photo by Daryl Darko Aaron Gregory of Giant Squid wears so many hats that he'd easily clear out a headwear shop. He's a former fish store owner, a student, a scuba diver, a graphic designer, and the guitarist and vocalist of Giant Squid. Gregory and his bandmates, including his partner Jackie Perez Gratz (also of [...]
Primitive Weapons, all photos by Carmelo EspanolaCrustcake, represented by the intrepid Andrew Wilhelm and Van Damned, spent four days in Austin, Texas, at South By Southwest, one of the world's largest, film, interactive and music festivals. Between the two, they saw 49 bands, ate 10 tacos, four slices of pizza, four gyros, three bratwurst, and drank 52 beers, five whiskey and cokes, five rum
I'm trying a new approach for this post. For multi-band events, my posts tend to be very very long, and the time it takes to do seems to make the effort moot, because they publish so far after the fact. So here are photos of some of the bands I took in at SXSW: bad vantage points are why some bands didn't make the cut. Here it is chronologically! Below: 1/2 of Italy's The Secret, Keith Morris of Off! , Easy Action [...]
Oh my fuck, you guys, IT IS 71 DEGREES OUTSIDE. I was gonna stay home and watch Vanilla Ice's underrated cinemetallic classic, Cool as Ice, but instead I am getting stoned and going for a long, long walk in the sun. Quickly, before I ditch you losers to actually enjoy life, here's what we did this week: [...]
Grayceon's recent Profound Lore release, All We Destroy, is an album that's more that worthy of your attention: cellist (!!!)/vocalist Jackie Perez Gratz (who's also a member of Giant Squid, and has played with Agalloch, Om, and a bunch of other killer bands), finger-pickin' guitarist Max Doyle, and a drummer Zack Farwell have created an [...]
Scale the Summit, Trap Them, Weedeater and Omnium Gatherum top the New Releases class of March 1st, 2011. New ones from American Heritage, Bill Steer's Firebird, Grayceon and others also come out this week, making it one of the healthiest new release weeks for metal thus far in 2011. MS New Release Czar Vic Vaughn [...]
One of the best labels in metal today, Profound Lore Records, will be one of the many trying to get their voice heard at the behemoth known as SXSW. With the two shows on March 19 they've recently announced, they demand your full attention.In the day time, they'll be holding it down with Brooklyn Vegan at Lovejoys (which is a great bar any time of year). Profound Lore acts Castevet (pictured
I have been to practically every South by Southwest Music Festival (SXSW) since the second one way back in the '80s. I love the atmosphere of the conference, from its much smaller and humbler days back then, to its over-blown monstrous corporate whoredom current-filled state. But as I have noted here in the past, SXSW [...]
For me, layering metal music with bowed strings has worked more in theory than in practice. However, this track from the new Grayceon album, "Shellmounds," deserves some praise. The whimsical opening isn't just a teaser. It builds evenly, bringing in some jacked up riffs @ 1:49. I think the guitars could even a little louder, but there's still a great mix of energy and melody here. The band's latest album, All We Destroy , is set for a 3/1 release via Profound Lore . [...]
Grayceon's Jackie Perez Gratz auditions for the new Whitesnake video. I'd be super curious to see Grayceon live; as Cosmo Lee points out at Invisible Oranges, since the trio consists of a cellist/vocalist (Jackie Perez Gratz, who's also a member of Giant Squid, and played on Agalloch's Marrow of the Spirit), a guitarist, and a [...]
Grayceon All We Destroy Label – Profound Lore Release Date - March 1, 2011 To quote a Coalesce album title, there is nothing new under the sun. Wait, shit – that was actually a passage from Ecclesiastes. See what I mean? Forty-odd years since metal's birth, it's tough to innovate beyond folding in a genre [...]
by: Frank Godla First Agalloch, and now Grayceon!? Profound Lore, undoubtedly a label I've known for releasing a lot of tunes I'm not a fan of, may be working towards regaining my trust after all. You may remember these guys from previous audio or video podcasts I've done last year, but I know it's been ...
Judgement Day Judgement Day Judgement Day La Fin Du Monde Grayceon ALL PHOTOS HERE [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Judgement Day - Barrage (Acoustic ) from Opus 3: Acoustic (2005) Website [Audio clip: [...]
graphic by Imerr Five years ago in November, string metal juggernauts Judgement Day released their first full-length record entitled Dark Opus . While many other acts have covered traditional metal songs with strings, Judgement Day went out on their own and created a paralyzingly haunting first album of original songs. When I first bought Dark Opus , I had seen them open for atmospheric rock band dredg and space rockers Telescreen out in Hartford, CT over a year ago. Their [...]
Two raucous shows back to back at Annie's Social Club last week; it's hard not to feel bad for the Folsom Street venue's upstairs neighbors. Whore for Satan Productions put together an atypical bill last Wednesday, replacing their usual down-tuned fare with something more high-pitched, and high octane. The ambiance evoked a bygone era, an uneasy time straddling the chasm between bell-bottomed, hedgerow-bustling 70's metal acts and the thrash and sleaze-glam that were to follow by the mid-eighties. Interstitial bands like The Scorpions, Accept, and Saxon prefigured the popularity of these later trends, and the night [...]
Jucifer is the loudest band I've ever seen, which is no mean feat. Despite having only two members and no permanent home base (instead proudly proclaiming themselves "nomadic"), the husband-and-wife team truck around a veritable wall of amplifiers, girding the back of the stage in wattage at every gig. Amber Valentine handles guitar and vocals, while skinsman Edgar Livengood plays drums that look more like cauldrons or industrial cable spools, the better to cut through the fuzz. Underscoring Valentine's elastic, screaming-to-crooning vocals with explosive, digressive doom metal, the pair run roughshod over a dozen genres — the [...]
by theseseans (NYC)This week is ripe with metal in NYC. Tonight at Fontana's you can catch Crustcake favorites Howl for free. Free? Free. As if that wasn't awesome enough, Tonesofdeath.com will be giving out free Colt 45! Delicious. Sunday night the North America Is Doomed tour comes through Webster Hall, while half of Converge shows up to Union Pool in the form of Doomriders and Acid Tiger. Next
by Black Bubblegum DOWNLOAD: Black Kites - "Advancement To Ruins" (MP3) DOWNLOAD: Grayceon - "It Begins, And So It Ends" (MP3) Yob The mighty YOB have revealed details on their upcoming new album for Profound Lore! In a blog post entitled "Tracking And Mixing Is Done", the band offered the following update: [...]
Blame it on the rigors of moving home cities yet again, or changing drummers as frequently as Spinal Tap, or trying to best their universally hailed first album Metridium Field: Giant Squid sound exhausted on The Ichthyologist. More depressed than angry. Not so overtly metal. Lethargic in their rhythms, loose in their playing. Maybe it's [...]
Last Wednesday I wanted to get a massage. I was having a rough week, and thought that it would help relax me. Unfortunately, the place in Studio City where I went last time (for the one and only massage I've ever had) was overbooked. Luckily for me, this past week was one of the most grueling work-weeks - physically - I've ever had. I don't remember having to lift and cary so much since my days as a lowly intern/assistant engineer at Water Music Studios. Today being one of my off-days, I was very much looking forward to a nice, [...]
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