Lebowskii hand new EP for special price

Just recently Grip Inc. came back to my mind. Having looked through their releases I asked if any band out there would have taken up their path...

Looks like my question has been answered. The preview track of the coming EP of Lebowskii shoots out the same agressive yet very detailed look towards sharp, compact riffage rounded out with some own nice ideas that shine every here and there. The drumming also goes in that direction going a bit abroad the standard pattern every here and there. Thankfully the vocals are rough but not to over screamed.

In addition to that the band has set up a special pre-order price with their label Music Records from France. From January 16th till February 15th, "Liquidators" will be available as a Digipack hardcopy for 4,50 € instead of 7€ on the webstore of Music-Records.

Lebowskii Liquidators promo banner, (c) by Lebowskii, used with kind permission

Lebowskii will be on tour to promote their new EP in 2018 and 2019. Make sure to check their Facebook account for details.

80s Thrashers Aggravator stream full album "Populace Destructor"

Do you often browse through your record collection and find yourselves picking the old school thrash albums from back in the 80s? The production on these albums was often done in a much more dirty and rough way. The songs were harder and directer, this feeling of shred coming directly from the speakers was far more present then it is these days.

If you stick to albums like Overkills "Taking Over" then this album "Populace Destructor" from american old school thrashers Aggravator is for you. Listening to it this album took me way back to the time when I discovered this genre and started to liked it more and more. Besides the mentioned reference to Overkill the sound is also influenced by early Sepultura, Kreator and Slayer. Aggravator proudly shared the stage with such gods like King Diamond, Toxic Holocaust, Exodus, Incantation, Suffocation, Autopsy... among others!

(c) by Aggravator, used with kind permission

The cool thing is that we can let you all out there have a listen to the full album right here, so enjoy some classic thrash now.


The album was originally released already in 2014 but has been re-released on 10th October 2015 by Dead Center Productions to extend the distribution on the European side, and to reach all the fans who could miss this piece of thrash. You can buy the full album from the webshop of the band or have a look on the label's Facebook presence.

Mike Portnoy uses Hello Kitty drumset to play metal classics

You don't need to have much equipment to play some nice drum tracks. ;-) 
This video is quite a nice idea.

What can you play on a children's drumset? Let's say you've got some sort of Snare, one Hang-Tom and a Bass-Drum with a single pedal as well as one Splash cymbal. Does it work to play some metal classics upon such a limited set? Check out the video below and you'll know. :-) Just one hint: Slayer's Raining Blood works!
Thanks for putting out so much fun Mike Portnoy!

Legendary thrash metal band Kontra from Italy reunites

I love Thrash! Yeah, legendary thrahsers Testament printed this saying once on one of their band T-Shirts. I'm very happy to be able to say there is a active underground scene alive these days that constantly provides us with fresh stuff from the heavier and straighter side of Heavy Metal.

Recently I've received a message that one of the legendary thrash underground acts from Naples, Italy did reunite.

They are called Kontra and did exist from 1999 to 2007. The band influenced both by Bay Area Thrash and by German Thrash Metal now has a new line-up of 3 members which the only original one is the singer/rhythm guitarist and founder of the band Marco Barraco.

(c) by Kontra, used with kind permission

Kontra played live on many stages in Naples and suburbs producing also 2 demos: “Strike Zero” in 2003 limited to only 100 copies,and ‘’Demo 2005’’ never published because the band splitted up. The band has been influeneced by acts like Metallica,Slayer,Kreator,Sodom,Destruction, Venom,Sepultura (the old ones), and Motörhead.

I'm looking forward to see what the band will do next and keep you guys out there updated on the further progress. In the meantime you can also hold an eye on Kontra's Facebook page by hitting the famous like button on their site.

Southern Front ask the sense of revenge in their new video

Southern Front are a purely thrash-determined band from Austin, Texas. For all of you guys out there loving Testament, Slayer and Pantera this band will be a fest. They've recently released a brand new video for the track "Face down" taken from the new album "Death Throes".

(c) by Southern Front, used with kind permission

The great thing is that the track reminds me a lot of Testament in their phase while they released "Low". It's pure power going straight forward with clear, yet very hard vocals in the style of Pantera. This mixture goes very heavy but the double axe guitar players add a lot with the traditional yet also technical and skilled playing technique reminding me of the old Slayer songs.

A cool feature is that both play left-handed something you don't see very often but it looks great. Another cool thing is that the video tells a story and and leaves one with a surprise behind.
It's in my eyes the question if revenge really makes sense at all in life... But best of all you can check it out for yourselfs:


The band is going to start a new mini-tour cycle in their hometown area in Texas already starting TODAY. Here are the dates:

March 7th. @ Dirty Dog Austin TX.

