RIP Oderus Urungus

Everyone has those random sleepless nights; you're just not tired for some reason. Last night was one of those nights for me. Despite being in my warm, cozy bed, I wasn't tired at all. So while rotating between reddit, twitter, and my rss feed with Marduk playing in the background, one of my fellow twitter buddies retweeted that dreaded blabbermouth post that you may have seen. This was about 11pm PST or something like that, it was around midnight at least. Blabbermouth did an excellent job of not jumping to any conclusions by carefully wording their article using terms such as "sources claim" and "reportedly" and other indefinite words, obviously in hopes that this was all just some sort of sick hoax or stupid rumor. I was part of the crowd that wanted to hear/see more evidence before having a meltdown. 

Then I started to notice high-profile people tweeting "RIP" related stuff. Earache Records, Relapse, Dez Fafara, Broken Hope, and a few other twitter accounts belonging to musicians/labels/etc. were all saying "RIP Dave". Well shit, if this was all a hoax, why would so many people be setting themselves up for embarrassment by falling for a stupid rumor? Dez said one of the members called him and told him...okay....then I went to Instagram and, not even 3 minutes before that, Randy Blythe made the post you've probably all seen by now. 1. I know he is personal friends with the entire band. 2. He would NOT take the time to write such a deep and touching post about this if it wasn't a hoax. I heard on facebook people such as his family and girlfriend were confirming it. There was just too much evidence supporting the reality of this and next to no evidence that it was a rumor. Dave was active on twitter, but all day yesterday, his account was pretty silent, which was all the more I needed to believe it without an official statement from the band (in this case, it was their manager). 

GWAR in general is one of the most notable and best bands to exist. And anyone that has seen them live can agree that there is not a SINGLE show on this Earth that can ever come close to a GWAR show. It's a one-of-a-kind, once in a lifetime experience that is truly unforgettable. I saw GWAR once, it was in 2011 with Every Time I Die and Warbeast. I'm not a fan of Every Time I Die at all, and Warbeast is alright, but GWAR put on one of the SINGLE best live shows I have EVER experienced in my life. Everything from the theatrics to the Dillinger Escape Plan-worthy craziness of the crowd, it was one of the best nights of my life. Because it was at the Showbox SoDo, there was a barricade in front of the stage, so one of the two times I crowdsurfed to the front, once I was on my feet on the other side of the barricade, just as I was about to run off to the side, Oderus and I made eye contact for a split second. This followed with him spraying my face with...whatever the hell it was (I'm pretty sure it's not fake blood, it tasted weird though) until my hair and face were soaked. I almost puked due to it being at the same time as I was trying to catch my breath. 

Man, that was fun! I'm glad he was around! He did a lot of crazy shit and was one of the single best, most creative, and most humble musicians ever. Not to mention his songwriting. Unpopular opinion: GWAR's most recent album is my favorite, one of the best of 2013. Really wish I could have seen them again, but that one show is enough for me to never forget. Rest in Peace Dave. 

Mari Leaving Eluveitie

It really bothers me how few zines and sites are bothering to even mention the departure of Eluveitie violinist/vocalist Meri Tadic. Also, why the hell would she leave a band that she had such a key role in? Considering the unique vocal contributions she's made on Helvetios and Everything Remains, I can't imagine it being easy at all to find a replacement. After missing them numerous times, I finally got to see them live at the end of 2012 when they headlined a very successful tour with Wintersun (their first ever tour of the states) and Varg (the German band, not the Norsk guy), where they played their (at the time) new album, Helvetios, all the way through....and then playing two or three of their really famous songs from previous records (I was upset they didn't play Thousandfold, which surprised me). But the one thing I noticed about their performance was the amount of focus that was put on Meri Tadic.

