Archive: Features
Heavy Metal Black Friday 2012 Deals Revealed
As Thanksgiving approaches many record labels, bands, and music retailers are already starting up their Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals. Below we have listed those that are available now, and this article will be updated throughout the week as more sales come in, so check back often!
In honor of cyber Monday (but actually available now), PROSTHETIC RECORDS is offering a variety of t-shirts and albums for $5 - $10 from the likes of Beneath the Massacre, All That Remains, Batillus and more. Check out the full list of titles right here. Starting on Friday, November 23rd the Prosthetic Records webstore will also be offering 10% off everything with the code "BF2012."
ROXX RECORDS has an "unblack" sale starting on Thursday with a variety of albums for $4 using code "UNBLACK2013" at the Roxx Productions website here.
Music from Flyleaf, KISS, and various other rock acts will be on sale for $7.99 via THE BLACK FRIDAY FRENZY starting November 23rd.
FACEDOWN RECORDS has already started a full Thanksgiving week sale, with special offers on various albums and merch ranging in price from $1 - $6.99. Check out all the sales at this location, which includes music from War of Ages, Sleeping Giant, and more.
AMAZON.COM is already running online Black Friday sales on hard rock and metal, which rotate on a daily basis. You can check out the full list right here, which currently includes Ill Nino, Queen, Meshuggah, and more.
THE OMEGA ORDER has a variety of albums in differing formats on sale with prices ranging from $2.49 - $9.99 from bands such as Agalloch, Anathema, The 69 Eyes, Immortal, Hortus Animae, and many more. Check out the full listing of albums on sale over here. More...
ProgPower USA XII Wrap-Up
September 14th through the 17th marked the 12th year for the ProgPower USA festival, which has become the United States’ premier multi-day heavy metal festival over that time. I was on site for three of the days, and I've published photos taken during each band’s set. The photos are sorted by the three dates: Kick-Off Day, Day One, and Day Two.
This year, the festival headliner was Therion, backed by the reunited Sanctuary (featuring Warrell Dane and Jim Sheppard of Nevermore,) former Emperor front-man Ihsahn, Swedish melodic titans Evergrey, and 12 other comparable acts: Haken, Powerglove, Vanden Plas, Creation's End, Darkwater, Eldritch, Mob Rules, Voyager, Forbidden, Labyrinth, Red Circuit, and While Heaven Wept. Day-by-day show write-ups of the Kick-Off Day, Day One, and Day Two are also available. During the festival, I got to conduct interviews with Evergrey, Darkwater, Haken, Red Circuit, Powerglove, Creation’s End, and Leprous, which was Ihsahn’s backing band for his US solo project debut.
I'm still relatively young, but I had been longing to attend this mythical annual festival ever since I heard about it in news reports six or seven years ago while attending high school. In that sense, it was an event seven years in the making for me, confirming my faith in metal and opening my eyes to even more bands that I hadn't known about back then. Moreover, where else can you hear top tier musicians discuss other top tier musicians as they walk through the crowd like they hadn't just melted your face on stage an hour before?
It was a weekend to remember, and from what I've heard, next year promises to be just as ass-kicking, with Symphony X and Epica headlining the 2012 roster.
Bruno Fevery Discusses Kyuss Lives!
The era of Kyuss, 1991-1995, produced only four albums, but those albums proved influential enough to crown the band “the fathers of stoner rock.” The group’s vintage amps were ideal for space rock jams and third-eye-expanding psychedelics. Kyuss found the right balance between hard-rocking grooves and mellow, kaleidoscopic slow jams.
Like the title of the group’s second album “Blues for the Red Sun” (1992) suggests, the group also steeped its sound in blues. Vocalist John Garcia sung soulful tones fitting for Delta blues, jazz and even R&B. This album title also described the vibe put forth by these southern California artists. There is certain mellowness, like observing the orange, yellow and blue hues that the sun paints while scraping across the horizon during dusk or dawn.
