THE WELL-DRESSED HEADBANGER

I'm pretty excited about the Summer Slaughter Tour, which hits NYC on August 1; ten of the most listener-abusive deathcore and technical death metal bands around, crushing it one after the other. I mean, seriously: Decapitated, The Faceless, All Shall Perish, The Red Chord, Veil of Maya, Cephalic Carnage, Decrepit Birth, Carnifex, Animals as Leaders and Vital Remains all on one bill? Sold!

The one thing that bums me out about the show is that as much as I like the majority of these bands (the only ones I'm not particularly looking forward to seeing are All Shall Perish, The Red Chord and Cephalic Carnage), I know I'm not gonna come home with even one new T-shirt.

Metal shirts, like metal itself, have gotten more and more "extreme" in recent years, with logos getting uglier and spikier, slogans getting more obscene/offensive, and imagery heading into territory that, frankly, I don't want on my chest where strangers can see. There was an awesomeness to metal graphic design in the '80s and even, to a degree, in the '90s that young bands don't care to match. To this day, old-school bands like Judas Priest, Metallica and Slayer offer good-looking shirts that a man in his late 30s can wear with relative dignity.

Iron Maiden used to be the gold standard for this. Their shirts, which almost always depicted mascot Eddie (I have one of the few that doesn't, a shirt from the 2004 Dance of Death Tour with a band photo on the front), were witty and cool-looking; you could wear them on the street and get unexpected nods of appreciation from strangers. I was hoping to buy a new shirt on Monday night. But everything on offer was ugly, and I left the gig empty-handed.

One option a few bands have exercised in recent years, which has pleased me greatly, has been the simple black-and-white logo shirt. I have one from Atheist, one from Entombed, and one that's not quite a straight logo shot, but features a logo and a simple white graphic, from the L.A.-based Native American crust/grind band Resistant Culture. And, of course, Motörhead has been doing that for decades—the classic "Motörhead/England" shirt, with their pig-demon mascot's head in the center, adorns hundreds of thousands of torsos worldwide, so many that Lemmy once told me, "I wish everyone who's got the T-shirt had the albums."

I feel like a lot of young bands are going out of their way to alienate older fans. There are a lot of metalheads in their late 30s who like new bands, but don't want to be walking around in a T-shirt that's been designed to piss off parents and high school principals. I think shirts designed for grown-ups would be a great marketing tool, and a way to bridge what I see as a growing generation gap in metal.

Of course, I could just be old and out of touch. That's not outside the realm of possibility. All I know for sure is that when I go to Summer Slaughter, I'll be wearing this classy, simple garment:

RECIDIVISM

Cosmo Lee at Invisible Oranges is asking his readers which band or bands they've seen the most often. For me, the leaders are Iron Maiden, Einstürzende Neubauten and Cecil Taylor in a three-way tie. I've seen each four times, with my fifth Maiden concert coming up on 7/12.

Right behind them are the groups or artists I've seen three times each: Amon Amarth, Arch Enemy, Borbetomagus, Clutch, Fishbone, the Flying Luttenbachers, High On Fire, Isis, Machine Head, Motörhead, the Rollins Band, Slayer, Slipknot and Social Distortion.

Then there are those I've (only) seen twice: AC/DC, Black Sabbath (once with Ozzy, once with Dio), Butthole Surfers, Ornette Coleman, Dio (as a solo act), Exodus, Ice-T, Jane's Addiction, Judas Priest, Megadeth, Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Orthrelm, Pantera, Iggy Pop (once solo, once with the Stooges), Radiohead, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Sword, and Rob Zombie.

I'm probably forgetting some, too—bands I saw open for several different headliners, or other unmemorable circumstances. If you're reading this, are you a recidivist? Do you see the same bands over and over? Are you always happy you went?

MAN ON THE STREET

[When I was in Austin for South by Southwest, I was stopped on the street by a blogger from some advertising agency/PR firm and asked a few questions about street marketing, etc. I forgot all about it until today, when an unrelated Google search turned up the resulting blog post. Here 'tis.]

The Dailies: March 18
Daily Person
Phil Freeman, metal blogger for MSN Music is at SXSW to do a live, onstage interview with Lemmy from Motörhead. He also does freelance writing about heavy metal for the Village Voice and other New York area publications.

What are you excited about seeing this year?
Well I’m hoping to get to the in-store performance for High on Fire (editor’s note: we saw High on Fire last night and it was fantastic). Also, I might try and get in to see Maldita Vecindad, this Mexican rock band who are amazing.