If you've listened to the album, you know what I'm talking about when I say that she was a big part of the album's sound. Because these folk metal bands like to have these drawn-out, atmospheric interludes during their performance, Eluveitie pretty much had Meri lead all of them. During every interlude or whatever you want to call them (there were several all throughout their set, one of them had to be AT LEAST five minutes long), the whole band would exit the stage (sometimes the guy with the beard playing the bagpipes would stay) except for Meri. All of the lights would go out except for the ones pointed at the spot where she was standing. And during these interludes, she would just stand there and belt out these ridiculous and amazing celtic-style melodies and chants. It was one of the most unforgettable things I've ever seen at a metal show.

So now that her role in the band has become much more important and unique.......she just leaves?? Her reason for leaving must have been very, very big and made her really feel cornered. I know that neither Meri or the band explicitly stated the actual reason for her leaving, but when you look at how much those fuckers tour, it seems like a very possible reason for someone to feel forced to leave. A lot of members quietly leave bands (it was hard to do that with Eluveitie considering how famous they are) due to tour exhaustion. A lot of members of Soilwork ended up leaving purely because they physically couldn't handle the amount of touring that they had to do (that band tours A LOT by the way). So I can't think of any other reason she would choose to leave other than tour exhaustion.

In case you don't know what I mean, I have included two tour shirts. The first one is the Everything Remains World Tour shirt, which has every concert from 1/11/2010-1/23/2012....that's over two years of straight touring...and then the Helvetios World Tour (second shirt) starts not even a week after the Everything Remains Tour ENDS. So that's not even a break! The only reason they're two different tours is because a new album was released! The shirt actually only shows the first half of the Helvetios World Tour 1/27/2012-10/21/2012). But actually, the tour continues on until the final date in their home country on 9/28/2013.

So the Everything Remains World Tour goes from 1/11/2010-1/23/2012 and the Helvetios World Tour goes from 1/27/2012-9/28/2013. During that time, the band never took a break lasting more than 1.5 weeks, with the exception of four separate 1 month-long breaks. I don't really consider 1-2 weeks off from touring as time off from touring in the case of Eluveitie because someone that tours as much as them is going to require more than a week to recover and recharge. So basically, with the exception of those 4 breaks, Eluveitie have been touring constantly from January 2010-September 2013. Um...that's drawing pretty damn close to FOUR YEARS of straight touring. Look at me and tell me that you wouldn't feel tired after that.

Reasons aside, Mari was a very big part of Eluveitie and will be missed dearly by a lot of people, myself included. I didn't know she released a solo album, so I'm going to be checking that out in a few days. I also plan on posting a few reviews before the end of the year since fall quarter just ended. 

+Crinn

Where am I?

Where have I been for the past month?? I have been getting all of my school shit done so that I can graduate high school next week on June 7th!! Rest assured, I have still been very active on listening to music, jamming new shit by Ghost, Suffocation, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Napalm Death, Queens of the Stone Age, Dark Tranquillity, Boris, and many others. I've been to a ton of shows lately including Boris (the Japanese drone/progressive rock trio with the chick guitarist), The Decibel Magazine Tour which is probably the most brutal and insane tour of 2013 (sorry Summer Slaughter, you failed on the brutality factor this time) with Cannibal Corpse, Napalm Death, Immolation, and Cretin...Kvelertak with Cancer Bats, Black Tusk, and Crop, and maybe one or two other shows. This summer, I have already got my tickets for The Summer Slaughter Tour and, yes, Black Sabbath!

Once graduation is over and I've found a job, I will be reviewing like mad. Yes, some of the "new" albums I will be reviewing will not be as new as they were before (duh), so you can just suck it if that bothers you. Other than that, I'm excited to be getting back into writing and will be posting a review of my favorite search engine which has majorly revamped their site and given it a complete makeover. In other words, it's a lot better and I will be discussing that and providing super-awesome screenshots.

Jeff Hanneman RIP

Dead at age 49, one of the greatest guitar players of all-time. I don't even know how to react to this shit. Damn.....half of the online metal webzines have had their servers overloaded by all the traffic. One of the only ones left seems to be the one I write for, www.louderthanhell.net but I might be speaking too soon.

