Comments Off on Review: MADBALL – ‘For The Cause’ [Video Stream]
New York Hardcore legends, Madball are back and bringing another 13 rounds of face-pummeling power with their upcoming album, ‘For the Cause,’ – scheduled for release June 15th, 2018 on Nuclear Blast Records. The new record features appearances from such notable names as Sick Jacken (Psycho Realm) on the track “Rev Up;” Steve Whale (The Business) and producer/vocalist Tim Armstrong (Rancid) on “The Fog;” and the legendary rapper and Body Count frontman, Ice-T on the track, “Evil Ways.” From violent aggression to anthemic, fist-pumping groove, this record delivers on all fronts – Or as bassist, Hoya Roc states, “It feels like the movie Pulp Fiction. We’ve got every style of hardcore in there.” Continue reading →
Comments Off on An Interview With NEKROGOBLIKON Vocalist Nicky Calonne!
The hype man is alive and well in the metal community, and his name is John f**king Goblikon. If you aren’t listening to Los Angeles, California’s melodic death metal jesters NEKROGOBLIKON yet you are seriously missing out on one of the best acts to grace the stages of the United States. Nicky “Scorpion” Calonne (Lead Vocals, Keyboard) Alex “Goldberg” Alereza (Guitar, Backing Vocals), Aaron “Raptor” Minich (Keyboard, Backing Vocals), Aaron “Zoot” VanZutphen. NEKROGOBLIKONhas released 3 full albums ‘Goblin Island’, ‘Stench’, and ‘Heavy Meta’ as well as one solid E.P. ‘Power’ since they crawled out of some smelly hole in California back in 2006, and now they’ve dropped another one on our heads titled ‘Welcome To Bonkers’ which released on Friday, April 13th 2018 courtesy of Seek And Strike Records. Continue reading →
Comments Off on State Of The Art: SPACE CADAVER [Album + Video Stream]
*This is a part of our State Of The Art series, showcasing bands every Monday from the featured state.*
This month’s state is Louisiana!
New Orleans’ Space Cadaver are a band that have fury and finesse, with a groove that stomps all over their songs. They have a sci-fi style and power to match the best in the universe. Guitarist/vocalist John Baleine, bassist Beto Arias and drummer Jason Meserole bring dark and light in equal measure. Formed in 2015, Space Cadaver have shared the stage with heavyweights such as Conan, Acid King and Ufomammut. Their message of spacey doom is spreading quickly!
Their debut self-titled album has been available since 2017. Guitarist/vocalist Baleine commented that “this album is a benchmark of 3 years of hard work and determination – an opportunity to grow…and have closure with a lot of dark things… It was a cleanse to purge the pent up frustrations around the suicide and murders of loved ones, drug addiction and the struggle to break free from the things that are no longer serving me.”
Space Cadaver have a sound that melds Death, Doom and Stoner in a rock hard package. Their self-titled debut album is a tour de force of genre-defying metal. They may only have a bass, guitar and drums to work from, but they know how to work that to make an amazing cinematic sound that sonically destroys everything in the mainstream metal world.
The album kicks off with the riffy ‘The Infinite Black Sun‘. This sets the band’s stall out, with Baleine’s growling vocals and thoughtful lyrics. The sound that a three piece make is genuinely impressive. The bass is high in the mix and the drums splatter through the fuzz storm of guitar. There are light passages that bring the sound into a different sphere and the dark parts take you to a back alley and mug you.
The guitar dominates “Day Ruiner“, as the groove is augmented by a superb guitar solo that is full of heart and power. “Storm” follows with the sound of hell coming out to play. A grunge-type melody lends the song a spirit that cannot be dismissed easily.
“Insufficient Reward” is a masterpiece in cinematic metal. It ebbs and flows with an approach that composers of movie scores love. I can imagine a video of someone escaping evil forces, running down dark corridors in space. The drumming is superb on this tune.
The commercially accessible “Clock Hoarder” continues with its fantastic bass/guitar interplay. It also manages to tip its hat to old school thrash. “Nowhere, Now Here” continues the album with a progressive, minor key insurgency. Once again, a cinematic sound, focusing on a picture in space of desolation and regret.
The closing two numbers, “Sword of the Lord” and “Draco’s Revenge” are urgent, epic sound songs that veer from blast beats to progressive jazz in the space of minutes.
Overall, Space Cadaver are a band that everyone should check out, before they check out (in space, naturally).