What brand-sponsored parties are you looking forward to?
I tend to avoid the heavily-sponsored types of events. There are only a couple of metal shows tonight so I’ll probably be bouncing back and forth between those.

Have any promotional items or events stood out to you so far?
Not so far. But today’s only my first day. It’s my first time in Texas so I’m just kind of wandering.

Do you think street marketing works?
At a thing like this I’m not sure it does. Honestly, I’m trying to figure out the point of SXSW because most of the bands are already signed. I do think street marketing works for bands as a general approach- hand out a cd, a card, a sticker, whatever. I think that can convince people to look at your music or download something. At a place like this I don’t think it works that well because there are too many people competing for your attention.

ENTOMBED, WOE OF TYRANTS, GWYNNBLEIDD

[Cross-posted here.]

Swedish death metal legends Entombed are on a short U.S. tour built around their performance at last weekend's Maryland Deathfest, and I'd never seen them before, so I figured I'd catch the New York show. I was kinda hoping to get their late enough to miss the opening acts, because the website said the relatively unimpressive metalcore band Woe of Tyrants and the totally useless hardcore band Merauder would be on the bill. Well, I got there only a few minutes after eight PM, and my information was only 50% accurate. The first band was not Woe of Tyrants, but Gwynnbleidd, a very pleasant surprise.

Gwynnbleidd are a Polish-via-Brooklyn blackened death metal band with some folk tossed into the salad bowl, too. Their 2009 album Nostalgia is terrific; it sounds a lot like Opeth at times, but in what universe is that a bad thing? They were the first band, so they got shafted by the soundman, who didn't give them even half the power or fullness their complicated and aggressive, but beautiful music deserved. Still, they pulled off a good set and had some loyal (and vocal) fans in the crowd. So good for them.

Woe of Tyrants were on the bill, and they were up second. They set up quickly, but took a long time to get their sound together (apparently their drummer had four toms, but only three microphones for them, which baffled the in-house engineer). When they did get rolling, it seemed like they were forced to perform an abbreviated set, 'cause they only bashed through about five of their stamped-out, melodic death metal/metalcore songs before leaving the stage. Instrumentally speaking, they're fine. They sound like At the Gates, they sound like Darkest Hour, they sound like a zillion bands you've heard before. Their vocalist is the problem. He's goofy looking. He looks like Michael McDonald from MAD TV, and it's hard to watch him. But again, it was over soon.

Entombed was up next (no Merauder), and they were one of the loosest bands I've ever seen onstage. They almost reminded me of Eyehategod, but without the deliberately sculpted feedback and at twice the speed. They played a lot of old material ("Demon," "Wolverine Blues," their cover of Roky Erickson's "Night of the Vampire"), but after all, isn't it all old material? They haven't put out an album since 2007, and when I interviewed vocalist Lars-Goran Petrov last week, he told me they have some songs, but no scheduled plans to record or release them.

Anyway, the set was terrific. Petrov is an entertaining frontman, dressed half scruffy-rock 'n' roller and half homeless-guy and kinda shambling back and forth onstage, half hunched over like a cross between a gorilla and Ozzy Osbourne, and his voice is just as leonine and room-filling as it is on record. Even though the band only has one guitarist these days, that guitarist, Alex Hellid, keeps the trademark Entombed ultra-distorted roar going at full strength, and the rhythm section has death metal power but rock 'n' roll swing. They reminded me of Motörhead or one of Scott "Wino" Weinrich's bands—Spirit Caravan, The Hidden Hand—more than a standard "death metal" act. And even though it wasn't a super-packed house, everyone there seemed to be into it, too—they had one of the bigger moshpits I've seen in a while. These days, a lot of audiences, especially in New York, just kind of stand around watching the band like they're at a zoo or something. But Entombed got the people moving. This was a great, loud, aggressive rock show, and I had a blast.

THIS WEEK IN CLEVELAND

Fatalist Attraction
Entombed lead a new wave of old-school Swedish metal

Ask your average music fan to name the most important and influential group to ever come out of Sweden and the answer will be Abba. Ask a metalhead the same question, and he'll tell you about Entombed. Daniel Ekeroth — author of the obsessive, passionate, and personal genre history Swedish Death Metal — says, "The Scandinavian metal scene would never have exploded without them. They changed everything. They were way ahead of any other Swedish band around 1990, with better songs, better sound, and above all, they were much better musicians than the rest."

