We’re not exactly sure who’s threatening Gypsyhawk’s good times and why said good times need defending, but we do know this: Gypsyhawk are guaranteed to deliver some good times on their current Defending Good Times Tour.

Gypsyhawk aren’t so much metal as they are rock, but who gives a shit when you’ve got twin guitarmonies this sweet? If you enjoy retro-sounding hard rock / metal like Holy Grail and Cauldron, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy the maximum rockage of Gypsyhawk too. Speaking of those two bands, here’s Gypsyhawk opening for them a couple of weeks back in L.A.:

The Defending Good Times Tour kicked off May 6th in California and is currently winding its way east through the upper midwest before heading back west via the south. Get tour dates after the jump.

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Let’s just pretend that I wrote a clever intro and move directly to the matter at hand, shall we?

So. Despite the order of the band in my headline I am actually going to start with this video Gary Suarez sent us, for “Call to the Warrior” by the band Affiance. Why? Because it’s actually NOT terrible! I mean, clearly some thought went into it, and it’s well-made. It’s actually good enough that it makes me wish I liked the song more. I guess as far as twenty-fifth generation screamo/metalcore acts go, Affiance isn’t bad, but they’re not playing anything you haven’t heard before. I do kinda wonder if the vocalist can really hit those notes or not… if anyone checks out this band live, let me know.

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Nowadays, classic metal seems all the rage — some cool kid told me this while walking to the market — and with MetalSucks doing the whole “Ten Great Bands That Inadvertently Helped Ruin Heavy Metal” thing, I got to thinking: how did metal become metal? We all know the Sabbath/Priest/Zeppelin “who started heavy metal” debate, but what about the in-betweeners that were probably “heavy metal” to my dad’s mom when Pops was just growing that ridiculous mustache and finding out that drinking beer was pretty cool once you got past that taste?

(Okay, full disclosure: I was drinking a beer and cranking UFO while reading the Van Halen story, so there.)

We’ve all known 3 Inches Of Blood for more than a few years at this point, but with the rise of bands like White Wizzard, Holy Grail, the criminally underrated Wolf, Gypsyhawk, RAM, and Cauldron waving the flag for the classic metal sound, I got to thinking about the bands that inspired them. These are groups where you could look back at them and say that they aren’t even definable as “metal” anymore.

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Black Breath – TBD (Southern Lord/Hot Mass)

The band released the 12″ debut EP, Razor To Oblivion, on their own awhile back, but Southern Lord deftly scooped up the crusty hardcore/metal quintet and re-released Razor on CD with news that the debut full-length would hit streets early in 2010. If this thing is soaked in beer, angst, and riffs as much as the four-track debut was, you might be able to put away those Municipal Waste records and toss in Black Breath at that kegger.

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