Archive for February, 2011

SAXON pulling out of Australia’s Soundwave Festival

Posted by tekhammer at 18 February 2011

Category: Festivals

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Sad pants all around. According to Blabbermouth, Saxon have pulled out of Soundwave due to issues with recording their new album, Call To Arms.

Thus spake the band: “We are, unfortunately, forced to cancel our Australia trip due scheduling problems with the new album recordings.

“We apologize for cancelling but due to the bad weather conditions we had in the U.K. during the recording sessions we have suffered various delays and we can’t just drop the production and leave — we have producers booked and mix engineers waiting to finish the album, which is titled ‘Call To Arms’.

“We have looked at this from all sides, but too many people are involved so we have made the choice to finish the album and we apologize again.

“We hope you can understand that we have not made this decision lightly.“

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Nightwish – New album and full length movie based on the same concept

Posted by Witchfinder General at 13 February 2011

Category: Album Releases

Tags: ,

Well it seems Nightwish keep finding new ways to get bigger and more epic.

That does not imply that I’m loving everything they are doing.  I’ll judge on merit as always.  Their last album had weak points, and I do fear that bands are starting to fall over themselves a bit too much to be more symphonic than thou.  In some cases starting to sound too much like each other - most recent Blind Guardian sounding Nightwish influenced in terms of the symphonic bits, and the most recent Epica studio album sounding a lot like Therion at times.

Anyway who knows about the new stuff yet.  The movie will bear the same name as the forthcoming album, Imaginarium.

See recent entries on the english news page on their website: http://www.nightwish.com/en/news/

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HIGH ON FIRE touring in New Zealand in February

Posted by tekhammer at 11 February 2011

Category: Tours

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According to Blabbermouth, High on Fire are touring Australia and NZ with The Melvins.

Tour dates are:

  • Feb. 20 – Dunedin, NZ @ ReFuel (w/ THE MELVINS)
  • Feb. 21 – Christchurch, NZ @ Al’s Bar (w/ THE MELVINS)
  • Feb. 22 – Wellington, NZ @ Bodega (w/ THE MELVINS)
  • Feb. 23 – Auckland, NZ @ Whammy Bar
  • Feb. 24 – Auckland, NZ @ Whammy Bar
  • Feb. 26 – Brisbane, AUS @ RNA Showgrounds (*Soundwave)
  • Feb. 27 – Sydney, AUS @ Sydney Showgrounds (*Soundwave)
  • Mar. 01 – Brisbane, AUS @ HiFi (Trash Talk & Kylesa support)
  • Mar. 02 – St. Kilda, AUS @ Gershwin Room @ Esplanade Hotel (TRASH TALK, KYLESA support)
  • Mar. 04 – Melbourne, AUS @ Melbourne Showgrounds (*Soundwave)
  • Mar. 05 – Adelaide, AUS @ Bonython Park Oval (*Soundwave)
  • Mar. 07 – Perth, AUS @ Claremont Showgrounds (*Soundwave)
  • Mar. 09 – Osaka, Japan @ Club Quattro (w/ THE MELVINS)
  • Mar. 10 – Nagoya, Japan @ Club Quattro (w/ THE MELVINS)
  • Mar. 11 – Tokyo, Japan @ O-East (w/ THE MELVINS)

They’re in Australia for the Soundwave festival, so have decided to hop over here (and Japan) for a bunch of gigs. Quite frankly, 5 gigs amazes me. I can’t really say I’m a fan, but I like their music enough to check them out live.

Tickets can be got from Under the Radar.

edit: According to Under the Radar, tour dates in New Zealand are:

  • Feb 19 – Kings Arms, Auckland (with Melvins)
  • Feb 20 – Re Fuel, Dunedin (with Melvins)
  • Feb 21 – Al’s Bar, Christchurch (with Melvins)
  • Feb 22 – Bodega, Wellington (with Melvins)
  • Feb 23 – Whammy Bar, Auckland (with Melvins and Kylesa)
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NEVERMORE playing Australia in June

Posted by Witchfinder General at 9 February 2011

Category: Tours

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Just caught up on this news today.

From the same fine people bring Motorhead and Uriah Heep to Australia in March/April, Nevermore is now playing across Aussie in June.

http://www.redanttouring.com/current_tours_and_events_nevermore.html

For some reason (probably for the purposes of marketing spin) their writeup say Nevermore hasn’t been down under since 1999, but I saw them in Melbourne on the This Godless Endeavour tour which was much more recent than that.

Tickets on sale this Friday (11th Feb) and they will be available via the e-ticket option which is good news as OxTix don’t post tickets overseas.

Here’s a couple of videos posted to Facebook of Nevermore playing recently on the 70000 Tons Of Metal cruise…

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1885391974158&oid=72664247480

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1885452215664&oid=72664247480

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If you are really desperate for the pre-Cowboys PANTERA albums

Posted by Witchfinder General at 9 February 2011

Category: News

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On eBay username satanictuck (who is John Perez from the band Solitude Aeturnus and his record label Brainticket) is selling the first four Pantera albums, that the band never wanted to acknowledge after they hit it big with Cowboys From Hell, for megabucks.  But if you are feeling equally rich and desperate for them, go for your life… I Am The Night, Power Metal (I think that’s the only one with Phil on vocals?), Projects In The Jungle, and Metal Magic, currently ‘on sale’ at $US85 each rather than US$100 each.  Plus postage.

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LA Music Blog interview with FENRIZ // DARKTHRONE

Posted by tekhammer at 8 February 2011

Category: Interviews

Tags: ,

Shannon Joy at the LA Music blog has done a very good interview with Fenriz of Darkthrone.

Darkthrone were one of the pioneers of black metal, but have evolved into a crustier punk/thrash style. And that’s not mentioning the countless other bands/music projects Fenriz has taken part in over the last couple of decades. Even though I’m not a fan of his earlier work, I do like his new stuff and have a great deal of respect for him as a person and as a musician.

He’s one of the few in the industry who has his head screwed on right. And has a sense of humour.

This is worth a read even if you don’t listen to his music.

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BLACK SABBATH – DEHUMANIZER special edition

Posted by Witchfinder General at 4 February 2011

Category: Album Releases

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The next deluxe edition Black Sabbath album coming out is Dehumanizer, originally 1992 with Dio on vocals.

Also my favourite Sabbath album since Heaven & Hell.  Dark, (generally) slow, heavy, and sometimes outright doomy.  Definitely worthy of the Sabbath name.

Most of the bonus material has been released before but only on CD singles for TV Crimes and Master Of Insanity so chances are a lot of people don’t have this stuff – at least not in hard copy.

Annoying (because now I guess I’ll end up buying this deluxe version) there is one never-before-released version, a live cut of Master Of Insanity.

Bonus disc track list:

Master of Insanity (single edit)
Letters from Earth (b-side version – called the ‘alternate version’ on the TV Crimes single – contains a section with different lyrics)
Time Machine (Wayne’s World version – not that I could really tell much of a difference between this and the album version)
Children of the Sea (live)
Die Young (live)
TV Crimes (live)
Master of Insanity (live)
Neon Knights (live)
Live tracks from 1992.  From memory Die Young is only half the song, or maybe that was Children Of The Sea.

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A look inside IRON MAIDEN’s ‘Ed Force One’

Posted by tekhammer at 1 February 2011

Category: News

Tags: ,

So do you want to check out the inside of Ed Force One?

Of course you do.

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