LTH: Monthly Black Metal Column

Salutations readers! For those of you that don't already know, I'm a writer for the new heavy metal webzine Louder Than Hell. Although I do write album reviews, I also have been conducting band interviews which have included Horseback, Gloryhammer, Dying Fetus, and most recently, the mighty Exhumed! As well as that, the awesome guys that run the site have given me the unique privilege of having my own monthly column. The column, titled "Within the Abyss", is about all things black metal. In each post, I may write about a specific era in black metal, a certain black metal subgenre, a particular country's black metal scene, or even a specific band in the genre. If you've been reading my reviews for awhile now, you will strongly recognize my writing style and my way of explaining shit. The first post in this series was just posted a couple days ago and can be read by clicking the link below (if the link does not work, you can simply copy the address and paste it into your browser's address bar):

http://louderthanhell.net/bands/united-states/column/news/2013/04/12/173657/within-the-abyss-black-metal-history/

On another note, as I mentioned before, I got to interview one of my favorite bands, Exhumed, last Saturday when they played with Psychonaut Deathtrip, Lord of War, Admirion, Rings of Saturn, Jungle Rot, and Suffocation. I will have that and a written report on the show with some photos up on Louder Than Hell very soon.

If you don't give a crap about what I have to say about black metal, you can click the Louder Than Hell link in the right-hand column under the "Partners in Crime" section to visit the site.

New Partner in Crime: Louder Than Hell

This is actually pretty big. I was recruited to be a part of the team for Louder Than Hell, which seems to basically be a heavy metal webzine with other stuff. I'm going to be writing reviews, interviews, live reports, editorials, and just about anything having to do with black metal. The website will be officially launched for public view sometime in January. I will be adding them to the list of "Partners in Crime" in the right-hand column so that you can go to the site whenever you want. For now, click the link below to view the website "teaser".

http://www.louderthanhell.net/

Google+

I feel like I'm being forced to give-in to this online social networking thing more and more each day. I just created a Google+ account and hooked it up to my blog. So if you're one of the 3 or so people that are actually on Google+ you should "follow" me or whatever you guys like to do. First Twitter, now this..damn...oh, I also have a big surprise for you guys starting in early January ;) so stay tuned. Once I'm on winter break, I'm going to start posting a shitload of more album reviews (goddamnit school). After that, I'm going to do what all of the other webzines/bloggers are doing out there and put together my personal "best albums of 2012" list. I can tell you already, I've known that the #1 album was going to be #1 when I listened to it for the first time.

Awesome Scott Conner Interview

One of my favorite "bands" ever is Xasthur. There haven't been very many official and good interviews of Scott Conner (aka Malefic), the guy behind Xasthur, but this is by far one of the best and most detailed ones I've ever seen. For those of you that aren't aware, Scott has just released the first album of his post-Xasthur project, Nocturnal Poisoning. It's all instrumental stuff that's pretty much just acoustic guitars, tambourine, and some drums here and there. I bought the CD from him (which you can purchase through the Nocturnal Poisoning Facebook page) a day after it was released and just received it in the mail a couple of days ago. Since then, that and the new Enslaved album have been the only things I've been listening to.

I'm not ready to state an official pos/neg opinion on it because even though I listen to A LOT of non-metal stuff, this is like nothing I've ever heard before in my life. To be honest, it was pretty weird at first listen, but it's one of those things where it eventually starts to grow on you in the exact same way that Xasthur does. I guess Scott unintentionally writes music that takes a little getting used to before one can fully take it in, understand it, and enjoy it. In fact, I highly doubt that I will ever even review it because I don't know what the hell I'd say in the review. In other words, I didn't know what to think at first, but so far, I've come to quickly love it and have become addicted to it. I HIGHLY recommend that if you have $13 to spare that you should give it to him so that he'll send you a copy of it.

