Horror-score fans, your long wait is finally coming to an end. For the first time ever, Italian prog icons Goblin (Suspiria, Dawn of the Dead) are touring North America this October. Even better? They’re joined by the genre-defying Secret Chiefs 3.
Last year, long-running metal super-group Down released the first of a sprawling four-part EP series. Aptly titled IV, the releases — the rest of which come in 2013 or later — are meant to comprise a massive new album, and the first takes the band’s Black Sabbath influences to a rawer and darker place.
Singer, songwriting contributor, and former Pantera vocalist Phil Anselmo — who teams with members of Corrosion of Conformity, Eyehategod, and Crowbar in Down — joined us to talk about soaring vocals, his home studio, and that unapologetic Sabbath influence.
Heavy metal has always paired well with horror. The album covers, the lyrical content, the feeding of celebrities to your god on stage (thanks, GWAR!) — it all lends itself to an image of fear and darkness. Well, Phil Anselmo of Down and Pantera is taking things to their logical conclusion.
Last month ALARM presented its 50 favorite albums of 2012, an eclectic, rock-heavy selection of discs that were in steady rotation in our downtown-Chicago premises. Now, to give some love to tunes that were left out, we have our 50 (+5) favorite songs of last year — singles, B-sides, EP standouts, soundtrack cuts, and more.
For a super-group like Down — formed from members of Pantera, Corrosion of Conformity, Crowbar, and Eyehategod — what’s more fitting than assembling a Voltron-style album out of four epic EPs?
Clocking in at a weighty 33 minutes (what many consider a full-length these days), Down IV Part I: The Purple EP is less a return than it is a first repayment — starting to make good to its fans for another five-year wait between albums.
The high-intensity pop-rock duo Sleigh Bells emerged in 2009 with power-packed guitar riffs that were coupled by sweet female vocals. The video for “Demons,” off of January’s metal-infused Reign of Terror, makes a strong argument for why this is one band you should see live.
Since 2007, the Portland Cello Project has taken the cello where few have gone before, offering chamber and string-based renditions of movie themes, pop songs, classical pieces, and more — even metal tunes such as Pantera’s “Mouth for War.” The group’s live and recorded output now boasts more than 900 pieces, varying between straightforward arrangements with a handful of cellos to setups of grandiose proportions, with a dozen of its namesake instrument being supported by full choirs, winds, and percussion.
[audio:http://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/06-New-Beginnings.mp3|titles=Harm’s Way – New Beginnings]
Though ostensibly affiliated with the hardcore scene, Harm’s Way has moved into the primitive, mid-paced territory of death-metal bands like Bolt Thrower and Asphyx. Originally formed in 2005 as a power-violence band in the vein of Crossed Out and Infest, Harm’s Way has become slower and more metallic with each of its releases. Isolation, its second full-length recording, is a definitive statement for the band, cementing its vision of the possibilities in heavy music.
Hardcore and metal have fed off of each other for decades. In the early and mid-1980s, Metallica, Celtic Frost, and other pioneering bands cited not only the new wave of British heavy metal as an influence, but also hardcore bands like Discharge. Since then, there has been a two-way street between the metal and hardcore communities, with New York-based hardcore bands like the Cro-Mags and Madball clearly borrowing ideas on heaviness from death-metal bands, and a band like Obituary claiming Merauder as an influence.
Jarboe, a rare female crusader of the male-dominated metal scene, developed her formidable, performance-art-inspired presence as a member of influential no-wave band Swans.
Down: Down IV: Part 1, The Purple EP (WMG, 9/18/12)
