPKNOT, and DISTURBED alongside an array of current acts like HALESTORM, A DAY TO REMEMBER, and IN THIS MOMENT, rising stars such as DIRTY HONEY and CROWN LANDS, and metal mainstays like ROB ZOMBIE, GODSMACK, and MARILYN MANSON. A lineup of this magnitude will invariably force punters to make some hard choices between this band on that stage and that band on this stage; after poring over this year’s daily schedules, here are some of the weekend’s biggest scheduling snafus and how your intrepid reporter plans to unravel them.
Welcome back to our ongoing series of LOUDER THAN LIFE 2019 artist profiles, our weekly guide through the lineup of acts who’ll take the stage at Louisville, Kentucky’s Highland Festival Grounds at Kentucky Expo Center September 27-29 in what’s sure to be one of the biggest concert events of the year. This week, we’re taking a closer look at Swedish neo-psych blues chooglers GRAVEYARD.
Metal icon KING DIAMOND has announced details on his forthcoming album and released dates for a North American tour that will kick off in early November and run until the end of the year.
Welcome back to our ongoing series of LOUDER THAN LIFE 2019 artist profiles, our weekly guide through the lineup of acts who’ll take the stage at Louisville, Kentucky’s Highland Festival Grounds at Kentucky Expo Center September 27-29 in what’s sure to be one of the biggest concert events of the year. This week, we’re taking a closer look at New Jersey hard rockers THE PARLOR MOB.
German stoner rock trio KADAVAR will release their fifth studio album, For the Dead Travel Fast (Nuclear Blast), on October 11. In advance of this highly anticipated work, the band has just released a video for the lead single, “The Devil’s Master.”
Welcome back to our ongoing series of LOUDER THAN LIFE 2019 artist profiles, our weekly guide through the lineup of acts who’ll take the stage at Louisville, Kentucky’s Highland Festival Grounds at Kentucky Expo Center September 27-29 in what’s sure to be one of the biggest concert events of the year. This week, we’re taking a closer look at Canadian psych-blues outfit CROWN LANDS.
One of the bands jump-starting LOUDER THAN LIFE on Friday is CROWN LANDS, a duo hailing from Oshawa, Ontario. For the past four years, Cody Bowles (drums/vocals) and Kevin Comeau (guitars/keyboards/pedals) have been expertly crafting hard-stomping rock that finds the sweet spot between WOLFMOTHER, THE WHITE STRIPES, and RUSH while belying the seeming limitations of their streamlined blueprint. Songs like “Being Right” and “Mountain” retain a touch of garage rawness while still sounding like widescreen epics, and hepped-up jumpers like “Misery” and “Mantra” have a fair bit of glitter encrusted on their shitkicker boots. Continue reading
Welcome back to our ongoing series of LOUDER THAN LIFE 2019 artist profiles, our weekly guide through the lineup of acts who’ll take the stage at Louisville, Kentucky’s Highland Festival Grounds at Kentucky Expo Center September 27-29 in what’s sure to be one of the biggest concert events of the year. This week, we’re taking a closer look at newly-formed supergroup DEADLAND RITUAL.
Not every unsigned band can grab a spot on the lineup for a festival on the magnitude of LARGER THAN LIFE. But then, not every unsigned band can unravel the certified Hall of Fame pedigree of DEADLAND RITUAL. Boasting the assembled firepower of drummer Matt Sorum (VELVET REVOLVER, GUNS N’ ROSES, THE CULT), guitarist Steve Stevens (BILLY IDOL, VINCE NEIL), bassist Geezer Butler (BLACK SABBATH, HEAVEN & HELL), and vocalist Franky Perez (APOCALYPTICA, SCARS ON BROADWAY), DEADLAND RITUAL’s deft audio alchemy combines a century’s worth of hard rocks and heavy metals into a sleek and shiny new alloy that’s both classic and cutting edge. Judging from their two officially released singles, “Down in Flames” and “Broken & Bruised,” a kind of sultry doom will be the unit’s primary stock-in-trade, riding the Big Groove of the formidable Butler/Sorum rhythm section on a thick slab of power riffs and impassioned vocals underneath a desert sky of electric gray. Continue reading