That about covers it. The band formed in 1987 as Nihilist, blending Discharge's raging punk with Motörhead's speed-crazed metal with a side of distinctive distorted guitar tone. Rejecting the crisp, martial discipline of U.S. death-metal bands like Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse, they pioneered a looser, more groove-oriented sound known as "death 'n' roll." After splitting with bassist Johnny Hedlund, who soon formed Unleashed, they changed their name to Entombed and released 1990's Left Hand Path.

The album created a sensation throughout the worldwide metal community almost as soon as it was released. Its raw power and ferocious intensity were most apparent in Lars-Göran Petrov's gravelly, roaring vocals. Instead of the guttural grunts and blood-gargling sounds of other death-metal singers, Petrov came at the listener like an enraged bear. And behind him, the band straight-up rocked, attracting listeners from across the global underground, a fan base that remains united to this day. As the frontman points out, "If we play festivals around Europe, there are punks and death-metal people, everyone just headbanging to it. It's good to connect those different people to each other."

Last month marked the 20th anniversary of Left Hand Path, but unlike Slayer and Megadeth — who are co-headlining a tour and playing their 1990 releases, Seasons in the Abyss and Rust in Peace, front-to-back — Entombed aren't planning any elaborate celebrations. "It actually just passed by us somehow," laughs Petrov.

They'd rather look forward. Though peers like Grave and Dismember quickly emulated their style — creating the impression that, like AC/DC or the Ramones, every album is more or less the same — Entombed tweaked their sound quite a bit over the years. Uprising (from 2000) threw some bluesy riffs and rock grooves into the sonic stew, 2001's Morning Star was sweeping and epic, and 2003's Inferno had a punky edge and a deliberately rough mix. The group has also covered songs by a wide range of bands (Venom, Kiss, Hüsker Dü, Alice Cooper, Stiff Little Fingers, and Bob Dylan, to name a few) that can be heard on 2002's two-CD Sons of Satan Praise the Lord.

The common denominator is a loose, live feel that Petrov says is a main goal. "We try to do it as good as we can, but you have to have that live feeling," he says. "If you record something in one take and it sounds good and it doesn't have to be perfect, then we just leave it that way. There's nothing wrong with being perfectionist, but it loses the spontaneity."

The only misstep Entombed ever made is 1998's Same Difference. At the suggestion of their new record company, they steered into an alternative-rock direction, with Petrov adopting a clean singing voice, and guitarists Alex Hellid and Uffe Cederlund cutting way back on their distortion. "We had a record label that wanted to try new things, and we're always open to new stuff," he says. "But I think it was too much astray from what we wanted. I wasn't too comfortable recording that."

Entombed haven't released an album since 2007's Serpent Saints — The Ten Amendments. The band isn't even seriously planning one at the moment, but Petrov says it's got some new songs. "We just gotta put them together," he says. "We don't want to rush and just put out an album because we have to. It's just a matter of sitting down, putting [the songs] together, and recording it. We go once or twice a week to rehearse, but we mostly rehearse old songs. But once we have time, we will sit down and concentrate on the new songs."

These days, there are young bands explicitly modeling themselves on Entombed's pioneering Scandinavian death-metal sound — like California's Fatalist, who even use the same font Entombed uses for their logo. Petrov knows about the youngsters, and it makes him laugh. "It is exactly the logo," he says. "I think it's great. Somebody's taking over — they're following in our footsteps. We have some bands here in Sweden that are holding the flag for old school. It's the new wave of Swedish old school."

RONNIE JAMES DIO 1942-2010

Legendary metal singer Ronnie James Dio passed away early Sunday morning, May 16, from the stomach cancer he'd been battling since November 2009. The 67-year-old Dio had one of the greatest and most recognizable voices in metal history. His career began in the 1950s, fronting various rockabilly and R&B groups (Ronnie and the Red Caps, Ronnie and the Prophets) in upstate New York. "When you start, you do cover material, and whatever happened to be around, we did it," he told me in an interview last August. "We did a lot of blues, a lot of R&B material very popular back East—people like Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, the Isley Brothers, James Brown, those kinds of people. You did what was put in front of you."

Dio really found his niche in the early '70s, though, first with the boogie/Southern-rock-style band Elf and then alongside former Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore in Rainbow. With his theatrical outfits and dramatic, sweeping gestures, not to mention his astonishingly powerful voice, he established a persona far larger than his relatively small physical stature, stalking the stage and commanding the audience's attention at all times.

