SURPRISE! Nik and Keefy recorded a Record Store Day Chaser episode.
Tag Archives: Jucifer
PREVIEW: Record Store Day 2024 Essential Rock, Metal and Punk Releases
Another Record Store Day is upon us and we are still to bring you our pretty comprehensive list of what releases we think you should be picking up, and labels you ought to support. We get that commercialism and capitalism a kind of destroying the whole world, but at the same time if you love music, and if you especially love underground music, you want to support artists as hardcore as possible. The best way to do that is to put money in their pockets so they can keep doing what you love, and what they love. Continue reading
PODCAST: Glacially Musical #172 – Slayer “Divine intervention” Reviewed ft. Omar Cordy of Ghost Cult
Time for our final episode of our Slayer series ! Nik and Keefy are joined by Omar Cordy of #GhostCultMag to discuss the first post-Dave Lombardo era, and the merits of Paul Bostaph! We also rank every album we covered!Continue reading
Psycho Las Vegas: Part 2 – Various Venues, Las Vegas, NV
Part II
Saturday at Psycho Las Vegas was no less impressive and perhaps the best single day of the fest band for band, especially if you were still able to stand after the first few days. Starting off with the public première of the Melvins documentary, The Colossus Of Destiny, followed by a Q & A by the director, Bob Hannam; this set the tone for the day.Continue reading
Roadburn Festival 2016 Part II: Various Venues, Tilburg NL
Part II
Noticing Amenra would be doing an acoustic set on Saturday, it brought nothing but confusion since they are well-known for their vigorous, powerful live performances. Acoustic? Singer Colin van Eeckhout even admitted feeling very nervous at the beginning of the set. The band was sat in a circle in the semi-darkness of the stage, only slightly illuminated by beams of light. 013’s brand new main stage felt almost obscenely big for such an intimate setting. However, once they got started, this added a vibe of disconnection from the band that almost gave you a feeling you were watching something you weren’t supposed to see. They managed to find a way to play their 2009’s acoustic EP Afterlife so timid and delicate, that the crowd seemed to be in trance and didn’t wake up until their cover of Tool’s ‘Parabol’, which earned them a deafening applause. For their second set at the Afterburner, they were back to their post-metal selves, screeching, pounding and shredding in exactly the way we know and love them. Leaving us to timidly watch the ripples forming in our beers as if a T-rex came stomping by, while the magic from the night before faded to a distant memory.
An unexpected highlight on the Saturday was Brothers of the Sonic Cloth. Both captivating and furiously loud, their psychedelic visuals and droning music created the perfect setting for a lot of people to hang out on the floor of the main stage and take in the wall of sound the Americans produced. For those of us feeling more awake, progressive space-rockers Astrosoniq, led by a very Rock’n’roll looking singer, gave a more fast-paced performance in the Green Room. Walter, in official terms the artistic director of Roadburn, but in reality the true heart and soul of the festival, brought out his visuals to accompany Astrosoniq’s very psychedelic guitar riffs.
Roadburn 2014 favorites The Vintage Caravan showed up for a surprise gig at café Cul de Sac on Sunday. Well, I say surprise, but 30 minutes before showtime the venue was absolutely packed with people. There is only one way to actually see a band in Cul de Sac: be hella early. So we found ourselves snuggly between 150 hot and sweaty, hungover fans with no chance of reaching the bar or the toilets in the next hour-and-a-half. But boy, was it WORTH it. The Islandic rockers tried to drill out our hangovers with their heavy bass and guitarist Oskar‘s relentless headbanging let us forget that this was our fourth day at the festival already and we were supposed to be very tired.
The greatest thing about Roadburn must be the diversity of the people you meet. Surrounded by more foreigners than native Dutch, you usually leave the festival a couple of Finnish words wiser than you were before (none of which probably as innocent as they led you to believe). However, I’m not going to lie: people watching is right up there on my list of favorite pastimes, and there really isn’t a better place for it than Roadburn. Mainly because metal shows in themselves are beacons of creative and eccentric people. And Roadburn, well, that is the holy grail of metal shows. Amidst a goldmine of glorious manes and enviously long beards, there seem to be more crust punks than usual (thank you G.I.S.M and Converge) and of course every back patch under the sun.
One of the most spotted patches this year was obviously Neurosis. You’d think that playing two ’30th Anniversary’ sets would bring about its problems. After all, having a thirty-year spanning discography to choose from can’t be easy. Remarkably enough Neurosis managed to represent each and every one of their records during their shows, right back to their 1985 hardcore punk debut Pain of Mind. It is astounding to see how much they have grown and changed over the years, before they settled into their skin of a contemporary hurricane of genres, set to a baseline of doom. When the final tones of 1999’s ‘The Doorway’ sounded at the Afterburner, it left us with nothing but goosebumps, hands sore from clapping and a profound sense that 366 days are way too many to wait until the next Roadburn.
