Earlier this year, Brendan Majewski, one half of Brooklyn’s Orphan, took his own life at the age of thirty-seven. That’s obviously terrible, and there’s never really anything more you can really say about something like that. It’s just horrible. End of story.

And so Krallice, one of the best black metal bands out there right now (and arguably just one of the best bands out there, period), have opted to pay homage to their fallen friend not with words, but, more appropriately, with music — specifically, with Majewski’s music. They’ve recorded a three-song EP of Orphan covers, Orphan of Sickness, which they are giving away for free. You can download it here.

Of course, I’m sure all parties involved would rather have Majewski than this tribute. But if it exposes any new fans to Krallice OR Orphan, well, that’s the closest thing to a silver lining this tragedy is ever going to get. So please check out the EP. It’s Krallice. It’s Orphan. It’s free. Do it.

-AR

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.

Only the most evil scenesters among you have likely heard of Orphan, a two-piece bass n’ drums metal act that reeks of Dale Crover’s coveted ball sweat and the undeniable stench of sulfur. It’s hard for any band these days to achieve maximum exposure by releasing its debut album exclusively on vinyl and limited to an eeeeeevil six hundred and sixty six copies, but that’s precisely what Orphan did with the reckless, sludgetastic Aborted by Birth. Thankfully now available digitally from legal download bodegas on these interwebs, here’s hoping more people will catch on to the awesome. Orphan also put together some groovy Youtube videos of its tracks, many of which can be found here. Check out the one for “Love Is For The Birds” below.

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