March 21st. @ Sweetwater Austin TX.

April 17th. @ Fitzgerald's San Antonio TX.

May 22nd. Arcadia Bar & Grill Houston TX.

Follow the further band activities on Facebook or check out their official homepage.

CD Review: MONSTER - The Arrival

Note: If you have a own band or project that you think might fit in well here for a review or as a presentation / introduction please drop me a line or two in a E-Mail.  Please see my profile for my E-Mail adress. I appreciate new suggestions very much!

If you're having troubles writing in English please send me a E-Mail in your preferred language or use the free Google Translator to transfer your message to English. I also use that tool, it's of course not perfect but I think it will mostly likely work out for our purposes.

Short introduction

MONSTER started as a band in the summer of 2011. All members had some experience that they brought in from their previous bands so they knew they wanted to do something in the Thrash metal direction. They released their first demo back in 2013 as a free download through the streaming and download plattform Soundcloud. After some time guitarist Dimi Weis left the band but was replaced some time after with Klaas Olthoff. The band has released their first full length album in Juli 2014 on Souncloud also free of charge for everybody to pick up.

Short Summary / Player / Download Link

The album is great, there's absolutely no doubt for me. They remind me a lot of the old Slayer but with a sound of today's Testament and some decent Death metal influences. The sound is heavy, dark but also melodic and most of all it is a very diverse and versatile record if you give it some proper rounds of listening.

You will discover that besides the obvious brutal elements there are a lof of fine subtile elements put inside this piece of music that make it well worth your time. Even if you have a limited download amount I strongly recommend to pick it up. It's fully professionell produced and recorded and comes without taking a cent out of your pockets.


Update 2014/11/20: Finally there's a chance to get a original copy of the album on a physical CD! You can order your CD by sending a Email to the band at monsterorder@gmx.de  One CD will cost you 7 Euro including shipping and handling when you live in germany, worlwide higher shipping fees have to be count in. A CD costs 9 Euro when you order to a adress outside of germany.

Please also consider to share the word on it and/or give the band's Facebook page a like at least in return. They also have proper band T-Shirts and girlies to order for a low price so you may support the band that way if you like. You can ask them directly via E-Mail for more details. Besides that you can also follow them on Soundcloud.

Festival footage online and on TV

The festival season is once more upon us. :-) Also the weather here in germany is a quite mixed thing right now it's time to celebrate the music we all love and adore together with other people while having a little party with it. If you know of more stuff that is up on TV or online please let me know though a comment or email. I'd like to put up as much stuff here as possible.

Vainstream Festival 2012

Some festivals are already over and TV stations have been there to capture some footage of what happened. One of them is iMusic 1 with their show iMusic rocks show. They recently took a look at the Vainstream festival and came back with some interviews and interview stuff (e.g. with Slayer). You can watch it online at their website. It's only 30 minutes long but worth watching it.

Rock Hard Festival 2012

Another TV station here in germany is the WDR. They did visit the Rock Hard festival 2012 here in Germany and will show tonight a cut-together of interview and concert stuff. After that they will also show 2 best of's of the shows from Graveyard and Unisonic. The exact time-table goes as follows:

Sunday to Monday, 15. upon 16. Juli 2012

00.15h Rock Hard Festival 2012
02.15h GRAVEYARD
02.45h UNISONIC

All times are german times. More info on this broadcast (in german) can be found here. In case they should add the stuff afterwards to their archive I'll put the exact links here up,too.

Update 2012/07/16: Happily they did upload the videos! Just click on the links to open a new window with the video in it.

Rock Hard Festival 2012 

Graveyard

Unisonic

Additionally you can watch stuff from the past 2011 Rock Hard festival and also from the 2010 RH festival stuff is still watchable online.

Update 2012/07/16: Just got the info that Heavy Metal Home TV has also taken some footage at the festival and did upload it to youtube for watching. The video is about half a hour long and features the following bands (each one contributes one full song to the vid):

TURBONEGRO, KVELERTAK, KRISIUN, RAM, DEATHFIST



Wacken Open Air 2012

Will there be a stream this year? I have no concrete info about this yet. At least the german TV station zdf kultur has announced to broadcast a four hour special on 4th August 2012, starting at 20h (german time). Maybe the NDR may do a stream. Their Wacken sub-page is still up and running so chances might be they'll do a stream. Let's keep the fingers crossed.