After leaving Rainbow in 1978, he moved on to front Black Sabbath, and in so doing reshaped that legendary band in his own image. "When we did 'Children of the Sea,' I think that was the first one we wrote together, and that showed that I was more than capable of doing it," Dio recalled about taking over as Sabbath's lyricist. "And Geezer [Butler, bassist and primary lyricist during the Ozzy years] really didn't want to write. When I came in, he said, 'You're gonna write the lyrics, aren't you?' and I said, 'Well, I certainly hope so,' and he said, 'Oh, thank God, that's one job I never wanted.'"

Where the band had been focused on doomy rock and relatively down-to-earth lyrical concerns with Ozzy Osbourne up front and Butler doing most of the writing, when Dio joined, he brought his own interest in heroism and myth to bear on the albums Heaven And Hell, Mob Rules, and Dehumanizer. Last year, that lineup of Black Sabbath, now renamed Heaven And Hell, released one of 2009's best albums, The Devil You Know—a stunningly heavy, operatic meditation on mortality and doom, by four guys who helped invent a genre and got back together to show the youngsters how it's done.

But no matter how heavy the music was, Dio's fundamental optimism always shone through. "None of the songs end with 'OK, and now we're going to die,'" he told me in that conversation. "My manner is always to let people know that someone out there feels the same, and luckily I've got a stage to speak for them."

Of course, Dio also achieved solo stardom in the '80s, with albums like The Last In Line, Holy Diver, and Sacred Heart, and classic metal anthems like "Rainbow In The Dark," "The Last In Line" and "We Rock." I was lucky enough to see him live three times—first on his Sacred Heart tour in 1986, then as the middle act on the bill (between Motörhead and headliners Iron Maiden) in 2003, and finally in 2008, fronting Heaven and Hell on the Metal Masters Tour with Judas Priest, Motörhead and Testament. The latter show was my then-eight-year-old nephew's first concert, and I'm really glad he was able to see a true legend perform. The world of metal has suffered a great loss; we'll never see another performer like Ronnie James Dio.

THIS WEEK IN CLEVELAND

Thrash Landing
Kreator return to their primitive roots

Just as America had its Big Four thrash bands — Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer — Germany had a trio of homegrown powerhouses in the '80s. Starting in the middle of the decade, Sodom, Destruction and Kreator shaped a uniquely German thrash sound — punkier and more primitive than its slick American counterpart.

Kreator's debut album, 1985's Endless Pain, was recorded in 10 days, and it sounds like it. A grinding trio disc that combines the crude, hammering rhythms and caveman riffs of Venom with the lyrical nihilism of Motörhead, it's not their best effort — in fact, it barely hints at what they'd achieve only a year later — but it rocketed them out of obscurity.

When 1986's Pleasure to Kill was released, Kreator's reputation was secure. Songs like the title track, "Riot of Violence" and "Death Is Your Savior" proved that Europe had its own thrash thing going on. Indeed, it could be said that Kreator paved the way for death metal with frontman Mille Petrozza's guttural, barking vocals and the band's punishing sound. The brutality continued on Terrible Certainty and Extreme Aggression, and the group made some breakthroughs outside the recording studio — when the Berlin Wall came down, Kreator was the first metal band to perform in East Germany (a show later documented on At the Pulse of Kapitulation, a mid-'90s home video that was reissued as a CD/DVD set in 2008).

The 1990s weren't nearly as kind to Kreator, creatively or commercially. Beginning with 1990's Coma of Souls, they started to experiment, incorporating industrial elements and writing longer, more musically ambitious songs, with mixed results. Fans weren't pleased, and the band's profile dipped substantially. Even Petrozza's longtime partner, drummer Jürgen "Ventor" Reil, grew disgusted and left just before 1995's aptly titled Cause for Conflict, though he returned on 1997's Outcast.

Finally, in 2001, the group got back on track. Violent Revolution kicked off with "Reconquering the Throne," and the album lived up to that title's promise, delivering one reinvigorated blast of raw, crushing thrash after another. Reviews were rapturous, and the tour that followed saw fans returning in droves. Kreator then released their first live album, Live Kreation, which featured performances so strong, they even rehabilitated songs from the reviled Cause for Conflict, Outcast and Endorama.

Enemy of God, from 2005, was another collection of killer modern thrash. Since that album's release to another chorus of critical hosannas, Kreator hasn't slackened the pace. For the past five years, they've been touring the globe, only taking some time out to record another album, Hordes of Chaos, released in early 2009. Much shorter than its two predecessors, each of which offered 12 tracks and nearly an hour of music, Chaos features only 10 songs and gets the job done in less than 40 minutes — another sign that Kreator have come full circle and gone back to their primitivist thrash roots.

