(Un)Official Metal Thread

[DFF]

There have been one or two additions to the Bloodstock Line-up since I last posted:

 

Friday
Main Stage
Twisted Sister (headliner)
Behemoth (sub-headliner, playing The Satanist in full)
Venom

Saturday
Main Stage
Mastodon (headliner)
Gojira (sub-headliner)
Paradise Lost
Fear Factory
DragonForce
Rotting Christ

 Second Stage
Acid Reign (headliner)

Sunday
Main Stage
Slayer (headliner)
Anthrax (sub-headliner)
Symphony X
Satyricon (playing Nemesis Devina in full)

[DFF]

HRH has just announced they are doing a Stoner vs Doom weekender in Sheffield this October. No bands or costs announced yet, but they are in our 02 Academy (perfectly decent venue) and will be having two stages and 30 bands. Dates are 1st and 2nd of October.

[Hellraiser]

Black Sabbath have announced that they're going to release a CD named "The End" which will include 4 outtakes from the "13" Sessions as well as 4 Live Tracks. It will only be sold at the merch stands during their "The End" tour.

Tracklist:
01. Season Of The Dead
02. Cry All Night
03. Take Me Home
04. Isolated Man
05. God Is Dead? (Live Sydney, Australia 4/27/13)
06. Under The Sun (Live Auckland, New Zealand 4/20/13)
07. End Of The Beginning (Live Hamilton, ON Canada 4/11/14)
08. Age Of Reason (Live Hamilton, ON Canada 4/11/14)

[TheWho87]

I'm gonna put this here, its not bad... but its not Sabbath

 

 

[Hellraiser]

The forgotten Black Sabbath singer Tony Martin (from 1987 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1997) attended the unveiling of a memorial plaque dedicated to Cozy Powell (who was mostly known for his stint in Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow and The Jeff Beck Group and who had stints in other bands and artists such as Whitesnake, Black Sabbath, the Michael Schenker Group,  Brian May, Robert Plant, the short lived Emerson, Lake & Powell as well as Yngwie Malmsteen). Black Sabbath guitarist and founding member Tony Iommi was there as well. In recent years there was some tension between the two about some unflattering passages about Martin in Iommi's autobiography. But according to Martin he was greeted very warmly by Iommi and they had their first conversation of any lenght in 15 years. He also says that he and Iommi may very well be working together soon.

We don't now what they will be working on and the "may" indicates that they might not work together at all, but to me this is good news. I've always been a fan of the Martin-Era Sabbath albums and I think it is a shame that this incarnation of the band received to little attention. I think the most likely reason for them to work together is to provide bonus material on the 4 remaining yet to be re-released and re-mastered Sabbath Albums featuring Tony Martin. Of course I'd love for them to work on new music together whether that be for a Iommi solo release, Martin's next solo album that he is still working on or maybe even a Heaven & Hell style reunion with musicians from that era. But I doubt that will happen since their is not enough interest in this era of the band. Still, as I said above, this is good news to me.

If you want to know what Sabbath with Martin sounded like:

 

and

 

 

 

[Hellraiser]

Rage have just released the music video to their new song "My Way":

 

[DFF]

On ‎13‎/‎01‎/‎2016 at 12:54, DFF said:

There have been one or two additions to the Bloodstock Line-up since I last posted:

 

Friday
Main Stage
Twisted Sister (headliner)
Behemoth (sub-headliner, playing The Satanist in full)
Venom

Saturday
Main Stage
Mastodon (headliner)
Gojira (sub-headliner)
Paradise Lost
Fear Factory
DragonForce
Rotting Christ

 Second Stage
Acid Reign (headliner)

Sunday
Main Stage
Slayer (headliner)
Anthrax (sub-headliner)
Symphony X
Satyricon (playing Nemesis Devina in full)

 

Metal Allegiance, Stuck Mojo and Goatwhore have been added today.

 

 

[MalaCloudy Black]

MetalSucks has a pretty good editorial about Phil Anselmo's racism. I think it's worth reading and discussing with people more intelligent than the MetalSucks community, who think the height of wit and humor is "be sarcastically racist". It really does beg the question though: why does Phil Anselmo get a pass for saying ignorant, racist garbage and going "WHOA J/K" when people are pretty quick to condemn other musicians - like the example given in the article, Dave Mustaine - for saying equally garbage things? I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Anselmo knows his audience to some degree, so even after he says something shitty, he knows well enough to backpedal and make (lame) excuses. Mustaine pretty much owns the fact that he's a crazy, right-wing, racist Tea Party nut, and that makes him a lot easier to dislike than the guy who will come out and go "whoa just kidding/sorry I fucked up" despite the fact that he has a decades long record of saying (and singing!) some pretty jacked up stuff.

Machine Head's Rob Flynn has been the most prominent musician to speak out about Anselmo. Here's an 11 minute video called "Racism In Metal" that was posted to the official Machine Head YouTube:
 

According to Flynn, Anselmo's excuse ("we were drinking white wine backstage") doesn't hold up, because there wasn't any white wine backstage. Anselmo also once told him hated the "n word era" of Machine Head. :/

 

[Lint]

Yea I read his excuse (Oh, we were drinknig white wine backstage!!) and didn't buy it for a second.  If he had said something like White Wine Power, or Wine Power...ok, still not a good thing, but it'd make sense in that context. 

[Hellraiser]

I know they haven't been Metal in a while but Avantasia (Rock Opera project by Edguy singer and mastermind Tobias Sammet) have entered their song "Mystery Of A Blood Red Rose" from their lastest album Ghostlights into the preliminary TV casting show to choose the candidate to represent Germany at the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest.