Kyuss’s sound contained so many features that unsurprisingly caught the ears of so many musicians of the early ‘90s, but one of the greatest attributes remains guitarist Josh Homme’s eclectic style. From his coarse tones to his eccentric use of pedals, Homme’s playing is unmistakable. These guitar tones relay a granular texture that seemed chipped off of one of Joshua Tree’s magnificent rock formations, which may explain the desert rock modifier often bestowed upon the band. Homme’s trademark sound remains true in the band he joined after leaving Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age, although more accessible to the radio crowd. More...
Free Metal Music Recap For March Is Metal
Over the past couple of weeks, we've reported on numerous free label samplers and compilations, not realizing that most have been in appreciation of March Is Metal Month.
EMI Music’s Label Services is bringing metal to the masses with their “March is Metal” campaign with retailers across the US. The retail campaign includes promotions from such legendary labels as Century Media, Nuclear Blast, Earache and Candlelight along with Season of Mist, Willow Tip, Crash Music, Prospect Park and Capitol.
Along with the sampler, which includes tracks from Lacuna Coil, Five Finger Death Punch, Fear Factory, White Wizzard, Ihsahn, Gama Bomb, The Atlas Moth, Queensryche, Exodus and Arsis along with hotly anticipated pre-release tracks from Triptykon and Defeated Sanity, ELS and Caroline will also offer a limited edition T-shirt designed by Rich Hall and the MMM logo will appear on the Testament/ Exodus tour poster as a sponsor for the tour. They also sponsored “Full Metal Texas” at this year’s SXSW.
"EMI Label Services and Caroline Distribution have the privilege of working with the best labels in the Metal genre. The annual 'March is Metal Month' campaign is a platform for us to expose the great repertoire from these partners to both the trade and consumer alike,” stated Dominic Pandiscia SVP / GM of EMI Label Services and Caroline Distribution.
During the month of March, Amazon.com has a nice metal sale in their MP3 store with loads of great albums for download for $6.99
And while we're at it, let's recap the many samplers made available for free download this month. Here are several from Amazon.com, which unfortunately are only available to those in the United States:
Here are a couple more freebies from Amazon.com as a bonus: More...
R.I.P. Dimebag Darrell: Five Years Later
Five years since the death of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, and the world can not forget him. The circumstances in which he and several others died that night have changed the club experience forever; security is tight even in the smallest venues for fear that another deadly attack may occur. After his passing, countless tributes were given in his honor in the form of concerts, cover songs and personal statements from friends and fellow musicians. To add to the long list of tributes, Metal Hammer Magazine’s 200th issue being released on December 16 will include a “Dimebag” Darrell tribute album. Top metal bands such as Evile, Machine Head, Kiuas and Chimaira have come together to cover their favorite Pantera songs for the fifth anniversary of the tragic event. More...
A Journey Of Faith: An Interview With Scott Waters
Boston rock band Aerosmith’s 1976 “Rocks” was a huge seller for the band, one that was highly influential on bands from Metallica to Guns N’ Roses. Rolling Stone magazine put it on their “500 Greatest Albums Of All Time,” and songs “Last Child,” “Back In The Saddle,” and “Home Tonight” are radio staples. There is no doubt that Rocks is one of the essential rock albums of the 1970s.
One day in the mid-90s in New Mexico, Scott Waters, the new vocalist of the Christian thrash metal band Ultimatum, was driving home after a tough day of work. Waters had recently left his old church, Victory of Love, due to its cult-like tendencies, which caused him to throw away hundreds upon hundreds of vinyl, cassettes, and CDs that he had been collecting since the early 1970s.
On this significant day in his life, Waters turned on the radio to the local rock station, ZRock. Maybe it was fate or a higher power calling to him in the form of electronic waves, but “Rocks” began to play and it hit Waters like an icy cold shower after a day at Navajo State National Park. More...