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WORDS BY CÉLINE HUIZER
Temples Festival Cancelled, No Future Events Planned
With an announcement on their Facebook page, Temples Festival which was to take place next weekend has been permanently cancelled. Ticket refunds are available at point of purchase. The fest was to have been headlined by the cream of the crop in underground metal such as Mayhem, Melvins, and Carcass, alongside bands such as Agoraphobic Nosebleed, MGLA, Windhand, Iron Reagan, Dragged Into Sunlight, Primitive Man, Jucifer, Vision of Disorder, Undersmile, Voices and many more. In a message festival organizer Frances Mace gave an explanation and apology to all involved claiming the fest “can’t face another year of debts & damage..”
Patrons of Temples Festival,
After an arduous 48hrs of uncertainty, and with deepest reluctance we have been forced to cancel Temples Festival 2016.
At the beginning of last week, the organisation we had onboard to finance the event pulled their funding, and with limited access to advance ticket sales and no sponsors to back us we have been unable to source the funding required to cover the overheads which would allow Temples Festival to go ahead.
Following Temples 2015, we were left with a sizeable debt and as opposed to dissolving the company and declaring bankruptcy – I decided to take on the debts personally and subsequently pay off all our creditors in instalments as quickly as possible, this meant bands, staff and contractors were all paid late – and it’s had a crippling effect on both my professional and personal life as a whole – truth be told, I made a series of bad business decisions and dealt with the situation very poorly – which I take full accountability for.
I’ve spent the past week trying to gain access to the funds we need to make this year work and avoid the problems we encountered following last year’s event, with our financiers pulling their involvement – it’s been an uphill battle, which I’ve fought to the best of my abilities – and unfortunately, have been defeated.
Over the past weekend, I’ve been attempting to produce the festival’s continuation on a ‘scaled down’ level so we can offer something for those of you who have purchased tickets, accommodation, transport etc and allow the bands who are touring, UK based etc – unfortunately this morning it became clear that even if we were to proceed as such, we’d be left with another huge debt and therefore unable to pay the bands, staff, venue, contractors and a number of other crucial overheads the festival relies on – thus repeating the mistakes that were made last year.
Having already lost in the region of £70,000 throughout Temples Festival’s existence – I’m afraid adding more debt to that will simply cripple both myself and the festival, and after such a difficult year it’s not an option for me to take on such a huge debt personally.
I am deeply deeply sorry to all of those who will lose out as a result of this decision, having put three years of my life and having already lost so much of it to the festival I’m afraid there is no option to continue with Temples Festival 2016 and I take full responsibility for events cancellation. I am truly sorry.
My intention was always to setup a unique UK festival which books bands who are rarely seen in the UK, I’ve tirelessly dedicated myself to this event for a long time now and the decision to cancel this year’s event has been unequivocally the hardest call I’ve ever had to make in my life. My sincere apologies to those of you who will lose out as a result of this, I am truly sorry – but I can’t face another year of debts & damage.
Thank you to everyone who has actively supported Temples Festival from the start, I launched this ambitious event with the best intentions and unfortunately it’s become too damaging for me to oversee single handedly. Although curating the festival is something I’ve been able to do well – managing the business side of the event has proven too much for me. I’ve been promoting concerts for half of my life, and those of you who know of the work I’ve done will hopefully be aware of how upsetting and damaging this decision has been to me on every level.
Our ethos has been No Surrender for the past year, as I was determined to make this festival work and finish what I started. I’ve worked so hard to make this happen for our Patrons in 2016 but against my will and core beliefs – today’s news has forced me to surrender.
Ticket refunds are available from your point of purchase, please contact them for a full refund.
Again, thank you to those of you who have been supporting this event for the past three years – your encouragement and kind words have kept me going through incredibly difficult times and I hope that despite this negative outcome you’ve at least enjoyed the two events we hosted for you. I’m proud of what was achieved with this event, and if there was any way of making this year work I’d be continuing with the same passion and dedication which oversaw the last two editions of Temples Festival.
With the utmost regret & sincerity,
Francis Mace
– Temples Festival
Jucifer – District of Dystopia
Some albums are meant for mass appeal. And then there are some albums that sound like they were created to disperse the entire population as far away from it as humanly possible. District of Dystopia (Nomadic Fortress), the new album – their seventh – from the two piece Sludge/Drone monoliths that are Jucifer, is certainly an album that falls into the latter part.
With its constant barrage of impenetrable mix of sludge and what seems to be the sound of the Elder God’s on a hungover morning, Jucifer have created an experience that is likewise punishing and oddly satisfying at the same time. Sure it might sound like the apocalypse put through several Marshall stacks, but it’s engaging and never strayed from my attention the whole time it was on, and is still an album that I can recall days and weeks after first listening to it.
Overall, although the NOLA tinged sludgy vibes and the sheer sonic weight brought on by these two bringers of despair, guitarist/vocalist Gazelle Amber Valentine and her husband, drummer Edgar Livengood, is something that must at least be admired if not necessarily enjoyed.
If the sound of the Armageddon coming at you in the form of feedback sounds good to you give this a blast, you will not regret it.
8.0/10
DAN O’BRIEN
Comasmile – An Interview With Undersmile
Currently superstars of the underground metal scene, doom quartet Undersmile have been wowing crowds for the last few years with their hypnotic brand of slow down tuned tunes. Having reached a major peak in their success and with the band’s alter ego, Coma Wall, getting some much deserved lime light, Ghost Cult caught up with the four piece to talk about their journey so far.Continue reading