 

To be honest I'm not a big fan of the song. And I doubt that it will be successful in Sweden. I don't think it's catchy enough.

[MalaCloudy Black]

http://webcast.livemetallica.com/

Metallica's playing a show and livestreaming it for free right now.

[DFF]

On ‎15‎/‎01‎/‎2016 at 12:23, DFF said:

HRH has just announced they are doing a Stoner vs Doom weekender in Sheffield this October. No bands or costs announced yet, but they are in our 02 Academy (perfectly decent venue) and will be having two stages and 30 bands. Dates are 1st and 2nd of October.

So, I won tickets to this! W00t!

Anyways, here's who have been confirmed so far:

Candlemass, Orange Goblin, Angel Witch, Torche, Raging Speedhorn, Black Spiders, Electric Citizen, Trippy Wicked, Witchsorrow, sergeant Thunderhoof, Ohmms, Limb, Cold in Berlin, Undersmile, Druganaut, Desert Storm, Old Man Lizard, Bong Cauldron, Brule.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Oooh that should be good, if anything for Candlemass/OG/Angel Witch/Torche alone.

[Hellraiser]

Speaking of Candlemass, they're going to release a 4-track EP in celebration of their 30th Anniversary in June via Napalm Records. It will be the first Candlemass release to feature vocalist Mats Leven who is probably most known for his stint with Yngwie Malmsteen in the late 90s as well as the his involvement with Krux and Abstrakt Algebra, two projects founded by Candlemass founder, bandleader and bassist Leif Edling when Candlemass was inactive.

 

Edling, who isn't going to play with Candlemass this year citing health issues as the reason, has started yet another side-project called "Doomsday Kingdom". There is not much known about the project yet but it's by Leif Edling so it has to bee good. Here the announcement:

 

[DFF]

Bloodstock yesterday added: Corrosion of Conformity, Evil Scarecrow, Unearth, Ghost Bath and XII Boar.

The line-up is looking quite healthy now, with a good few bands I'm looking forward to seeing across each day.

[Hellraiser]

The Candlemass EP will be released on June 3rd via Napalm Records and is titled "Death Thy Lover". Tracklist as follows:
01. Death Thy Lover
02. Sleeping Giant
03. Sinister N Sweet
04. The Goose

Also Rage will release their new Album "The Devil Strikes Again" on June 10th via Nuclear Blast Records. It will be the first album to feature new members Marcos Rodriguez (from his own band Soundchaser) on guitar and Vassilios "Lucky" Maniatopoulos (singer of alternative rock band Tri-State Corner and former pupil and drum-tech of former Rage drummer Christos Efthimiadis) on drums. The album was recorded in the fall of last year in several studios including Rodriguez' own "Soundchaser Studios" in Belgium. The Production was handles by bassist/vocalist and bandleader Peter "Peavy "Wagner and Rodriguez. The mixing and mastering was done was done by Dan Swanö who has worked with bands such as Asphyx, Dissection, Hail Of Bullets, Katatonia, Marduk and Opeth in the past. The cover artwork was designed by Karim König.

Tracklist:

CD1

01. The Devil Strikes Again
02. My Way
03. Back On Track
04. The Final Curtain
05. War
06. Ocean Full Of Tears
07. Deaf, Dumb And Blind
08. Spirits Of The Night
09. Times Of Darkness
10. The Dark Side Of The Sun

Bonus CD (2 CD Digipack/3 CD limited Digipack)

01. Bring Me Down
02. Into The Fire
03. Requiem
04. Bravado (RUSH cover)
05. Slave To The Grind (SKID ROW cover)
06. Open Fire (Y&T cover)

Bonus Live CD (3 CD limited Digipack

01. Black In Mind
02. Sent By The Devil
03. End Of All Days
04. Back In Time
05. Down
06. My Way
07. Until I Die
08. Don’t Fear The Winter
09. Higher Than The Sky

The 3 bonus tracks that aren't covers are songs they wrote after they were done writing the initial 10 songs for the album. The live bonus Disc was recorded during one of the recent shows the band played as support for Helloween during their European tour. The band themselves say that this is the hardest album they've done in years. It is also supposed to be more straight-forward and raw then the last few outings with Victor Smolski. The title track and album title are a reference to  the song "Sent By The Devil from the album "Black In Mind" released in 1995.

 

[MalaCloudy Black]

Making their US TV debut..

 

 

 

[GhostMachine]

Can anyone recommend songs I should check out by the following bands, please?

Kamelot

Xandria (Do not recommend the song Nightfall; I've heard it but don't care for it)

Amaranthe

Epica (I've only heard Storm The Sorrow)

Gothminister

And are there any symphonic metal bands I should check out that actually have male lead singers? Or are those rare as hell/limited to death metal bands?

[DFF]

4 hours ago, GhostMachine said:

Can anyone recommend songs I should check out by the following bands, please?

Kamelot

Xandria (Do not recommend the song Nightfall; I've heard it but don't care for it)

Amaranthe

Epica (I've only heard Storm The Sorrow)

Gothminister

And are there any symphonic metal bands I should check out that actually have male lead singers? Or are those rare as hell/limited to death metal bands?

For Amaranthe, a solid starting point would be "Hunger" and "Automatic".

[LUKIE]

I don't know if you would call Turisas Symphonic, but Turisas has a male lead.

Have you checked the Encyclopedia Metallum?