Tag Archives: State of The Art

State Of The Art : AMERICAN STANDARDS

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

This month’s state is Arizona!

 

When we found out what state would be featured for our weekly series of STATE OF THE ART, I automatically knew who I wanted to introduce to the world, the fantastic guys in American Standards. American Standards is a chaotic hardcore band that you probably do not know and will kick yourself for not knowing them before today. But don’t be saddend by this, even I was late to the party, not discovering them until sometime in late 2016 when meeting their vocalist Brandon Kellum through the Facebook fan group for Dillinger Escape Plan, The Dillinger Compound. American Standards story is that of separation, loss and the adaptability that allows us to preserver. Formed in Phoenix, AZ in the summer of 2011, the band released their first album ‘Still Life’ through We Are Triumphant, an imprint of Victory Records. Musically, the record walked a fine line between subtle melody and raw chaos providing a platform for vocalist Brandon Kellum’s emotionally and politically charged lyrics. The band quickly became known for their intense live shows and undeniable work ethic playing over 300 shows to date.

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State Of The Art : WARHEAD

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

This month’s state is Arizona!

 

Hello hell raisers! Welcome back to another weekly segment of State Of The Art series where every week we go a bit heavy metal Santa Claus and shower some much deserved spotlight to the lesser known and underground bands who already are wrecking shit up at you local town or city. Monday can be asphyxiating and SOTA is your caffeine to start off your week. If you love digging up new bands and are always on the run trying to hit the gold, this segment is totally yours. Last month I highlighted SUPPRESSIVE FIRE, a thrash band from Raleigh NC, which you can check it out HERE. Today, this Monday, we present to you another thrash metal quartet who are taking giant strides in the underground circuit. Okay, you might be thinking, “does this bloke know anything other than thrash?” Well, I know, but thrash is where my heart is and I mean come on who doesn’t like thrash metal. So coming back to the artist, welcome the old school, fast and furious WARHEAD from Phoenix, Arizona!

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State Of The Art: DED!

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

                                                                    This month’s State is Arizona!

Ded is one of the best upcoming Nu-Metal bands from the state. While listening you will instantly recognize some of the greatest parts about Nu-Metal with some insanely good additions. They make you want to start your own damn pit in your living room, that is how crazy good they are. I have only found out about them recently yet I have already fallen in love with their sound. Vocalist Joe Cotela is inhuman, his screams have the same feeling to them that a lot of older bands had that just started out with a bunch of agression. That isn’t all, the guitar work of  David Ludlow is everything you are looking for in a Nu-Metal riff. It sounds raw and it has clear influences on a lot of other great Nu-Metal bands that are out there. Bassist Kyle Koelsch fits his role perfectly, the bass in the mix of their 3 songs is just right. It doesn’t dominate and it also doesn’t disappear in thin air. All these musicians are talented but a band wouldn’t be anything without an energetic drummer, that is where Matt reinhard jumps in. Luckily for us they have already released 3 songs from their upcoming debut album ‘Mis•An•Thrope’. The whole album will be available on the 21th of July. Those 3 songs are called ”FMTY”, ”Anti-Everything” and ”Dead To Me”. They have all been self released and they have all made me realise what I was missing out on before. These songs are full of power, hatred and filled with a bunch of head banging moments. I suggest you listen to them before we go any further in today’s State Of The Art, they are all linked at the very end! Continue reading →

State Of The Art: GATECREEPER!

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

                                                                       This month’s State is Arizona!

GATECREEPER is a death metal band out of Tucson & Phoenix Arizona. They formed in 2013 with members Chase Mason on guitar, Metal Matt on drums, and Sean Mears on bass. In the early days they didn’t play a single show – they just wrote songs and recorded them. There was virtually no direction for this self-titled, 4 song EP, released in April of 2014. But, it turned out to be a great idea because they ended up with a fanbase before they played their first show.

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State Of The Art: SUPPRESSIVE FIRE

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

This month’s State is North Carolina!

 

Hello, fellow metalheads! Welcome back to our weekly edition of the State Of The Art series. I know it is Monday and you’re probably all lagged up, reluctantly waking up from you slumber and contemplating the cesspool of existential crisis Monday brings. It’s annoying I know, everyone hates Mondays. Well, that’s when Metal Nexus comes in and plays its card, the SOTA card. To cheer up your dull day, we bring to you today one of the rising forces of American thrash metal, bellowing from the deepest gorges of hell, hailing from the capital city of Raleigh, we present to you SUPPRESSIVE FIRE. They bring with themselves a relentless wall of sonic barrage, coupled with speed and aggression of 80s teutonic German thrash and the modern technicality and brutality of the sub genre. Let’s get this straight, if you are looking for or are expecting that one melodic filler song per album kinda band, then I am sorry, in the words of the legendary Pantera, “Walk on home boy!”. This is as thrash as it gets, teutonic monstrosity and Bay Area aggression makes them the band that they are today!

