Unfortunately…you’ll have to click this link to see it. It’s only available in the UK currently, and if you live in the States, you’ll have to watch it on Rolling Stone’s website (which is where that link takes you too. You can send us letters of thanks right after you read this).
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We’ve got some words from TBDM’s frontman Trevor Strnad regarding the upcoming The Black Dahlia Murder album (interview taken from KaaosTV). Please see below…
“The writing was still taken care of Ryan [Knight] and Brian [Eschbach] — the guitar players. It was split pretty much 50/50 — pretty much like ‘Ritual’ [2011] was; half the songs by Ryan, half the songs by Brian. I think what Max [Lavelle, bass] brought to this record is a really, really crushing bass sound that’s a little bit new for us, like a little bit more overdriven and distorted and it’s really energetic and heavy as fuck. And Max killed it in the studio; he did great.
[New drummer] Alan [Cassidy] also did great. He didn’t really have as much time to study the songs, because he came into the band so quickly, you know what I mean?! We needed him to come on tour with us to take Shannon’s [Lucas] place, and things worked out so great with him that we asked him to stay. But he had to learn the songs for the album really fast. He was at home in Wyoming playing drums for 10 hours a day, he said, getting prepared for the album. He brought a lot to the drums; he’s a got a really awesome style, I think his fills are bit more busy than Shannon’s. I think that there’s gonna be some stuff that makes him really stand out and will get people excited about him. ‘Cause I know right now people are, like, ‘Wow, they suffered a huge loss, losing Shannon.’ Shannon is a great drummer, definitely, but he’s gonna like what Alan has done on this record, too; it’s really impressive stuff and I definitely feel like we found the right guy for the band. So his playing is exciting and people are gonna take notice, for sure, as soon as that record drops. And I’m excited to get it out for that reason, you know — to kind of say to everyone, ‘We’re back.’
think. The biggest change for me, writing ‘Ritual’, was having more surprises in the songs and more dynamics — buildups, some quiet parts, samples, different kinds of instruments incorporated into the album. That has all carried over to this new one. And better solos, more solos, more time to solo. Ryan’s guitar work on this album is mindblowing. He shocks us, pretty much, every time we come back to do an album with what he’s learned and he really sets the bar high for himself. So there’s definitely some fretboard fireworks on this one. I don’t know, man. People that liked ‘Ritual’, I think they’re gonna love the new one; it’s just us taking it further — darker music, more melody…. The melody that was really prevalent in ‘Ritual’ is there. But there’s also some heavy stuff, too — some slow, Morbid Angel-esque kind of slimy stuff. So I think people are gonna be really happy with it… [It’s[ a good mixture of all things Dahlia. We [wanted to] keep it kind of raw with the mix — not too polished. Keep things sounding ‘real’ — like ‘Ritual’ was; I think that was a good move.”
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Gotta love that bass. And maybe turn that piano down just a WEE bit.
Maybe it’s just me, but it kinda sounds like if Tosin Abasi went to the bass guitar and was like “…you’re mine now.”
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Even though this is live, it’s pretty damn good quality. Definitely digging this, and it’s about due time for After The Burial to come out with a new album so…perhaps this is a moment of foreshadowing for the band. This song is called “A Wolf Amongst Ravens.”
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Definitely shouldn’t have watched this music video while eating my after-work sandwich…
If you’d like to see the lyrics for “Feeding Frenzy,” check out the lyric video we posted about a while back!
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Physics Engage.
Apparently, National Geographic, yes, THE National Geographic magazine, has published an article that dives into the science behind mosh pits! Check it out below, or click here to go to the NG site.
Parents may never understand their rock ‘n’ roll loving children, but scientists might. A study published online in arXiv this week seeks to explain the “mosh pit”—using physics.
To most scientists, heavy metal refers to elements on the lower end of the periodic table. But to Jesse Silverberg and Matt Bierbaum, doctoral students at Cornell University’s department of Condensed Matter Physics, the aggressive music—and the violent dancing that accompanies it—could be a key to understanding extreme situations such as riots and panicked responses to disasters.
For the past two years, Silverberg and Bierbaum have studied “moshing,” at heavy metal concerts, using theories of collective motion and the physical properties of gasses to better understand the chaos of metal fans’ dancing.
Moshing, for those who have never attended a heavy metal show, is a form of dancing in which participants bump, jostle, and slam into one another. It’s a form of social ritual that anthropologists have likened to spirit possession in its uncontrolled, dynamic, and often violent nature.
Silverberg and Bierbaum say it can also be understood by applying models of gaseous particles. As these particles float in groups, they too run, bash, and slam into each other, sending the elements flying in chaotic patterns.
“We are interested in how humans behave in similar excited states,” said Silverberg, “but it’s not exactly ethical to start a riot for research.”
Extreme Physics
Mosh pits provided the scientists with a way to observe excited collective movement without causing undue injury or death. Analyzing hours of recorded footage from concerts and making multiple field trips to music clubs, Silverberg and Bierbaum recognized the particulate physical patterns in the mosh pit.
