Tag Archives: State of The Art

State of the Art: Invasive

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*This is part of our State Of The Art series, showcasing bands every Monday from the featured State*

This month’s State is Washington!

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Very cool the way the Metal family works. I have stated before, that Metalheadz know no strangers. We all share a bond in the music, the bands, the musicians and for one another. What’s especially cool is when that camaraderie is perpetuated from band to band as well; not as competition, but as influences, friends and fans instead. Such is the case with my next SOTA band who was suggested to us by BloodRedRose’s band Homewrkr earlier this month and shared the stage with a number of my bands including Mechanism and Elephant Gun Riot. Let me introduce you to Invasive.

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State of the Art: Lust for Glory

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*This is part of our State Of The Art series, showcasing bands every Monday from the featured State*

This month’s State is Washington!

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Just about everyone likes Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, The Eagles, old Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult and other late sixties/early seventies Hard Rock favorites. If you like Rock in any form, you are not likely to find friends with similar tastes saying they hate these bands, right? Heavy riffs, bluesy, heavy hitting solos, blasting drums and booming bass lines were the foundations for everything that we listen to today, much of it having direct underpinnings paying homage to these gods. As good as the music has always been, the live shows were where all of the glory was, however. Festivals that lasted weeks in a time of free love, fun Rock ‘n Roll and overt illicit drug use are pillars on which today’s Metal grounds itself. Such is the case with my SOTA band this week. Lust for Glory flies in the face of just about everything modern in favor of their Lo-Fi take on what music should be.

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State of the Art: Mind Vice

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*This is part of our State Of The Art series, showcasing bands every Monday from the featured State*

This month’s State is Washington!

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Not looking for the normal fare this week. I was looking for something different, but couldn’t quite put my finger on what specifically I was looking for. When I heard it, I would know, right? Washington has, so far, provided a bevy of super music, so I figured it couldn’t be too difficult. Two hours later I found EXACTLY what I was looking for. Heart of 70’s Rock with elements of Funk and fuzzy Psych they have termed as “Head Banging, Ass Shaking, Molten–Hot–Sludgefunk”. I’ll buy that. Saves me the trouble of trying to categorize them and sounds much cooler than anything I would have come up with anyway. So, without further ado, let’s check out what makes Mind Vice such a kick ass band.

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State of the Art: Burning Witch

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*This is part of our State Of The Art series, showcasing bands every Monday from the featured State*

This month’s State is Washington!

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Featuring two of Washington (and metal’s) most prolific artists, the short lived doom/sludge cult known as Burning Witch stunned and repulsed with their strange Continue reading →

State of the Art: Mechanism

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*This is part of our State Of The Art series, showcasing bands every Monday from the featured State*

This month’s State is Washington!

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So I was on vacation last week and, as a result, did not post a State of the Art: Washington showcase article. Well, when looking for Washington bands to cover this week, I was almost overwhelmed with the number of really good bands deserving some attention and have decided to make up for last week by posting two this week. So, let’s go to Tacoma, Washington, just northeast of Olympia, home of Melodic Hard Rock/Metal monsters, Mechanism.

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State of the Art: Elephant Gun Riot

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*This is part of our State Of The Art series, showcasing bands every Monday from the featured State*

This month’s State is Washington!

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After a week off, I am back with you here at MN. So we are off to Washington this month. Population of 7.062 million spread over 71,300 square miles in the upper, northwest corner of the continental United States. Known for its snow capped mountains of the Cascades and the rainforests of Olympic National Park, tech industry and cultural diversity in music, art and business, Washington definitely deserves a month in the spotlight. For my first SOTA lets head just a little north and all the way east from Washington’s capital of Olympia to Spokane and check out Elephant Gun Riot…

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State Of The Art: Washington – Wolves in the Throne Room

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*This is part of our State Of The Art series, showcasing bands every Monday from the featured State*

This month’s State is Washington!

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One of my all time favorite black metal acts, Wolves in the Throne Room make their home in the misty forests of Olympia, Washington.  Brothers Nathan and Aaron Weaver have been playing stellar ambient black metal epics since 2003, and released their first full length in 2006 with “Diadem of 12 Stars“. This album really made people reconsider what made black metal “BLACK METAL“.   WIITR effortlessly juxtapose haunting ambient and choral passages with the usual blasting and tremolo riffing that BM is so well known for. The addition of waterfalls, wind blowing, and other sounds one would hear whilst traveling across the Cascade Mountains bring life to a genre of music that is most often associated with the cold and the dead. Continue reading →

State of the Art: 3 Kisses

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*This is part of our State Of The Art series, showcasing bands every Monday from the featured State*

This month’s State is Alaska!

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3 Kisses. Where the hell do you start describing a band that has been around since January 2004, performed thousands of shows, has nine albums under their belts, been in endless music magazines, on countless radio stations, been on ABC’s “Wife Swap”, had their own reality show, been featured in numerous commercials, video games, movies and TV shows (including the 2014 Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards; Restaurant Impossible; Diners, Drive Ins & Dives; Dallas Card Sharks; Disaster Decks; Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare; Sonic Boom; Lifetime movies, and Hot Wheels spots), had songs in the Top 15 by Rock Solid Preasure, is currently rated #1 for Alaskan Alternative Music on ReverbNation, heavily supports breast cancer research through the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure and the American Cancer Society and been inducted into the Independent Artist Registry? I honestly don’t know, but let’s give it a shot. Here we go…

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State of the Art: The Artificer

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*This is part of our State Of The Art series, showcasing bands every Monday from the featured State*

This month’s State is Alaska!

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I love our State of the Art Series! It gives us the opportunity to shed some light on bands that are likely not in many readers’ field of view (and my own, for that fact) but absolutely should be. This week I would like to introduce you to my next band pick from Alaska: The Artificer out of Fairbanks.

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State of the Art: Vicious Mammals

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*This is part of our State Of The Art series, showcasing bands every Monday from the featured State*

This month’s State is Alaska!

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Alaska is turning out to be one of the easiest states for our State of the Art series. So much good music from our 49th state. This week, let me introduce you to a band that grabbed my attention from riff number one. Dirty, straight forward Rock ‘n Roll with a heavy hit of Punk and Hard Rock from Big Lake, AK. I give you Vicious Mammals.

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