They promoted the album with one of the most hilarious videos ever, for the title track. The "Hordes of Chaos" clip cuts back and forth between Kreator playing the song atop a heap of bodies and the adventures of a head-choppin', limb-severin' barbarian who seems to own nothing but fur underwear, a big-ass sword and a generous supply of baby oil. "Jörn Heitmann came up with the concept," says Petrozza. "I think he wanted to visualize the Hordes of Chaos and use images from [painter Frank] Frazetta, Conan the Barbarian, etc. I think the results look amazing! There was a lot of waiting around on the set, so no exciting stories to tell, unfortunately."

In 2008, Petrozza told Metal Edge magazine, "No offense to bands that do anniversaries all the time — there's bands that celebrate the 10th anniversary, the 15th anniversary — but we're not into that. We focus on the present and the future of the band, not what we've achieved in the past, and I don't see a reason why I should have a special celebration. I think that's kinda lame, to be honest."

But for the band's 25th-anniversary tour, Kreator asked fans to vote for songs to be played live — and thousands responded. "The surprising thing is that our taste is not that far off from what our fans like," says Petrozza. "[But] there will be some songs in the set that we haven't played in a long time."

And even as they honor their past, Kreator are once again in transition. In May 2009, their label SPV declared the European equivalent of bankruptcy and shut down its U.S. division. Recently Petrozza announced, "We have just signed a worldwide deal with Nuclear Blast, the strongest metal label in the world!"

Petrozza's enthusiasm for the music is at the core of his being. He's had more success with Kreator over the past 25 years than Steve "Lipps" Kudlow and Robb Reiner had with Anvil, but he shares their attitude that metal is something you do out of love. Asked about his near 30-year relationship with drummer Reil, who had to skip a recent leg of tour dates due to medical problems, he says simply, "It's great! We both love metal! We are living our dream!"

HIGH ON FIRE POLISHES ITS METAL WEAPONRY

[From the SF Weekly.]

Oakland's (and possibly Earth's) heaviest band, High on Fire, is ready for its close-up. The trio's fifth studio album, Snakes for the Divine, is its first for the E1 label after several years on highly regarded metal imprint Relapse. The musicians also worked with a real producer for the first time in years.

On Snakes, the band's sound was shaped by Greg Fidelmann, who has worked on such high-profile metal discs as Metallica's Death Magnetic and Slayer's World Painted Blood. "He's actually a producer producer," says guitarist and vocalist Matt Pike, contrasting Fidelmann with Steve Albini and Jack Endino, who worked on 2005's Blessed Black Wings and 2007's Death Is This Communion respectively. "Greg's a lot more hands-on."

The result is High on Fire's cleanest, most accessible album to date. Of course, the members keep their trademarks. Pike's vocals are a hoarse roar somewhere between Motörhead's Lemmy and the Melvins' Buzz Osborne with throat polyps, and the rhythm section of bassist Jeff Matz and drummer Des Kensel thunders like an avalanche. But each instrument occupies its own space, with room for subtle ornamentation. And Pike's guitar, one of the fiercest and most punishing axes in modern metal, has moments of surprising clarity. Indeed, from the album's first few moments, it's obvious this is a new stage in High on Fire's evolution — even if the title track begins with a high-pitched, buzzing riff that's naggingly similar to AC/DC's "Thunderstruck."

Pike laughs and owns up to the borrowing. "Not intentionally, but yeah, I kinda lifted a little bit of that," he says. "I thought it was so cool, and it's such a fun thing to play."

For the rest of its eight-minute running time, the song is a vintage High on Fire gallop, riffs landing like body blows from a 9-foot-tall steroid abuser. The album is jammed with the band's longest and most punishing songs (five pass the six-minute mark, and two run more than eight minutes). It also offers greater variation from the High on Fire crew. "How Dark We Pray" and "Bastard Samurai" are slower than anything the band has recorded since its 2000 debut, The Art of Self-Defense. "Every now and then it's good to slow down some," Pike acknowledges. "Jeff and I had a really wide span of tempos."

Pike is busy preparing for the band's first headlining U.S. tour in several years. "The way our management and booking agents are, they want us opening constantly," he says genially. Indeed, the group has been the first act of choice on Megadeth's 2008 Gigantour outing and on the recent Dethklok and Mastodon co-headlining tour, but Pike would like the chance to play for an hour straight for a change.

He'd also like to play fresh material this time out. "I'm two-thirds of the way through learning all of 'em so I can play and sing 'em live," he says of the new songs. "We're still working out the quirks. But by the time March rolls around, I'm pretty confident everybody will have their end of things in order."