The Monster Energy Aftershock Festival has announced it daily lineups and set times for this years event. Tool (in a rare U.S. festival appearance) and Avenged Sevenfold are the headliners along with Primus, Meshuggah, Korn, Disturbed.The fest takes place at Discovery Park in Sacramento, CA on October 22nd & 23rd. The lineup is below: Continue reading
Out on the road supporting Parkway Drive and Counterparts, metalcore favorites We Came As Romans have dropped a brand new single, ‘Wasted Age’. The track can be heard below: Continue reading
The 3rd annual Louder Than Life Festival kicks off today at Champions Park, in Louisville, Kentucky. Ghost Cult is there to cover and bring you all the sounds and flavors of the fest! Check below for the daily line-up!Continue reading
The première music festival on the west coast, Monster Energy Aftershock is booked for a fifth edition this October 22nd and 23rd at Sacramento, California’s Discovery Park.Continue reading
The third annual Louder Than Life Festival will take place October 1 & 2 At Champions Park In Louisville, KY.Continue reading
Tomorrow kicks off the 21st Brutal Assault Festival with Parkway Drive, Neurosis, Arch Enemy, Behemoth, Mastodon, Abbath, Devildriver, Exodus, Ministry, Nile, Obituary, Satyricon, Ihsahn, Dark Tranquility, Dying Fetus, Unearth, Conan, Voivod, Taake, Septic Flesh, Insomnium, Stuck Mojo, and Mono among others. Making the festival unique compared with other events are the art exhibition, horrror film festival, revolutionary Cashless/Access card system, and other features that have always made Brutal Asault the leaders in the festival going experience. Previously announced bands Electric Wizard (visas) and Terror (surgery for Scott Vogel) have cancelled and replaced with Uffommamut and Raised fist respectively.
Wednesday kicks off with bands like Abbath, Mastodon, Neurosis, Devildriver, Mutooid Man, Chelsea Wolfe, Tribulation, Conan, Vektor, Gruesome, Shining and more.
Thursday features Parkway Drive, Gojira, Ministry, Exodus, Ihsahn, Dark Tranquility, The Black Dahlia Murder, H20, Animals As Leaders, Immolation, Aborted, TesseracT, Obscura, and more.
Friday has Arch Enemy, Moonspell, Taake, Satyricon, Cattle Decapitation, Sigh, Coroner, Obituary, eptic Flesh, Voivod, Raised Fist, iron Reagan, In The Woods and others.
Saturday closes things out with headliners Behemoth, Agnostic Front, Insomnium, Moonsorrow, Destruction, MGLA, Venom INC, Archgoat, Stuck Mojo, Holy Moses, Stick To Your Guns, Lightening Bolt and more. Tickets are still avaialble at this link:
Long-running and legendary Brutal Assault Festival takes place again this year for their 21st edition. Taking place which takes place in a military fortress Jofesov in Jaromer, in the Chech Republic the four day festival runs from August 10-13th. In addition to headline acts Mastodon, Ministry, Parkway Drive, and Behemoth, the fest features names from across all genres of rock and metal such as Aborted, Agnostic Front, Angelcorpse, Animals As Leaders, The Algorithm, Archgoat, Birdflesh, Bury Tomorrow, Conan, Coroner, Dark Funeral, Dark Tranquility, Devildriver, Die Krupps, Disavowed, Destruction, Electric Wizard, Eskimo Callboy, Exodus, Eyehategod, Gruesome, Hypnose, Immolation, Insomnium, Iron Reagan, Jig-Ai, Knuckledust, Leprous, Mgla, Misery Loves Co., Mithras, Moonspell, Mono, Mutoid Man, Nile, Obituary, Omnium, Gatherum, Satyricon, Septicflesh, Shining, Sigh, Sikth, Slagmaur, Taake, Terror, Textures, The Black Dahlia Murder, Tribulation, Vektor, Valkyrja, Voivod, Whiplash and more. Tickets are on sale now with camping packages at this link:
Louisville Kentucky’s top flight metal and hard rock festival, the 3rd annual Louder Than Life festival has announced its 2016 lineup. Avenged Sevenfold will headline, with Slipknot, Slayer, Disturbed, Korn and The Cult performing among others on October 1st and 2nd.
Tickets go on sale this Wednesday at noon EST at www.LouderThanLifeFestival.com. Prices will be $79.50 for a single-day general admission, $89.50 for a general admission weekend pass, and $234.50 for a VIP weekend pass. Other packages are available, with prices increases soon.
Other bands performing at Champions Park on River Road are Ghost, Cheap Trick, The Pretty Reckless, Alter Bridge, Pierce the Veil, Clutch, Anthrax, Hellyeah, Sevendust, Trivium and Sick Puppies. More than 50,000 fans attended last year’s sold-out festival, most from out of state.
With the Louisville locale in the forefront, the festival also features on bourbon and “gourmet man food”.
Celebrity chefs will be Edward Lee, Tom Coghill, Bill Kunz and Jonathan Schwartz, while the Gourmet Man Food Village will have several dozen choices, including Doc Crow’s, El Luchador,: 502 Café, Aporkalypse Now, Hi-Five Doughnuts, Holy Mole, The Comfy Cow, Gelato Gilberto and Cheese Louise.
Bourbon World, presented by the Louisville Courier-Journal, will feature Angel’s Envy, Basil Hayden’s, Benchmark, Buffalo Trace, Bulleit, Eagle Rare, Evan Williams, Four Roses, Jim Beam, Knob Creek, Maker’s Mark, Michter’s, Old Forester, Town Branch, Willett, Wild Turkey and Woodford Reserve.
