I’m not going to do a full, detailed show review of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s headlining gig at at The Music Hall of Williamsburg this past Sunday night because at this point I don’t really know what else to say about the band’s performance that I haven’t already said. They put on one of the most fun live shows of any band out there right now, and they never disappoint — especially at a smallish venue like this one, where security is more likely to let them truly embody the spirit of punk, as they were born to do.

Case in point: for the last two songs of the pre-encore set, “Sunshine the Werewolf” and, of course, “43% Burnt,” Greg Puciato demanded that everyone on the floor get up on the stage… and everyone was only too-happy to oblige him. (And keep in mind that, on top of this, Puciato and Weinman were both already bleeding from their respective heads by this point.) Now, I know this isn’t exactly a new idea — Iggy and The Stooges do it at the end of every show — but that doesn’t make it any less fun/crazy.

Check out video below, courtesy The PRP:

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Photo by Emily Di Frances

A few days before I crossed paths with the big Deftones and Dillinger Escape Plan tour last week, Deftones drummer Abe Cunningham told me that the band has only now emerged from years of intra-band discord and label battles. It kinda blew me away to hear that “it absolutely sucked” to be involved in the making of Saturday Night Wrist, a classic record which seems like the product of a thousand men’s pooled awesomeness, not of five embittered, isolated former friends (plus Bob Ezrin). The live shows from those fractious years gave no clue to their travails, either; they played awesomely killer always. Weird.

Cunningham’s words got me pumped to assess the newly happy, friendy, post-wake up call Deftones. The question: With no one to battle, would their blades grow dull? Does this band thrive on friction like fellow all-time raddest American bands Faith No More and Talking Heads? Are they poker-faced like other ego-rich Yank greats Slayer and Van Halen? Now that they are tight again, would their on-stage fury be sapped of its fuel?

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I was a little skeptical when I first heard about the Amon Amarth two-set tour. Sure, I was excited because, yay, double the Viking fun. Hearing their new album in its entirety, though? I thought that might be a little boring. Not that I have anything against Surtur Rising — no, the opposite in fact. Amon Amarth are the AC/DC of death metal. All their songs are sort of similar, but they’re always fun and always a rollicking good time. It just seemed like overkill.

I quite enjoyed their latest release and I looked forward to an evening with them. Ha–  “An Evening with Amon Amarth.” Because of that title and the rather small venue, I was half expecting a stage of luxurious leather couches and the band coming out in smoking jackets. But that would just defeat the purpose.

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Axl and I went to Rammstein last Thursday at the Meadowlands Arena (now “Izod Center”) in New Jersey, a surprisingly bearable 45-minute public transit ride from Manhattan. Axl had seen Rammstein when they played Madison Square Garden last fall; me, I was a Rammstein noob. I had an inkling of what was in store, but nothing could possibly have prepared me for the spectacle that is a Rammstein show.

So, I think I can speak for Axl too when I present to you my thoughts on the show:

FIRE!

FIRE! (starts at 1:10… then be patient):

After the jump, guess what? More FIRE!

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The most important thing you need to know about an Insane Clown Posse show is that the band (can we even call them a band?) have an entire crew on tour with them — maybe 3 or 4 dudes — whose sole job it is to make sure Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent Jay have several 2 liter bottles of Faygo on stage within arm’s reach at all times. These guys — let’s call them Faygo Stocker Dudes — are essentially the equivalent of guitar and drum techs; with the absence of any real instruments, Faygo essentially IS the instrument, the crucial element of an ICP show. At pre-determined climactic moments, the Faygo Stocker Dudes themselves join in with the soda-spraying madness and drench the audience in diet root beer along with ICP.

That gigantic semi trailer parked outside the venue? No instruments, no stage props, no scrims… JUST FAYGO. Thousands of 2-liter bottles of the stuff. All diet root beer, natch.

Oh, and every wall and speaker cabinet in the entire venue was wrapped in soda-repelling plastic.

Does that set the stage for what I witnessed last Friday in NYC?