Joseph Valhal, the band’s guitarist put up an classified ad and was almost on the brink of stalling the idea, that is when Brandon Smith revived the hope and joined him as a drummer as narrated by the frontman in an interview with Wonderbox Metal. The building foundation being now laid strong, all they needed was now a bassist and a vocalist. Aaron Schmidt soon fit the last missing puzzle and decided to do the double duty of a bassist and vocalist, thus helping in the birth of a new three piece band that would soon go on and create major ripples in the NC metal scene from 2011 onwards. Albeit, later the band would see themselves branch out into a four piece till date.

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State Of The Art: WITCH MOUNTAIN

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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 Oregon!

Witch Mountain was formed in 1997 and became a household name in the city that keeps it weird, Portland, Oregon. The doom crew had just released mostly likely the best album thus far since the formation of the band in the 2014 release ‘Mobile of Angels’ their 8th album. Singer Uta Plotkin was belting out all the vocals on the most recent albums. Her voice became the definition of doom to most within the scene. Uta announced she would be leaving the band prior to the release of ‘Mobile of Angels’ in September of 2014. If that wasn’t already enough bassist Charles Thomas was leaving the band as well. This left only drummer Nathan Carson and guitarist Rob Wrong. Uta left some huge shoes to fill for whoever would eventually take her place. The band had a few months to look around for a singer prior to Uta leaving the band. They were in no immediate hurry to fill the spot and just wanting to ensure they had the right person. Less than a week after receiving a video audition from Kayla Dixon she was to become the new singer of Witch Mountain. Dixon spent some time with the Cleveland based band Demons Within, but the majority of her career was in theatre acting. The 19 year old Dixon was flown out to join the band and newly added bass player Justin Brown from the Portland band Lamprey. Once again the band was complete. Continue reading →

State Of The Art: Oregon – Increate

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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 Oregon!

Like shooting fish in a barrel for this month’s State of the Art: Oregon series. No matter how extreme your Metal tastes, Oregon has something for you. Digging 80’s Pop Metal? Gotcha covered. More into old school Thrash and Power Metal? You got it. Think these are for wusses and desire to hit the extremes? There are more good Death and Black Metal bands in Oregon than you can shake a stick at. If there is one niche that stands out in the upper, West Coast, however, it is going to be Progressive Metal. Incidentally, this stands among my favorites, so this week let me introduce you to Increate.

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State of the Art: Oregon – Sacrifice to Survive

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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 Oregon!

Man. Can hardly believe it is already May. With that we move from Pennsylvania on the East Coast to the West Coast to hit Oregon, our new state for our State of the Art series. Having a capital of Salem and being bordered by Washington, Idaho, Nevada, California and the Pacific Ocean, Oregon became the 33rd state in the U.S. February 14th, 1859. Taking up some 98,000 square miles and having a population of about 4,000,000 residents, Oregon is the ninth largest state and the 33rd most populated, respectively. Within its boundaries lies a wide variety of geography including volcanoes, large bodies of water, dense forests, high deserts, semi-arid shrublands and beaches; driving Oregon’s economy powered by agriculture, fishing, hydroelectric power, timber and cutting edge technology. Nike, FLIR Systems, Portland General Electric and Columbia Sportswear are just a few international corporations that call Oregon home [Wiki]. In addition, the state has spawned a large number of notable bands such as Red Fang, Black ‘n Blue, Toxic Holocaust, Whermact, among many others. For my first Oregon SOTA band this month I would like to shine the spotlight on Sacrifice to Survive.

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State of the Art: Pennsylvania – Chronostasis

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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 Pennsylvania!

So, with this week, our State of the Art: Pennsylvania series is comes to a close. So much good music to choose from and from a scene that is bursting at the seams with new ideas, creative concepts not heard anywhere else and a diversity that is nothing short of stunning. Finding interesting and engaging bands was never a problem but choosing among such a large swath of sounds did become a rather daunting task; and this week was no exception. I was down to three or four bands that fit my bill this week until I came upon Chronostasis. This is exactly what I was looking for. Once I got my chin out of my lap, bought their debut CD and got over my initial shock and awe, I got to work.

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State of the Art: Pennsylvania – Tungsten

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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 Pennsylvania!

Week number three of our State of the Art: Pennsylvania series takes us back to Philadelphia where we find an extremely unusual band that pulls influences from all over the musical landscape: Metal, Psychedelia, Progressive Rock/Metal and everything in between to create a sound like no other. My spotlight band this week is Tungsten.

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