Update 2012/07/27:
There will be a internet livestream from the Wacken 2012 Festival! The following bands already confirmed that their shows will be shown online: Overkill, Dimmu Borgir, U.D.O. und Hammerfall.

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday the stream will be online, starting at 18h (german time) and end at 1h in the night. On Sunday their will be a stream up from some shows of the previous days that hasn't been shown in the time before. More details like the full time-table will follow in the next days. I'll update the related post on the frontpage of my blog when new info arrives, so stay tuned for more!

The internetstream can be seen at this site of the german TV station NDR, thanks to them that they will give us the possibility to take part of this great event also in 2012!

Update 2012/08/03:
ZDF kultur will broadcast some of the shows live through their TV station on 4th August 2012. The following bands will be shown at the mentioned german time:

20.00 Uhr, Amon Amarth (LIVE!)

21.25 Uhr, Volbeat

22.50 Uhr, Scorpions (LIVE!)

23.15 Uhr, Machine Head (LIVE!)

Update 2012/08/05: ZDF kultur has put the video for this online, full four hours of live-stuff!!!
But hurry, it's only up for a week. 

The highlight shows in the week after the Wacken Open Air will contain the following bands at the mentioned days with german timeframe:

Update 2012/08/07: Seems like every show will be added to the on-demand-archive of the TV station for free watching after the broadcast so I'll add the links here as fast as I can. Just click on the desired show and a new window with the chosen on-demand stream will appear. :-) But hurry, every video is only up for a week. Enjoy!


6. August, 17.55 Uhr: Sepultura & Les Tambours du Bronx

7. August, 17.55 Uhr: Hammerfall

8. August, 17.55 Uhr: D.A.D und The Boss Hoss

9. August, 17.55 Uhr: Saxon

10. August, 18 Uhr: Dimmu Borgir & Orchestra

13. August, 17.55 Uhr: Edguy

14. August, 17.55 Uhr: Testament

15. August, 17.55 Uhr: Ministry

16. August 17.55 Uhr: In Extremo

17. August, 18 Uhr: In Flames

More info on the timetable regarding the broadcast on german TV station zdf kultur and the highlight shows can be found on this site  

The TV NDR station has put up the full Show from Cirle II Cirle for seven days on the Wacken subpage. The band performed Savatage's "The wake of Magellan" album in it's entirely so it's something very special.  

Update 2012/08/12: The german Metal Hammer magazine has put together some nice links as a media review shwoing what german magazine's and TV stations did report about the WOA: See the clipping with all the links attached right here. 

Update 2012/10/19: Meanwhile the german documentary "Heavy Metal trifft Karniggels" has been uploaded to this location. Having taken a look at the stuff it seems to me that the documentary stuff has been left in but the videos from the band performances have been cut out. Guess that's because of legal rights missing to stream this stuff. Anyway, nice they did put this one up at least as (optional HD) flash videos and additionally also as Windows Media Stream in three qualities.If you want to know more about the director Detlev Buck, there is another german sub-website from NDR station describing his life and work quite in detail.

In addition to this they also did set up a subpage with all the performances of the bands that played at the "Wacken metal battle" Contest. So if you saw a band there that you liked a lot or just wanna checkt out some fresh new bands, this is the place for you to go. I counted 17 videos on that page. Great so see they support young bands that much.

AREA 4 festival

There was a stream online and now some of the shows are online. Check my corresponding post for details on where to see the stuff. 


Hellfest 2012

German TV station Arte did broadcast a documentation about this Open Air located in France with it's very mixed line-up. It's nicely done, with much livemusic, interviews and some personal insights into the time the both reporters spend at the festival. Check out the movie here. It will be online for about a week. (added the link on August 5th 2012).

Omas Teich Festival 2012

A smaller festival in the eastfrisian region (northern) of germany with mostly Independent band and the like, mostly not with metal bands. ZDF kultur will broadcast a cut-together on 28th Juli 2012, starting at 20h (german time) and some specials in the week after the festival. Read the (german) announcement here. You can get more info about the festival on the official homepage.

Melt, Isle of Wight,Hurricane and Berlin Festival

Besides all of this the ZDF has some concert footage of Melt, Isle of Wight,Hurricane and Berlin Festival in their mediathek service currently online, but only for a week. Go here and click on the image to choose your desired festival stuff.

Graspop Metal Meeting 2012

Adrenaline Mob have uploaded two pro-shot videos of their performance at the Graspop Metal Meeting. Nice stuff, check it out below for yourselfes.