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I go to a lot of shows. Like, a LOT — hundreds a year, thanks to my propensity for touring for months on end, traveling to festivals, and just going to gigs at home or elsewhere. I get burnt out sometimes, but invariably I find myself down front (or at least by the bar) several times a week. These past few days were a bit more ridiculous than usual, given that I was bouncing from the Netherlands to the UK to Ireland within the space of a week. I still managed to catch some amazing performances, though, several of whom that once again reaffirmed my firmly-held conviction that live music is the lifesblood of the metal scene.

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Okay so I know we’ve just about run this Big 4 shit into the ground this week, but this is so priceless I just had to share it.

My friend, who we will refer to here only as M.A., lives in Los Angeles, and is not a metalhead. But her boyfriend is — or, at least, he’s a fan of certain bands from a certain era — and so it was with some curiosity that she accompanied him this past weekend to the Big 4 show in California.

So I shot her an e-mail this morning to see how she liked the show. What follows is her response. As metal fan, you will most certainly appreciate all her observations about the show:

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Avenged Sevenfold and Vinnie Paul, “Mouth For War”

Matt Cerone over at MetsBlog.com does these daily “the least you should know” wrap-ups after every game, which this season have essentially all boiled down to “they sucked.” In that spirit, here’s an abbreviated report from the Revolver Golden Gods Awards in L.A., which Axl and I had the privilege of attending and which, unlike the Mets, most definitely did not suck. We had a rip-roaring good time and got rip-roaringly drunk before realizing that oh yeah, this is L.A. and you have to fucking drive home. What a nightly buzzkill, literally! Thanks, Axl, for driving my drunk ass home.

The least you should know about the 2011 Revolver Golden Gods Awards before we have time to properly recap the event:

• Avenged Sevenfold were easily the most popular band there; most kids at the show were wearing their shirts. Their performance was fantastic and even converted a few industry non-believers I spoke with; in addition to a “hit and run” set of the band’s most popular songs, they played “It’s So Easy” with Duff McKagan and “Mouth For War” with Vinnie Paul (video above).
• Alice Cooper played very early in the night but rocked nonetheless. (video after the jump)
• Vince Neil: not sober.
• Asking Alexandria frontman: definitely not sober yet. Lost his mic under the drum riser 10 seconds into “Youth Gone Wild” with Sebastian Bach (video after the jump).
• Sebastian Bach: still awesome.
• Sebatian Bach to Dave Grohl, upon running into him backstage: “Hey! Dave Grohl!” [hugs]
• Rammstein vocalist Till Lindemann was hilariously hitting on every woman in sight, including L.A. metal sorta-celeb Metal Sanaz.
• Other backstage celeb sightings: Dino Cazares (who Tweeted “where’s the baby?” at us), Dave Navarro (who still looks 20 years old), Rob Zombie, Alan Robert of Life of Agony (mega-cool dude), Taylor Momsen, Pat Smear, Taylor Hawkins, Sasha Grey, Jenna Haze, Steven Adler, dude from Puddle of Mudd, William fucking Shatner, the ghost of Dime.
• Black Veil Brides winning “Best New Band.” Lulz!

Fun videos after the jump! More extensive coverage coming soon.

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Photos by Robert Bejil

It’s weird. Mention Periphery to any person on the street and they’ll think nothing of it. But speak their name to those who know, and it’s like you just dropped “Jeezy” at an As I Lay Dying concert. Periphery have become a huge band in the warped little snow globe of the metal landscape.

As a person who’s listened as the sextet has grown and evolved, and go through singers like cheez balls, seeing them live was an experience that I was far overdue to have. I had my chance about a week ago when the group ventured over to Hartford Connecticut’s Webster Theater supporting Fair to Midland along with Scale the Summit [Alas, they have since dropped off the tour. -Ed.]. The evening turned out to be a proggy feast I won’t soon forget.

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In case it isn’t readily apparent from the giant logo in the lower right hand corner, we “borrowed” this photo of the gig from Prefix.