Comments Off on FOO FIGHTERS More Than Make Up For Lost Time In Lexington, KY 5/1/18
It’s been a couple weeks since Foo Fighters rolled through (or should I say rolled OVER) Lexington, KY, and my ears are still ringing. The city’s famed Rupp Arena hosted the eleven-time Grammy-winning legends earlier this month after their original stop in the Bluegrass state was canceled last October due to a family emergency which frontman, Dave Grohl addressed mid-set with “There’s only one thing I love more than Foo Fighters, and that’s my mama! And when my mama gets sick, f*ck all you motherf*ckers!” causing the crowd to erupt in cheers. For well over 3 hours, the band entranced a nearly sold-out crowd with a slew of everyone’s favorite Foo Fighters tunes, as well as new material from their latest release, ‘Concrete & Gold’. To call this show “just another rock show” would be an incredibly understated observation. For me, personally, this single night had more heart, emotion, energy, and fan-to-artist connection than most shows I’ve seen. Continue reading →
Comments Off on Inkcarceration Tattoo & Music Fest Ticket Giveaway! [Details Inside]
Metal and tattoos, it’s a perfect marriage isn’t it? This JulyInkcarceration Music and Tattoo Festival will bring to you the ultimate summer holiday getaway. It is a a one-of-a-kind destination event that presents to you heavy and hard rock music from over 30+ plus bands on two stages, with some big names from the industry, such as the likes of RISE AGAINST, A DAY TO REMEMBER, BUSH, BLACK LABEL SOCIETY, CLUTCH and many more. It’s a star studded line-up. Adding more to the festival’s appeal, it will also host a tattoo festival inside of one of the country’s most infamous prisons, plus so much more. Continue reading →
Comments Off on Review : CANDLEMASS – ‘House Of Doom’
Coming May 25 via Napalm Records is the new EP: ‘House of Doom‘ from legendary doom metal band ‘CANDLEMASS!’ Clocking in at under 30 minutes, ‘House of Doom‘ is a quick but thoroughly enjoyable listen! We start things off with the title track which for my money has everything that an old school Doom Metal fan could ask for: Insanely catchy riffs, powerful vocals, and Sabbath style rhythm! This is easily the best Doom Metal anthem since “Doom over the World” by the now defunct ‘Reverend Bizarre.’
Comments Off on Shaman’s Harvest, From Ashes To New & Big Story In Johnson City, TN [Review & Photo Gallery]
Shamans Harvest
A rainy evening in Johnson City, TN is as good of a day as any for a metal and rock filled day. Capone’s is the premiere music venue in the Tri-Cities and this is where massive amounts of headbanging was about to occur. The lineup for this dreary day would include Shaman’s Harvest, From Ashes To New, and Big Story which was a wide variety of genres and brought a mixture of fans together under one roof. Continue reading →
Comments Off on Texas Hippie Coalition, Kobra And The Lotus & More Bring Metal To Johnson City. [Review & Gallery]
The band of outlaws that is the Texas Hippie Coalition rolled into Johnson City, TN and The Hideaway with their friends Kobra and the Lotus, Brand of Julez, Granny 4 Barrel and Clockwork Asylum. The “Year Of The Bull tour” was about to be unleashed on Johnson City, TN. The intent was to tear apart The Hideaway and they came real close!!
Comments Off on Review : LIK – ‘Carnage’ [Album Stream]
Swedish Metal is the unsung hero of the Metal genre. Rarely do you see so many game changing extreme Metal bands arise from one area as you do with Sweden. You have pioneers of various forms of Death Metal like Entombed, At The Gates and Dark Tranquility who all contributed massively to the genre by contributing buzz saw guitar tones and melody mixed with insanely heavy riffs. Fast forward to today and you still have a healthy amount of bands emerging from the area! One of the most notable would be LIK who have just released a new album that is a worthy successor to bands like Dismember, Entombed and Bloodbath!
Comments Off on Underøath On Dropping Christian Band Label “For Aaron & Spencer Its Freed Them Up To Be A Lot More Honest.”
Photo credit: Dan Newman
With eight years having passed since we last heard new music from Underøath, that near decade-length absence weighed heavily upon music lovers’ hearts. When you consider all of the bands that formed using their idiosyncratic power and texture as blueprints (and then hearing those pretenders fail anyway), you can clearly see the hole Underøath left behind. Whatever real-life worries, psychic baggage or other concerns plagued Spencer Chamberlain, Aaron Gillespie, Tim McTague, Chris Dudley, Grant Brandell and James Smith at the time of their 2013 farewell tour, Underøath’s collective consciousness has been fortified by a renewed commitment to their art. And more importantly, themselves. Never was an imposition more on point: On their Fearless Records debut Erase Me, Underøath have added another crucial chapter to their formidable legacy. When the band went in the studio in the summer of 2017 to record their sixth album with producer Matt Squire (Panic! At The Disco, 3OH!3), they knew exactly what they wanted to do as well as what they needed to do. Having already established themselves both as melodic songwriters (2004’s RIAA-Certified Gold record ‘They’re Only Chasing Safety’) and as ambitious power merchants (2006’s stentorian, gold-selling Define The Great Line and its majestic follow-up, 2008’s ‘Lost In The Sound Of Separation’), the evolution detailed on ‘Erase Me’ finds them using the sonic dialects they’ve crafted to reveal where they are now. Continue reading →
New York Hardcore legends, Madball are back and bringing another 13 rounds of face-pummeling power with their upcoming album, ‘For the Cause,’ – scheduled for release June 15th, 2018 on Nuclear Blast Records. The new record features appearances from such notable names as Sick Jacken (Psycho Realm) on the track “Rev Up;” Steve Whale (The Business) and producer/vocalist Tim Armstrong (Rancid) on “The Fog;” and the legendary rapper and Body Count frontman, Ice-T on the track, “Evil Ways.” From violent aggression to anthemic, fist-pumping groove, this record delivers on all fronts – Or as bassist, Hoya Roc states, “It feels like the movie Pulp Fiction. We’ve got every style of hardcore in there.” Continue reading 