Further, they differentiated two distinct forms of heavy metal dancing: the “mosh pit” itself, which follows the gaseous pattern, and the “circle pit” (where dancers run, smash, and dance in a circular rotation) within it, which adheres to a vortex pattern of particulate behavior.
Based on these observations, they created an interactive computer model depicting the behavior.
Animal Instincts
“Herd animals behave in very similar spirit—what physicists call ‘flocking’ behavior,” said Bierbaum.
As with groups of flying birds or schooling fish, simple rules can be applied to individuals in large groups—like moshers—to understand what seems to be very complex behavior. This makes modeling possible, allowing computers to re-create immense numbers of actions in a matter of seconds. These models can then be used to design spaces that would minimize trampling or injury, or to tailor responses to disasters like fires.
“The lessons we’ve learned in mosh pits [could be used] to build better stadiums, or movie theaters,” Silverberg said.
James Sethna, one of the researchers’ advising professors, hastened to add that his students’ forays into heavy metal science “didn’t start out for reasons of creating safer stadiums. We did it because it was cool and we wanted to know if we could explain human behavior—albeit slightly intoxicated behavior—without having to use complex [models].”
A longtime heavy metal fan himself, Silverberg shared which band produced the best results: “Killswitch Engage … always gets the crowd nuts. Although of course everyone has their own favorites.”
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Whoa. Why was Duce still in the band for such a long time then?
The answers are below, via Machine Head frontman Rob Flynn’s blog:
“As much as I do not want to write this journal, I promised you I’d write them “at least once a week”. Good, bad, happy or sad… so this is what has to be done. 2-11-13. That is the date we fired Adam Duce. That is the day that I had to tell Adam that after 21 years of being in a band together, I just couldn’t take it anymore.
That is the day I said “My hope is that this can be amicable.” The words sounded like someone else had spoken them. It was like being outside of my body watching someone else deliver these painful words. But, it was me saying it. And we all said it.
We had our say sitting in our jam room in Oakland. Dave said it. Joseph (our manager) said it. Phil said it. We all said that we couldn’t take being in a band with him anymore. That if this didn’t happen, we were going to break up the band. It was hard. One of the hardest moments of my life. It was also a long time coming. We may have fired Adam on 2-11-13, but Adam quit Machine Head well over a decade ago. He just never bothered to tell anyone… but we all knew it.
Contrary to popular belief, being in a band is tough. Really fucking tough. It’s the toughest sonofabitch you’ll ever come across in your life and it will beat the living shit out of you 80% of the time. Many times it feels like one big rollercoaster, the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. There are wins and losses seemingly every single day. Being in a band is one of life’s strangest gambles.
But when you do win, when you win that 20%, well… it truly is salvation. It’s what makes eating the other 80% of that shit-sandwich bearable. It’s where “those” stories come from. It can be the best job you’ll ever have and unquestionably one of the hardest you’ll ever have. But until you’ve done it for 20+ years, you have no clue. Until you’ve held a band together for 20+ years, you really don’t know jack shit about it.
You think you do.
You don’t.
A band is a dysfunctional family. A brotherhood, a family business, and a renaissance-era-court. You’re room-mates in studio-apartment-on-wheels for years-at-a-time, 24-hours-a-day. Plus you’re in the pressure cooker of the spotlight, every move analyzed, read into, or attacked. Everybody wants something from you, everybody wants to be your friend, everybody loves you, everybody can do so-much-better-for-you-than-the-people-you-have-now. Some people try and turn you against each other, and everyone wants to take credit for your success.
Often time you’re enemies. At odds and fighting about something, but “pretending” everything is “fine” onstage.
But it isn’t…
You just wear a mask that looks like it’s fine, and after 20 years, we know that mask so well, it slides on way too fuckin’ easy.
Adam hasn’t been happy in this band for a long time. But how do you leave? To a guy like Adam everything is either winning or losing. A stunning victory or the ultimate failure. There was no in-between. And while that sounds great for a TV show or an interview-sound-bite, or even a John Wayne movie that wraps up in 90 minutes… life just isn’t like that.
And life certainly isn’t like that for a band like Machine Head. A band who operate in the upper-middle-tier. For us, there are no stunning victories, only respectable wins. No ultimate failures, just better-luck-next-times. We carved a niche, we OWN that niche, but it’s still just a niche. Nothing wrong with that.
No matter how un-happy or fed up he got, quitting the band would be seen as “losing” or a “failure”. Truth be told, he was sick of it. Sick of touring, sick of recording, sick of practicing, sick of looking at album artwork, sick of being-on-a-team-but-never-getting-the-ball, sick of yearning-for-the-honeymoon-to-resume when 20 years deep it never does. Sick of never quite hitting the big-time, sick of carving the niche… sick of caring.
I don’t blame him. It’s hard to keep the passion.
But he just wouldn’t quit.
We wanted him to quit. We were hoping he would quit, “guys, my heart isn’t in this anymore, it was a good run, later dayz”. We didn’t want it to come to this…
But he wouldn’t.
I didn’t feel anything as I drove away from the jam room that night. When I awoke the next morning I didn’t feel anything either. I wasn’t “numb,” I still “felt”, was just kinda blank. But three days after the meeting, an argument broke out in the jam room about how conflicted I felt about it. Then I cried.