I’ve never met anyone that outright hated Motorhead. There are people who are indifferent or don’t really like them, but full-on vitriol-spewing hate? Nuh-uh. Motorhead are amazing and wonderful and remind me why I love metal. I’m sure nay-sayers exist, and I pity them, for they have no joy in their cold, hard hearts. I, however, delight in gruff dirty rock n’ roll played really, really fast, and so I was psyched to see them live.

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Hardcore has been through a considerable evolution since the emblematic 1980s, with most of the contemporary acts operating under that banner sounding poles apart from progenitors like Black Flag or Minor Threat. So it’s a testament to the state of this music that Queens, New York natives Sick Of It All has managed to stay together–recording and touring–for twenty-five long years without stagnating. Though considered part of a “second wave” of NYHC that followed Agnostic Front and Cro-Mags, the quartet’s discography touches on punky, metallic, and even poppy iterations of hardcore, which has lent to their continued appeal to an inter-generational fanbase, visible and vocal at this hometown 25th anniversary celebration, held at a predictably sold-out Webster Hall.

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I never used to “get” Volbeat. I’d tried listening to their albums after multiple friends had recommended them and I’d been pounded in the head with their music by constant spins on WSOU… but nothing registered, like an old man trying to pop a woody in the sack despite the presence of the hottest young piece of ass you ever did see. “I used to be like you,” someone recently told me. “Until I saw them live.” She then proceded to make a pretty impassioned plea, the kind I’ve occasionally found myself making when I’m trying to convince a friend of something I just know they’ll like.

So I gave her the benefit of the doubt and went to see Volbeat live in NYC last week on the first date of their U.S. tour. And now totally I get it.

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[Read my recaps of Day One, Day Two and Day Three. -Ed.]

No Austin excursion for me and Kip is complete without another round of savory, tasty meat courtesy the Salt Lick, but due to our inability to find a ride out to Driftwood we had to get our BBQ on elsewhere. Rudy’s just outside of town came highly recommended by this trusted guy, so we piled into two cabs and headed out to… a gas station.

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[Read my recaps of Day One and Day Two. -Ed.]

The always-wise Antonin Skullia Esq. said to me on Friday that there’s no such thing as a “first annual,” just a “first ever.” Indeed. So please don’t think I’m gloating when I say that the first ever MetalSucks SXSW event South by South Death was a big success and surely worthy of creating a “second annual.” Meek is Murder, Wormrot, Red Fang, Havok and Kvelertak teamed up for for an excellent day of headbanging, beer-swilling, and sweaty, dirty metal in the cramped punk-rock confines of Headhunters.

And for the night-cap, the definitive most metal of non-metal bands: Chrome-E-Oh. Ohhhhh ohhh!

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[Read my Day One recap here. -Ed.]

If Kvelertak aren’t rich men by the time they release their next album they’ll have seriously blown it. Based solely on the power of their incredible live performances at SXSW, the first of which took place Thursday afternoon inside Emo’s at the annual MS-sponsored Full Metal Texas event, these six Norwegians had major U.S. record labels drooling, kissing the ground they walk on, drinking their piss, shoveling poop down their own throats and throwing gobs of money at them. Expect a major bidding war to erupt over Kvelertak; it’ll be interesting to see where their next album lands. But the truth is, it’s all deserved; Kvelertak RIPPED. Video after the jump!

Day 2 of SXSW also featured the live debut of T.R.A.M., an improvizational jazz/metal supergroup featuring Animals as Leaders’ Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes, Suicidal Tendencies drummer Eric Moore, and former Mars Volta saxophone player Adrian Terrazas at the WSOU showcase (along with Ultrageist and Meek is Murder). We also caught performances by Goes Cube, Yob and The Red Chord at Full Metal Texas.

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Kip W. and I arrived in Austin, TX the night of Tuesday, March 15th. We’ve never flown in before Wednesday, the official start of the music portion of the festival, but that we felt compelled to be there for all of Wednesday’s day-time activities speaks to the volume of metal at this year’s festival. It was amazing and even overwhelming at times, but too much metal is never a bad problem to have. After a tasty burger at the Jackalope and some delicious but incredibly spicy chicken-wings that would leave our arseholes tingling the following morning, we headed to bed to rest up for the madness to follow. Sleeping is metal. Kip’s righteous snore is definitely not metal, but thank Odin for earplugs.

