Jerry Garcia during a recent live performance.

Jerry Garcia died sixteen years ago today from being an overweight drug addict, and the anniversary interests me mostly because I remember exactly where I was when I heard that Garcia was dead, and, holy shit, I can’t believe it was sixteen years ago.

But Shadows Fall front man Brian Fair is an actual Grateful Dead fan. And so he has commemorated Garcia’s death not by pining for his youth (and possibly scarfing down a tub of Cherry Garcia, Cathy-style), but, rather, by writing a guest blog for our friends over at Metal Insider, in which he basically seeks to answer this question: “Why should metal fans give a poo about Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead?”

Here’s a sample:

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Shadows Fall’s Paul Romanko: Still without a side project of his own.

So two of the three current Shadows Fall-related side projects both released new music yesterday, and despite the fact that it is not particularly fair to either band, I am lumping these two projects into one post for the sake of my own comfort and convenience. My apologies to all parties involved.

And so…

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Back in 2008, legendary metalcore pioneers Overcast — who went on to be in a couple ofsmaller bands you may have heard of, like Shadows Fall and Killswitch Engage — got back together to re-record some old tunes for a collection called Reborn to Kill Again. When that album was released, I interviewed vocalist Brian Fair (also of the aforementioned Shadows Fall), and I asked him if Overcast might ever write some new music together. His answer?

“We’ve actually talked about it because Pete [Cortese, guitarist] and Mike [D'Antonio, bassist] definitely have ideas for songs. We just have to make sure that they’re Overcast songs, you know? And not just a Pete song. Like I said, it has to be tuned to E and there has to be a mosh part that goes nowhere and there has to be random time changes for no reason. All those things have to be there in order to make it an Overcast song. We’re definitely not opposed to [writing and recording new material]. It may or may not happen, it depends on if the songs are quality.”

Well, I guess somewhere along the way these dudes either decided that these songs are not “Overcast songs,” or otherwise decided that it just wasn’t Overcast without guitarist Scott McCooe and drummer Jay Fitzgerald, or, uh, something else — because the band’s three most famous alumni (In case you’re dumb: D’Antonio went on to join KsE, Cortese went on to join Seemless) are now reuniting to form a new band called Death Ray Vision.

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And I don’t mean that they literally killed someone.

What The Shads did do is slay  – in the figurative, idiomatic sense of the word — a gimongous (15,000 people) audience in the Philippines last year, and filmed and recorded the event to boot. The result will be Madness in Manila, a new DVD/CD set the band is releasing on October 26.

Noisecreep is offering the first taste of the Madness in the form of a stream of “A Public Execution,” the studio version of which originally appeared on last year’s Retribution.

As for the quality? It’s Shadows Fall! On a bad day, these dudes still rip, and this recording doesn’t sound like they were having a bad day. I can just see Brian Fair’s windmilling dreads in my mind’s eye. It’s making me realize I haven’t seen these guys live in too long. Sad for me.

Check out the live version of “A Public Execution” here. You can pre-order Madness in Manila here.

-AR

The big beef on the Webernets this weekend concerned a Twitter fight between Shadows Fall frontman Brian Fair and All That Remains frontman Phil Labonte over the latter’s girlfriend. Yup, a Twitter fight. In the end it can most likely be chalked up to a bunch of drunks quibbling, but it sure is funny! Have a look at the Twitter war play by play over at Metal Injection.

Turns out All That Remains have a new video too, for the track “Forever in Your Hands.” I’ve been over All That Remains since the first time I saw them live and realized Labonte couldn’t touch those high notes he hits on record with the assistance of ProTools. Not that I was ever really into the band in the first place. But, ya know, some of you may dig this band… so here’s the video, which features cameos by God Forbid’s Byron Davis, Killswitch’s Adam D. and others.

-VN

Look how angry Brian Fair is in that photo. Grrrrr. That’s his metal face. Not to be fucked with.

In reality, though, Brian is actually a pretty chill dude. Seriously. Would an angry monster give away free shit over Twitter? Of course not. But Brian is. Says the Shadows Fall front man himself:

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Those in the NYC area, pay close attention: TONIGHT, there is a very, very special MetalSucks co-sponsored Tones of Death show going down at Fontana’s in Manhattan. Observe:

• Black Anvil CD release party (download “Margin For Terror” for free here)
• MetalSucks local faves The Binary Code are opening.
• Special guest DJ is Brian Fair from Shadows Fall
• There is a super-awesome, super-secret special guest band giving a surprise performance. We can’t tell you who this super-secret special guest is, but we promise you that you’ll be very, very sorry if you miss this opportunity.
• THE SHOW IS FREE!
• There will very likely be free alcohol of some kind.

See? The madness starts at 8pm, and the show is 21+. See you there!

To many fans around the world, Brian Fair is known as the charismatic front man for Shadows Fall, one of the most successful metal bands of their generation. What younger fans might not realize is that Fair actually got his start as the singer of Massachusetts metalcore pioneers Overcast. Every subgenre of metal has an Overcast – a band that splits up before they really hit it big, and whose members go on to form other, better-known acts. (In Overcast’s case, besides Fair’s joining of the Shads, guitarist Pete Cortese went on to form Seemless, while bassist Mike D’Antonio currently plays with some band called Killswitch Engage.)

Of course, the newfound celebrity of Overcast’s members didn’t dampen old fans’ desire to hear their music – or new fans’ curiosity about how some of their favorite musicians got their start. But before disbanding in 1998, Overcast had only released a small handful of recordings on tiny independent labels, making anything other than low-quality bootlegs incredibly difficult to track down.

With that in mind, the band recently released the appropriately titled Reborn to Kill Again (Metal Blade), an Adam D. produced collection of re-recorded classic and several new songs. I recently had the opportunity to chat with Fair about getting Overcast back together again, re-thinking the band’s old material after all these years, and the possible future of the band. And, oh yeah, he was even cool enough to give me a quick update on the status of the new Shadows Fall album. Check out the full transcript after the jump.

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Metal Blade has signed infamous Massholes, Overcast. Overcast are of some interest because their singer, Brian Fair, went on to front a little band you may have heard of called Shadows Fall, while their bassist, Mike D’Antonio, eventually joined some group called Killswitch Engage (the band’s other members, presumably, went on to get day jobs). That makes Overcast one of those bands that is kind of a retroactive supergroup, like the line-up of Megadeth that had Kerry King for all of ten seconds, or one of those glam bands like London or Hollywood Rose, whose various members went on to form Motley Crue, GN’R, and L.A. Guns.

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