MetalSucks

Back in January, Mayhem announced a tour with some ridiculously awesome support acts, including Ludicra, Krallice, and Tombs; then, in true Mayhem fashion, they cancelled the tour just a couple of weeks later. And I think pretty much everyone had the same reaction: “Ludicra, Krallice, and Tombs should just tour without Mayhem.” Because it was still an incredibly strong bill even without the black metal legends.

Well, hey, guess what? Ludicra are doing just that! They’ve announced the wittily monikered “De-Cancellation Tour 2010,” which will find Krallice doing even more dates than they were scheduled to play with Mayhem, and even has Tombs tagging along for a handful of shows. Various shows will also feature support from a diverse line-up of other kick-ass bands, including Lair of the Minotaur, Slough Feg, Ocean (not The Ocean, but still a great band), and Kowloon Walled City, so I’d say “To hell with Attila.”

Get dates after the jump. And it’s worth noting that Ludicra’s excellent new record, The Tenant, is available now on Profound Lore Records via the label’s website. Sooner or later I’ll try to write something a little more proper about that album, but for now I’ll just say “Buy it.” It has the MS seal of approval.

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An anonymous industry insider close to the Mayhem camp has contacted MetalSucks with the news that the Norwegian black metallers have canceled their tour with Ludicra, Krallice and Tombs. Says the MetalSucks tipster, “I can 100% guarantee that this is true.”

The tour was scheduled to start in New York City on April 7th and wrap up in Los Angeles on April 25th (dates here).

This following last year’s doomed-before-it-even started Blackenedfest Tour. That tour’s original bill featured Mayhem, Marduk, Cephalic Carnage, Cattle Decapitation and Withered. Marduk didn’t make it to the U.S. due to visa issues, and the other three bands dropped off after an all-night argument in Denver. Mayhem finished up the tour alone.

We’ll post more news as this story develops…

Black metal legends Mayhem have announced another North American tour, and while that might be good news in and of itself, I’m actually more excited about their announced support acts for this trek: Ludicra and Krallice. I’ve never seen Ludicra live but I’ve been listening to them a lot as of late, and Krallice put on a truly transcendental show. Even if Mayhem somehow ended up sucking the big one, you’d probably get your money’s worth just from these first two bands alone.

This is gonna be a solid tour. Get dates after the jump…

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Even though metal seems to have (re?)infiltrated the mainstream as of late, I’m still always surprised when I open my NY Times in the morning and see a feature on a metal band. When that feature includes a half a page above-the-fold photo of Immortal, I am outright shocked.

But there they, the chosen visual representation for an article on black metal and, in particular, the black metal symposium that took place at Public Assembly in Brooklyn this past weekend.

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This past weekend was “The Blackened Weekend” here in NYC, a 3-night series of metal shows put on by the same folks behind the Mastodon / Neurosis show a couple of winters back and the Pig Destroyer / Brutal Truth / Repulsion joint this past summer. Krallice headlined Friday’s show with support from Liturgy, Malkuth and Orphan, while Black Anvil teamed up with Skeletonwitch to destroy the very same venue (Brooklyn’s Union Pool) on Saturday night. Last night’s weekend-ending show was the grand poobah of The Blackened Weekend headlined by the grand poobah of doom supergroups, Shrinebuilder. The band put on an energetic show to a packed house at Manhattan’s Le Poisson Rouge — a curious choice of venue for a metal show but by no means a bad one — that, as expected, highlighted elements of all of the band-members’ respective “other” bands in the best possible way.

Friday night’s Krallice show was a rager — Union Pool was packed to the gills and even spawned a moshpit, a rarity for these types of shows. Though I had some difficulty with Krallice’s recent release Dimensional Bleedthrough, the band absolutely smoked live and proved that their show-stealing set at last winter’s Scion Rock Fest wasn’t an anomaly. Check out some fan-filmed footage from right up-front below; I doubt anyone’s going to sit through all 20 minutes, but at least watch a sample or let the audio play in the background while you go about your morning routine. The audio quality is even pretty decent.

-VN

Krallice | NYC @ Union Pool | Friday 13th November 2009 from (((unartig))) on Vimeo.

Friendly reminder: our own Vince Neilstein will be DJing “Heavy Metal Happy Hour” this Friday the 13th at The Arrow Bar in Manhattan (Ave A and 5th St., downstairs). All drinks are 2-for-the-price-of-1 from 6pm-9pm, and Vince will be spinning the best of 2009’s metal offerings. At least for the first two hours, after which he’ll surely break down and start playing Ratt and Skid Row. Come on down and get your drink on, and since your inhibitions will be lowered feel free to tell Vince how much his taste in metal sucks.

Afterwards, there are THREE killer metal shows taking place in NYC. There’s the Krallice/Liturgy joint at Union Pool. Hung are headlining a bill that also includes Ikillya and Devil to Pay at Ace of Clubs. Hecate and The Austerity Program are performing with Rise of Because, Theologian, Chaos Majik and Statiqbloom at S.I.R. studios as part of the two-day Apex Fest III. Yowza! So many choices. But Heavy Metal Happy Hour with Vince is the obvious choice for your early evening activity!

MS Maniac Edward Wilfred is digging the new stuff from NYC black metallers Krallice. Says he:

First I want to thank you guys for turning me on to this band in the first place.  They are definitely one of the greatest black metal bands I have ever listened to. But anyways, they have a new track up on their myspace and apparently a new album is coming out november 10!!!!!  Hurry up and post the news so the rest of the metal world can jizz over the news!!