There was a lot of action on the first day of SXSW: face-punching hardcore via the Brooklyn Vegan day party, a ripping set by recent Ironclad signees Turbid North, and of course the MetalSucks-sponsored Sumerian Records showcase featuring Animals as Leaders, Veil of Maya, The Faceless and more. There was even the somewhat odd but nonetheless fun sight of watching Phil Anselmo play a guitar in his old-school hardcore project Arson Anthem. Deetz and videos after the jump.

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Melvins’ January 28 show in Los Angeles was a victory lap within a victory lap. It was Stoner Witch night, the final installment of a month-long residency that found the still-relevant, still mindfucking metal crew play a different Melvins album in its entirety each night. It was also a high-profile sendoff to the outgoing Spaceland Productions, which announced they would cede the venue to new management and a new name (The Satellite) not long after King Buzzo and bassist Jared Warren banged their respective ‘fros for the last time.

The short first set was business as usual, including a helping of tunes from their 2010 chart-bottoming album The Bride Screamed Murder, and a killer sludgification of Flipper’s “Sacrifice,” committed to tape on Melvins’ 1992 platter Lysol. The place was packed and sweaty long before intermission hit, and it only got more so once Warren re-entered to begin the bassline to “Lividity,” Stoner Witch’s final track. My girlfriend opted to avoid heat exhaustion and moved upstairs to watch the festivities from behind a glass wall.

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The change was imperceptible to those not paying attention. The rugged MF Doom-dominated hip-hop soundtrack that had prevailed in-between opening sets shifted abruptly as the opening squall of The Afghan Whigs’ “Honky’s Ladder” unexpectedly burst from above, signaling the imminent onstage arrival of Baltimore’s Trapped Under Ice. Members milled about onstage giving the gear last minute strums and bangs as Greg Dulli’s menacing lyrics poured from Santos Party House’s booming PA system. The crowd, most of whom in 1996 would have been watching Barney And Friends rather than appreciating the raucous yet soulful sounds of the Whigs, hardly seemed to notice. During the final minute of the song, frontman Justice Tripp emerged, goading audience to move up and fill the wide-open space near the front of the stage.

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You know how sometimes you will get completely obsessed with a band, and you’re all “ZOMG CANNOT STOP LISTENING TO THEM!!!”? That is how I am right now with THE ACACIA STRAIN — I probably listen to Wormwood at least three times a day, and when I’m not listening to it, I am singing it in my head.

It’s always awesome to get the chance to see a band when you are at the peak of being into them, so I was very stoked to check out the DEATHCORE ACROSS AMERICA tour when it rolled through my town the other day: I Declare War, Whitechapel, Veil of Maya and The Acacia Strain = YOU’RE FUCKING MOSHING! I also got a chance to chat with TAS bassist Jack Strong [mirin that name, sounds alpha as fuck].

In this post I will share the three reasons why TAS is my favorite band at the moment, as well as a few words from Jack to support my points: 1. Their diverse fanbase 2. They are punk 3. Last but not least, TAS are fucking heavy as fuck.

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Earlier this month I caught Eluveitie, Holy Grail and System Divide at NYC’s Gramercy Theater at the beginning of their month-long North American trek [check Eluveitie's tour blogs]. Unfortunately 3 Inches of Blood were trapped in Cleveland (the horror!) due to van problems, so I was bummed to learn I wouldn’t be catching them on this day… but no matter, I’ve seen their rockage before and I’m sure they’ll be back again. Eluveitie reminded me of what folk metal is like when it’s done exceedingly well, Holy Grail lived up to my expectations of having lots of shred and lots of hair, and System Divide… well, uh, they were there too.

After the jump, further thoughts on all three bands, and plenty of photos from the show.

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