Here are the daily line-ups:
Saturday, Oct. 1 – Avenged Sevenfold, Slayer, The Cult, The Pretty Reckless, Pierce The Veil, Cheap Trick, Chevy Metal, Anthrax, Motionless In White, Hellyeah, Sick Puppies, The Amity Affliction, Avatar, Neck Deep, Young Guns, Being As An Ocean, ’68, Twelve Foot Ninja, Dinosaur Pile Up.
Sunday, Oct. 2 – Slipknot, Disturbed, Korn, Ghost, Alter Bridge, Clutch, Biffy Clyro, Pop Evil, Skillet, Sevendust, Zakk Sabbath, Parkway Drive, Trivium, KYNG, Skindred, Adelitas Way, Crobot, Smashing Satellites, Sabaton.
It’s been quite a transformation few years for new Artery Recordings signees Wildways. Hailing from western Russia and operating until just a few years ago under a different name, this metalcore prospect comes up big on the US debut Into The Wild. The current wave of modern metalcore, bands with the ability to be heavy, but fluid enough to genre bend and flow well. Everyone aspires to this style, and fewer can make it there own sound. Wildways has done this big time.
Tapping into that millennial angst is easy. Try doing for a generation that would rather Snapchat then make a real personal connection. The kids in Wildways know this, and since they are their own audience, this helps them connect on real level. No fantasies or fakery, but real songs about personal problems. Tracks meld metalcore, EDM, rap (in English and Russian!), punk rock, and even thrash on occasions, coming on like the Linkin Park meets Parkway Drive in a game of carnival bumpercars. Big songs, tuneful melodies, verbose wordplay, and plenty of feel-good moments are the hallmarks of this album.
Opener ‘Skins’ is one of the longer tracks on the album. It’s a kitchen-sink type affair musically, building from a whisper to an emo-core roar of major proportions. Alternating between singing, rapping and screaming, it just kills. They have been a band long enough that they grasp dynamic and tempo shifts and are not just trying to spaz out the listener with changes. Props.
‘3 Seconds To Go’ is a hyperactive song that sounds like what would happen if you had Dragonforce and asked them to write for Enter Shikari or Chiodos at gunpoint. Again, vocalist Toli impresses. There is some baddass keys/programming going on here too. ‘Faka Faka Yeah’ will have the Atilla loving kids losing their shit. I can see this crossing over easily to pop fans. It’s still pretty metal, even though I have no idea what the hell this song is about. The album definitely gets stronger as it goes on with the best tracks being ‘Slow Motion’, the single ‘Princess’ (with mystery female vocals), ‘Don’t Give Up Your Guns’ and ‘Illusions And Mirrors’.
Wildways have arrived and might be a good bet to be the next big thing. This is a good first step into a larger world, and we’ll be following along closely.
7.0/10
KEITH CHACHKES
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Yorkshire’s favorite sons Asking Alexandria are back with a new full-length, determined to put the ghosts of the past behind them and seize some sort of unofficial metalcore crown and miter. This being the first album of new music since the much talked about departure of former frontman Danny Worsnop (We Are Harlot), who himself was synonymous with the band, the band has been under massive scrutiny. Factoring in the challenges of incorporating new singer Denis Stoff (Sharforostov) of AA soundalike Make Me Famous, and the fact that some of the fans doubts, you could say this release came at a critical juncture. Never being one to back down from a challenge, guitarist/band mastermind Ben Bruce and his new singer mostly crafted an album as strong or better than anything in they have done. To the most cynical, die-hard fan this music will squash any notion that the band could possibly fall off without Worsnop. The Black (Sumerian) will likely be looked back in the future as a pivotal album, the time when metalcore grew up, without watering it down as a genre.
While droves of the scene bands strive to run away from their roots (Parkway Drive and BMTH among others), Asking Alexandria has made a metalcore history lesson of sorts. The sound of the band on The Black covers where they were when they started with Stand Up and Scream (Sumerian), to the present. It is a well written, immaculately produced affair and a lot of props has to be given to Ben Bruce and his bag of licks. ‘Let It Sleep’ raucous battle cry. Straight in the typical style of the band, it is harsh, grooves, and has a terrific refrain for screaming along with. Denis just bruises his way through the track, like puncher in a prize-fight.
The title track is a beast too. The simple driving riff could be mistaken for Five Finger Death Punch or Sevendust, but all the heaviness the band is known for bringing. The chorus is massive, and these first two songs are going to be blaring out of car windows and scarring soccer moms all summer. ‘I Won’t Give In’ follows and is kind of a unique metalcore power-ballad of sorts. It’s not the best track here, but the tempo and the delivery have the desired dramatic effect they were going for. ‘Sometimes it Ends’ is the only song that blatantly addresses the Worsnop split and the fallout. The track is phenomenal and has the power and a flavor the band hasn’t really shown before. Perhaps one of their best tracks to date in terms of brutality and songcraft.
‘The Lost Souls’ is a lament for the millennial generation and another strong cut. It seems like the band focused on making these massive tracks, but without too much clutter. Stoff gets on the Chester Bennington/Jonathan Davis level emotionally here vocally. You can just close your eyes and imagine the massive festival crowds screaming this in unison. Returning producer Joey Sturgis may have out done himself here.other strong tracks include the ‘Send Me Home’, ‘We’ll Be OK’, the epic balladry of ‘Gone’, and the closing track ‘Circled By Wolves’. There are a few tracks here that aren’t the strongest top to bottom, but none of them are skippable moments.
With this new batch of powerful songs and Stoff and his flexible vocal chords in tow, you see the band living up to all the promise and hype they have been given, instead of falling off.
8.0/10
KEITH CHACHKES
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