You’re welcome for the introduction, Edward. But I’m going to have to disagree with your assertion that they are one of the greatest black metal bands ever (“that you’ve listened to”… ok, maybe).

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Photo by Ben Shapiro

With its intertwining, trebly guitar lines, smeary blurs of percussion and peculiar chanted interludes, the debut full-length Renihilation by Brooklyn’s Liturgy was one of this year’s more intriguing black metal releases. In sound, it split the difference between the buzzing rawness of early Ulver and Krallice’s recent experiments (Krallice’s Colin Marston produced the album). And while one could easily be satisfied by the overwhelming, majestic crackle of the “Pure Transcendetal Black Metal” on Renihilation, just as important to the effect is the transcendentalist philosophy of Liturgy’s leader, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix. As you’ll see by Hunt-Hendrix’s answers, graciously composed while the band was on the road, Liturgy is a band consumed by ideas as profound as its music.

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Prior to having my mind blown by Krallice at this past February’s Scion Rock Fest in Atlanta, I’d written off the NYC-based black metal quartet as Hipster Metal. Boy was I wrong. Anton OyVey and I stood in absolute astonishment as a band whose set we’d happened upon out of curiosity completely blew us away and stole the show of the entire day. That their brand new song has premiered on Stereogum doesn’t do much to dispel the “hipster” tag from much of their fanbase, but it doesn’t mean you should pay any less attention to them; Krallice are the real deal and they’re fucking fantastic. Besides which, I’m starting to doubt the very notion of “hipster metal” anyway; what about a band that writes music and lives together in the woods of the Pacific Northwest makes them any more genuine and qualified to write black metal than a band whose members grew up in the rough and tumble concrete jungle of 1980s New York? Both seem like perfectly genuine and inspiring influences to me.

Case in point: the 11-minute title track of their new record Dimensional Bleedthrough, out November 10th on Profound Lore. As Stereogum’s Brandon Stosuy says, “Such fucking riffs!”, and that’s exactly it. For those new to Krallice, the band features Colin Marston of Behold…the Arctopus and Dysrhythmia, Mick Barr of Orthrelm, Bloody Panda’s Lev Weinstein, and now full-time bassist/co-vocalist Nick McMaster. Stream the new track at Stereogum, then come on back here and tell us what you think.

-VN

Dysrhythmia are the Kevin Bacon of metal. The band’s connected to Behold…the Arctopus, Krallice, Spastic Ink and Gorguts within one degree of separation, Cannibal Corpse, Origin, Bloody Panda, The Red Chord, Orthrelm and Watchtower by another. Guitarist Kevin Hufnagel and bassist Colin Marston both have solo projects, and play together in the ambient guitar duo Byla. Try to draw a Dysrhythmia family tree, and you’d end up with a massive tangle of nodes and lines that resembles one of those three-dimensional diagrams of a complex molecule. Converted into notes, it would probably sound like the music on Dysrhythmia’s fifth album, Psychic Maps.

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So I was thinking back to the CMJ Music Marathon here in NYC last fall, and how Bison B.C. seemed to be the “buzz” metal band on everyone’s tongue. If you were there to see them you witnessed something awesome, and if you weren’t there you heard about it from everyone else and felt like a dipshit because you missed it. At the Scion Rock Fest last month in Atlanta the buzz bands were Krallice and Salome, depending on who you asked (there were, after all, four stages running simultaneously). So who’s it gonna be at this year’s SXSW? My bets are on any one of the awesome bands on The End Records / MetalSucks showcase, but your guesses are as good as any.

Here’s a live video of Bison B.C. performing in their native Vancouver. What are the shows you absolutely must see at this year’s hoedown in Austin?

-VN

Axl did such a fine job recapping this past weekend’s Scion Rock Fest that there’s no need for me to reiterate what he already wrote. But even your MS editors part ways once in a while, and while Axl watched the end of Pig Destroyer’s shortened set I headed inside to catch Krallice purely for the curiosity factor. What I saw completely blew my mind and was easily the highlight of the day for me.

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That I’m sitting here in the MetalSucks Mansion this snowy Monday morning has gotta be some kinda heavy metal miracle; as I type this, Anton OyVey, Rob Pasbani from Metal Injection, our friends from BITPOM.com, and a lot of other fine friends are still stranded in Atlanta due to the weather.

And honestly, there are worse towns in which to be stranded. To my shock, not only is the booze in Atlanta shockingly cheap, not only is the purp somehow completely fucking magical, but the city is about as chill as you could hope for. I kinda miss it already.

But enough wistful reminiscing. After the jump, get my thoughts on some of the best bands of Saturday’s totally excellent Scion Rock Fest!

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Though black metal is typically associated with the cold and distant terrain of Scandinavia, its growing ubiquity has lead it to spring up worldwide, including an increasingly rich pocket of it stateside. Though it’s been present here for some time, the last year has been incredibly fruitful for USBM, leading to some of its biggest accomplishments. But a gem even among those accomplishments is the debut full length from Krallice, a Brooklyn, NY-based trio (though now a quartet when playing live) featuring members of Behold… the Arctopus, Dysrythmia and Ocrilim. Though their locale may not be BM friendly (at least not according to the Kvlt unit of the Tr00 police), Krallice manage to churn out some blackened goodness, rich in both old school textures and unique approach to the genre. The album is brilliantly layered, impressively performed, and wonderfully nuanced, giving hope to the black metal faithful that there is still the possibility of success in the genre for those that revere the True Norwegians but also long to strike their own ground. Not bad for the eponymous debut of what was initially labeled as a side project.

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