Anyway, because I'm a diehard Xasthur fan, I want to know about the background story behind the demented project that lasted over a decade. This is the interview where you get an EXTREMELY in-depth and raw explanation of Xasthur, the history behind it, the reasoning behind the lyrical themes, and a lot about hating people and the struggles that Scott went through during the Xasthur era. As well as that, Scott gives you an early in-depth look into Nocturnal Poisoning, which is actually quite interesting! Follow the link below to read the interview.

CLICK HERE!

Click here for the official Nocturnal Poisoning/Disharmonic Variations website/blog

Roadrunner Records is Dying

Want another reason to hate Warner Bros? Although this isn't COMPLETELY at the fault of Warner Bros, but ever since they bought the biggest rock/metal record label Roadrunner Records, things have just been plummeting for them. Don't know Roadrunner? Well, they're the label that HUGE acts such as Slipknot, Korn, Trivium, Machine Head, Opeth (my favorite band), Dream Theater, Rush, Killswitch Engage, Soulfly, Gojira, and Porcupine Tree call home.

What happens first? Because of bad business, Roadrunner is forced to close their European HQ. BIG FUCKING LOSS for RR because Europe, especially Germany, where their office was located, has a MUCH healthier music industry than that of the United States. This was back in April of this year.

Next, the guy who is 70% responsible for the label's success, A&R executive Monte Conner, after being the president for the label for more than TWO WHOLE DECADES steps down from his position and leaves RR all together! So now, the label no longer has one of the best band-recruiting machines in the history of professional music, and are now stuck with a bunch of half-asses that they're obviously just talking nice about to maintain their disintegrating reputation. Read the more detailed Metal Injection article on that incident and the post on RR's website here:

http://www.metalinjection.net/its-just-business/roadrunner-records-president-steps-down-after-20-years

http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/news/farewell-to-monte-conner

What I just did recently was check out the good ol' RR site to see if they had recruited any fresh meat. Well guess what I found: the biggest heavy metal record label in history currently has a roster of only 29 bands. Does that seem like a lot to you? Let's take a look at other metal labels that aren't nearly as mainstream as Roadrunner: Century Media currently has a roster of 92 bands and artists, Relapse Records currently has 73 artists, Victory Records has 70, and Metal Blade Records takes the cake with a whopping 117 bands that are CURRENTLY on their roster! 29 bands? 29 FUCKING BANDS!? And not only that, ALL OF THEM ARE MAJOR BANDS! Listen guys, I know that since you're a mainstream metal record label, you're money-whores, it's not a secret. But I never knew that you were going to be THAT DAMN PICKY about the bands they sign! Sometimes it's a really good thing to sign underground bands because if you have a good A&R guy (hint hint!!!!) that knows good music that has potential when he/she hears it, then you'll sign unknown bands that then get your promotion therefore selling awesome records and getting you the damn money you want.

Roadrunner Records is going down the drain, and I'm hoping that all the bands that are still signed on to them are seeing that are are doing what they can to get the hell out of there. Opeth has already gone through that once, when KOCH records went out of business and got bought by a metal-hating label, Opeth was label-less until good-ol Monte Conner swept them out of the dust to then have them release their two most successful albums of their career, Ghost Reveries and Watershed (and then Heritage in 2011).

1984-2012

Been listening to this guy since 2005, damn that's almost 8 years. One of the most brutal human beings and musicians ever to live. I've been both frustrated and upset all day.

Dying Fetus Tour

Ten days after I witness the miracle known as Wintersun occur right in front of me, I will be seeing one of the best death grind/brutal death tour packages ever.

I am excited to see the bands in THIS order:

Dying Fetus (this will be my 4th time seeing them)
Cattle Decapitation (this will be my 5th time seeing them)
Cerebral Bore (this will be my 2nd time seeing them)
Malignancy

Eluveitie/Wintersun Tour

WINTERSUN IS COMING!! WINTERSUN IS COMING!! WINTERSUN IS MOTHER FUCKING COMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As much as Eluveitie loves touring, I actually have yet to see them...until December 2nd!! Honestly, I'm surprised that Wintersun isn't going on their own headlining USA tour. But what the hell, they'll still be there. I don't know much about Varg. Soooo just like the show I saw last night (Morbid Angel, Dark Funeral, Grave), I have seen NONE of these bands live before.