I cried and cried.
I’ve cried every day since. I’ve been an emotional wreck. I cried writing this. I was sick the day that we announced it (11 days and 2 General Journals after actually doing it), walking around about to vomit for hours.
I met with him for a couple hours last Wednesday, met with him yesterday. It’s civil.
I don’t know what else to say.
I don’t have some inspirational quote to end with here. I’m not gonna sit here and tell you everything is gonna be all right, or that’s it gonna be the same. At this moment I can’t even bring myself to say that it’s going to be better.
Why?
Because it sucks.
It fucking sucks.
It sucks for everyone who tried to save this.
It sucks more than you can imagine…
It’s a horrible relief.”
Yay for emotions in metal.
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Check out this interview with Michael Keene of The Faceless! (we found it at LA Weekly, credit goes to Jason Roche for conducting the interview)
When music from Los Angeles metal group The Faceless’ newest album, Autotheism, began to leak out into the blogosphere last summer, fans were divided, and so were critics. “A botched experiment of sorts,” opined SputnikMusic.com; “razor sharp,” countered ThePRP.com.
The group’s previous work, 2008’s Planetary Duality, had gained near-universal accolades for its impressive display of death-metal brutality, anchored by the dizzying guitar work of Eagle Rock native and band co-founder Michael Keene. Their fan base grew through their venerated live show, as well as high-profile tours with acts like Lamb of God and Meshuggah.
But Autotheism, their third album, ushered in some changes. While a few of its tracks have the blastbeat drumming, death-metal riffage and death barks (courtesy of new lead vocalist Geoffrey Ficco) for which the group is known, the rest of Autotheism has a progressive-rock flavor, loaded with bursting, melodic flourishes.
Keene, meanwhile, has increased his own vocal presence, with a clean delivery that at times recalls Mike Patton during his Faith No More days.
Considering that heavy-metal fans are notoriously resistant to change — after all, it was a major controversy in 1996 when the members of Metallica simply got haircuts — it’s perhaps not surprising that folks got worked up.
“I knew that was going to happen,” Keene explains, over lunch at the Brite Spot in Echo Park. In general, he seems like a pretty relaxed guy, not easily ruffled. “There are people that wanted another Planetary Duality. I think that’s strange. Why would you want the same record again? That record’s there. Why don’t you just listen to that one if that’s all you want?”
If the change in the group’s sound seemed sudden to some, Keene traces his ambition for the work back to the 2003 formation of The Faceless.
“There are a lot of things fulfilled on Autotheism that I wanted to explore earlier, but I maybe wasn’t comfortable taking those risks then,” he says, noting that he was 17 at the time. “My ambitions at that point were slightly more inside the box, but as the band developed and we achieved success, I felt more free to experiment and try more off-center things. My idea for what the band was going to be is fulfilling itself now.”
Still, despite the aspects of Autotheism that suggest otherwise, “At its core, The Faceless will always be a death-metal band,” Keene insists. “I would say we are more on the proggy side, but there will always be brutality in there somewhere.”
He’s already begun writing the group’s next album, making one wonder: Where is their work going to go from here?
“It’s pretty eclectic. Some of the stuff is really technical metal, but some of it is really jazz-influenced stuff. I don’t know how to fit it all in and make it The Faceless yet, but I’m going to.”
In the meantime, he’s flexing different musical muscles — quite a few — through another project The Faceless will release later this year: an album of covers and remixes. Tracks will include versions of David Bowie’s “As the World Falls Down,” from Labyrinth, and Nine Inch Nails’ “March of the Pigs.” Beyond that, industrial artists will be remixing some of Keene’s band’s tracks.
Will it inspire come confusion, and maybe even some hostility? Quite possibly. Will Keene be able to gracefully shrug it off? Most definitely.
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Here’s the latest statement from Slayer about the feud between ex(?) Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo and the rest of the famous band.
“Slayer confirms that Jon Dette will drum for the band on its Australian tour that starts this Saturday, February 23 in Brisbane. As regards Dave Lombardo‘s Facebook post, Slayer does not agree with Mr. Lombardo‘s substance or the timeline of the events, except to acknowledge that Mr. Lombardo came to the band less than a week before their scheduled departure for Australia to present an entirely new set of terms for his engagement that were contrary to those that had been previously agreed upon.
“The band was unable to reach an agreement on these new demands in the short amount of time available prior to leaving for Australia. There is more to the account than what Mr. Lombardo has offered, but out of respect to him, Slayer will not be commenting further. Slayer is grateful to its Australian fans for their understanding of this unfortunate last-minute change, and very much looks forward to seeing them at these shows.”
Who’s gonna fill that throne?
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Here’s the statement from Machine Head about splitting with bassist Adam Duce. Duce has been with the band since its formation. Ouch…
“Machine Head and bassist Adam Duce have parted ways. The split is amicable, and Machine Head would like to wish Adam the best with his current and future endeavors. The band will continue on for the time being as a three-piece and have begun the writing process for their follow-up to 2011’s “Unto The Locust”. A late 2013 release is projected.”
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IFuckingLoveHeavyMetal.com 