New Partner in Crime

Announcement:
I will now be working as one of the reviewers for the metal webzine Teeth of the Divine! Here's the thing: when I write reviews for them, I can't post the whole review on here like I do with other sites, I will be posting a clip from the review followed by a link to the full review on the Teeth of the Divine website. So far, the people on there seem to not be total assholes and know what they're talking about.
You can find their website by clicking on their link in the right-hand column under "Partners in Crime".

Anette Olzon

I've never seen metal-related news like this spread so fucking FAST! I didn't hear about The Rev's death until about a day and a half after he died! And that was HUGE!! This is not only a disappointment, it's upsetting and infuriating. Tarja was given the boot because of her ego, what could have possibly been going on this time?? Of course, the band gave the cheap half-assed instant response to the media to keep them out of their hair (for now) by saying it was because of "creative differences".

Ok, first of all, that doesn't happen on tour, bickering over "creative differences" occurs during the writing process of an album and during jam sessions. And I HIGHLY doubt that Nightwish was busy songwriting and jamming on their days off instead of catching up on much-needed sleep and doing other random shit that bands do on tour. I think that it MIGHT have something to do with Anette's child and her wanting to focus on raising her family. But I don't know, she had plenty of time off (which was a good idea) so that she could give birth to the damned thing and recover. But I can't even see THAT as being a reason to just leave/get kicked out of a band in the middle of a tour!

I haven't been this pissed since the night I had to tolerate Dave Mustaine throwing away 1/4 of his band's set so that he could just preach and tell everyone about the bible!

This is an outrage and a major deception for the world's biggest symphonic metal band. Although I strongly oppose Floor Jansen being a possible replacement, I do think that there couldn't have been a better fill-in vocalist. click the picture below to get the full-size, it's pretty big.

New Partner in Crime: Fearless Records

Looks like I have a new "partner in crime". I have just joined the street team of the awesome record label Fearless Records. They have a wide variety of genres on their repitoire including pop punk, screamo, metalcore, and rock. Some of their most notable bands (some of which I've written reviews on) include Alesana, The Word Alive, Every Avenue, blessthefall, A Skylit Drive, and Go Radio.

Carnival of Death tour 2012

I AM SO GOING TO THIS!! 

The only band on this bill that I've seen before is Decrepit Birth, and when I do, it will be my SEVENTH time seeing them! I've always wanted to go see Jungle Rot and who wouldn't want to go see death metal legends Obituary??

R.I.P. Neil Armstrong

Yeah, you all know who this motherfucker is. The first human being ever to set foot on the moon died today (I literally just heard, I don't know how he died). Wow, this is a shocker and a huge loss for...well...anyone who gives a fuck about space exploration! R.I.P. man!

2012 Conquerors of the World Tour!!!

Not only have I already got my fucking ticket to this show, I'M EXCITED AS HELL!!! I'm excited to see the bands in the following order:

Ex Deo (this will be my second time seeing them)
Inquisition
Septic Flesh
Melechesh
Krisiun (this will be my third time seeing them)

Iwrestledabearonce world tour

Will I be going to this? Well, for the top two bands, YES! Although I've heard from people that saw Iwrestledabearonce on this year's Warped Tour that the fill-in vocalist sucks ass compared to Krysta Cameron, but what the hell. I'm excited to see the bands in THIS order:

Oceano (my favorite deathcore band and this will be my second time seeing them)
Iwrestledabearonce (this will be my second time seeing them)
Within the Ruins (I don't like them, but this will be my second time seeing them)
[the others I'm equally excited about because I've never heard them]

New Tankard album? Yes please!!

Tankard just got a spot on the roster of my favorite record label, Nuclear Blast (much well deserved for the alcoholic thrashers). Make sure to pick up their new album on the 31st of this month. Click the cover below for the full-size image: