Boy, was I in for a pleasant surprise.

Patrick Devlin, singer and guitarist of Blaggards, grew up in Dublin, Ireland before moving to Houston in his early 20’s. After meeting bassist and singer Chad Smalley, the roots of a kick ass Irish rock group began to form. Rounded out by an amazing fiddler named Chris Buckley and the incredibly talented drummer Michael McAloon, Blaggards were ready to begin their goal of world domination. Blaggards have an intense show schedule this year, and head off to Ireland in March of 2010. Want to go with ‘em? Me too! We can.

Frequently compared to groups such as Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly and the Pogues, Blaggards are much more than just a Irish rock band. With undertones of Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, even Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, Blaggards bring a new and very satisfying sound to fans of all genres. There are elements of rock, folk, punk and yes, metal, in their on stage set. Their first CD, titled Standards, is so surprisingly good that I’ve yet to play it for someone that isn’t an instant fan… no matter what their favorite style of music happens to be.

I think that metal fans in general are fans of music that speaks to us, music that makes us sit up and take notice, whether tapping our toes or banging our heads, the music has to make us feel something… which is why I feel more than comfortable suggesting that all of the Metal Martyr readers give Blaggards a listen. I didn’t have my nice HD video camera with me for this show, and attempted to record a couple of their songs at night with a regular digital camera. Needless to say, the videos came out looking like The Blair Witch Project, so I won’t be posting those.

However, you can listen to one of their songs, “Drunken Sailor”, here!

Blaggards and Metal Martyr have teamed up to offer one reader a copy of Standards, their full length first release, and a bad ass Blaggards t-shirt. Entering is simple, just leave a comment below, and at 5pm CST on Monday, August 17, 2009 I will pick a random winner via random.org.

Learn more about Blaggards here:

www.blaggards.com
www.myspace.com/blaggards

Buy their CD here: www.cdbaby.com/artist/blaggards

Contest Rules:

You must be a resident of the US, and leave a valid email address when you make your comment so that I can contact the winner. One comment per person per day, please. Any duplicates will be deleted.

[image: Anna Donlan/Blaggards]

Post from: Metal Martyr

New York City’s Suicide City have released their second album on August 4th. Following their self released 2005 EP Not My Year, the new album, titled Frenzy, is a dark and powerful mix of “punk rock, dirty rock ‘n roll with some big balls of metal and a touch of manic depression thrown in.”

From their MySpace page:

With only being together for a year and a half, Suicide City has toured with MINDLESS SELF INDULGENCE, OTEP and most recently, TAKING BACK SUNDAY. The band has been voted best new band in numerous magazines and has garnered incredible reviews from KERRANG! (UK), METAL EDGE (USA), not to mention 2 cover features in The EAST COAST ROCKER and PULSE WEEKLY!

Vocalist Karl Bernholtz’s lyrics are consistently dark, dealing with attempted suicides, necrophilia, the loss of family and the revenge of an abused daughter. The songs themselves are incredibly well put together, including influences of classical music and catchy group choruses. The parallel of the lyrics and the almost hauntingly beautiful ups and downs of the song “She Waits” simply amazes me.

Frenzy has, for the foreseeable future, become one of my favorite albums. Suicide City is a band that has put together songs that in equal parts inspire, uplift, depress, and terrorize you. It’s obvious to me that a lot of feeling and personal experience went into the writing of every song on the album.

Suicide City is:

Karl Bernholtz (vocals) (ex Groovenics)
Danny Lamagna (drums)
Billy Graziadei (guitar, vocals) (ex Biohazard)
AJ Marchetta (guitar) (ex Groovenics)
Jennifer Arroyo (bass, vocals) (ex Kittie)

Contest Rules

To win an autographed copy of Frenzy, all you have to do is leave a comment below. One runner up will receive an unsigned copy of the CD. Both winners will be picked randomly when the contest ends on Friday, August 14th at 5pm CST. You must be 18 years of age and live in North America to enter. One comment per person per day, please. Good luck!

[image: Red Music]

Post from: Metal Martyr

As part of the Progressive Nation Tour, Bigelf is currently touring with Dream Theater, Zappa Plays Zappa and Scale the Summit. Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy says:

Los Angeles’ Bigelf are my personal favorite new band to come along in many years…their latest CD “Cheat The Gallows” is my favorite album of the year and I already had positioned them onto the European run of Progressive Nation in the Fall….with them now joining us on PN09 in North America as well, it looks like world domination is now not that far out of reach for them!

Bigelf has a very refreshing sound, a pleasing mix of the Beatles, Pink Floyd with a hefty dash of Black Sabbath thrown in for awesomeness. Cheat the Gallows is “30 years behind and 5 years ahead of what’s happening in music today.”

Read my review and contest details after the jump!

The album starts with “The Gravest Show on Earth”, and is an absolutely brilliant way to kick off this CD. With a beautifully dark “here comes the carnival” feel to it, I was reminded of classic Sabbath, and for some reason The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” popped into my head at one point. Brilliant.

Bigelf captures a 70’s style that I haven’t heard in a long time, and didn’t know that I was missing until now. Paying homage to some of the best artists in music history, but with a style all their own, Bigelf is set to take the stage and show us what they bring to the rock table on the following dates:

• Fri July 31st – Tower Theater – Philadelphia, PA
• Sat Aug 1st – Merriweather Post – Washington DC *
• Sun Aug 2nd – Bank Of America Pavillion – Boston, MA
• Tues Aug 4th – The Palace Theater – Albany, NY
• Wed Aug 5th – Chevrolet Theater – Wallingford, CT
• Fri Aug 7th – Convention Hall – Asbury Park, NJ
• Sat Aug 8 – Brookhaven Amphitheater – Brookhaven, NY
• Tues Aug 11th – The Agora – Quebec City, QUE
• Wed Aug 12th – Bell Center – Montreal, QUE
• Fri Aug 14th – Molson Amphitheater – Toronto, ONT
• Sun Aug 16th – The Burton Cummings Theater – Winnipeg, MAN
• Tues Aug 18th – MacEwan Hall – Calgary, AB
• Wed Aug 19th – Shaw Conference Center – Edmonton, AB
• Fri Aug 21st – The Orpheum Theater – Minneapolis, MN
• Sat Aug 22nd – Riverside Theater – Milwaukee, WI
• Sun Aug 23rd – Chicago Theater – Chicago, IL
• Tues Aug 25th – Temple Hoyne Buell Theater – Denver, CO
• Thur Aug 27th – San Jose Civic Auditorium – San Jose, CA
• Fri Aug 28th – The Joint – Las Vegas, NV
• Sat Aug 29th – The Greek Theater – Los Angeles, CA

* – Additional Special Guests on the 8/1 Washington DC show will be Queensryche (a special one-off 5 band Progressive Nation bill for 1 night only!)

Contest Entry and Rules:

You only need to leave a comment to enter the contest. One comment per reader, per day. However, to make it a bit more fun, you could watch the video below and leave your own “mini review” of Bigelf’s song “Money, It’s Pure Evil” in the comment section!

The contest will run from today (July 30) until August 6 at 5pm CST. One winner will be chosen at random from the comments section, and will be sent a copy of Bigelf’s Cheat the Gallows CD and a t-shirt (men’s sizes medium and large only). Winner must live in the U.S. or Canada to receive prizes.

(Watch the video here)

Hear the full song here! (To download the MP3, right click and choose “save as”)

[image: Amazon]

Post from: Metal Martyr

Stratovarius

When I saw the video for Deep Unknown, the opening track from the album I really wanted to go grab a bottle of wine and some crackers. The album is actually pretty good. I wasn’t sure what to expect after hearing Deep Unknown, but it’s good old fashioned power metal from across the pond.

If you don’t like power metal with keyboards and runny vocals then you won’t like this at all. Frontman Timo Kotipelto accent is a little obvious, but hell, he’s not exactly singing in his native tongue. His range is really good and he can’t really sing. The keyboards sound a little generic but still ad to the whole effect of it. You’ll hear more keyboard solos than guitar solos. The guitar rhythms are catchy and I have no complaints.

The last song on the album, When Mountains Fall is extremely sappy with violins and classical nylon string guitar. It’s a nice song if you feel like shooting yourself. No, actually it’s a beautiful song, just a little over the top for me.

Bottom line is, if you dig power metal then chances are you will dig Stratovarius’ Polaris. I don’t care what any metal elitist bastard says, it’s good. I still like Firewind about 5 times more but this is good stuff.

Image: Amazon.com

Post from: Metal Martyr

With that said, I’ve been listening to the new Hatebreed covers album, For The Lions. Hatebreed, while not adding much of their own flavor to it makes the songs, well, sound like Hatebreed doing covers. The difference is you get to hear a little variety with solos and some vocal changes from your normal Hatebreed sound, hence the title.

The Slayer cover is good, as is the Metallica cover of Escape, where you get to hear Jamie actually sing a little in the chorus. The cover of the Misfits Hatebreeder is really cool and by the way, there are solos in all the songs that would normally have solos. I mentioned awhile back that I really dig the cover of Sepultura’s Refuse/Resist and their cover of Madball’s classic Set It Of is a great tribute to the NY Hardcore vets.

All the songs on the cover album are well done. The only exception I would say is the cover of Obituary’s I’m In Pain. It’s not easy to cover and emulate Obituaries sounds, especially John Tardy’s unique vocals, so with Jasta singing it it sounds a bit strange, almost out of touch. You just don’t get that classic Tardy growl.

The great thing about cover albums is that they can often ignite interest from younger fans in to the older bands that the band has covered, especially the older, no longer existing bands. Some of the bands that some of the newer metal and hardcore fans may write off simply because that’s what “The old guys” are listening to. They may hear the cover and gain interest and go searching through back catalogs of Sepultura, Slayer, The Misfits Madball, Cro-mags, Black Flga and so on.

All in all this is a good, solid cover album that shows great tributes to the bands that influenced. Also, these aren’t songs that you’re going to find on older Hatebreed albums, singles or b-sides, like Children Of Bodom’s upcoming cover album. If you’re a Hatebreed fan you’ll enjoy For The Lions. If you’re not a Hatebreed fan and perhaps never have been then you probably haven’t even read this far anyway, so you probably won’t like it.

Post from: Metal Martyr

Malefice: Dawn Of Reprisal. More metal from the UK. Heavy abrasive rhythms with an almost hardcore sound at times. Great vocal variety without going clean. Groove/Thrashy riffs and awesome melody with some mathcore type wankery thrown in there sometimes.  Dawn Of Reprisal was released on March 3rd, 2009.

That wasn’t that far off, but it should read:

Malefice: Dawn Of Reprisal. More metal from the UK. Heavy abrasive rhythms with an almost hardcore [metal] sound at times. Great vocal variety with some clean in there here and there. Groove/Thrashy riffs and awesome melody with great riffs and rhythms.  Dawn Of Reprisal was released on March 3rd, 2009.

Perhaps I was too busy focusing on another band at the time and didn’t give this album a good listen, but I’ve listened to it twice since yesterday and I’m lovin’ it. Check out the song, perhaps one of my favorites, Hatred Justified after the jump.

Post from: Metal Martyr

Cauldron formed after the break up of Goat Horn. Jason Decay singing and playing bass, started Cauldron with Al Chambers on drums and Ian Killpatrick on lead guitar. Chambers was later replaced by Chris Rites. Caulron is currently on Earache Records and is based out of Toronto, Ontario. Now that you have the history, let’s talk really quick about the record.

If you’re in to old school heavy metal that kind of tastes like NWOBHM, then you’ll probably dig Cauldron. The singing is not over the top or anything extravagant but it’s very listinable and that’s always good, kinda 80’s-ish heavy metal without all the stupid cliche’s…oh wait. Chains, yeah chains. Chained To The Nite is only the title a chain filled album. You have Chained Up In Chains, though I don’t know what else you could be chained up in. You also have Chains Around Heaven. These guys obviously have a chain fetish. It almost comes off as kind of cheesy, but it works.

Oh yeah, and Ian Killpatrick goes by “Ian Chains”.

Ok, now that I’ve pretty much covered the lyrical content of the album, let’s talk about the guitars. A lot of triplet galloping and power chords, just how I like it. Simple, yet effective. Some melodic parts here and there but not much to gawk at, but there are some cool solos as well as bass solos and bass solos are always cool.

The biggest problem I have with this album is that some of the songs sound a little similar. Not so much that you can’t get a good transition between songs, but that the band has a very distinct sound from most anything else I’ve been listening to lately and the singing and guitar works kind of repeats itself, if not the tiniest bit.

Overall it’s a solid album and brings breath of fresh air among all the other bands on the scene. It’s not enough to make me start writing about these dudes every day, but I’ll probably give them more press as it rolls through.

Favorite Track: Dreams Die Young (see below) Here more of this album through Youtube user Thrashdeathblack168.

Image: Earache Records VIP

Post from: Metal Martyr

What I do is try to describe in the best way that I can how the music makes me feel and what it sounds like in a nut-shell. If I had some more schooled music knowledge I could probably break things down in to a more detailed review and bore the shit out of you, but I don’t so I can’t.

What you will get is a simple and mostly non-biased review and that’s it. When I can I’ll try to post a sample of the song or a link so that You can get your own feel for it and draw your won conclusion.

Post from: Metal Martyr

I’d be lying if I sat here and said that most of death metal doesn’t sound very similar, because it obviously does. We all know that over the years there has become a cookie cutter type sound that most bands follow. That doesn’t necessarily make the music bad, it just makes the bands that define themselves by sounding slightly different than everyone else sound a lot better and on a higher plane.

Lay Down Rotten’s Gospel Of The Wretched is good ole’ death metal to the tune of a European style, but doesn’t seem to break the mold.

What I do really dig about Lay Down Rotten is the fact that they aren’t trying to be too technical, too fast. The riffs flow exceptionally well and you may draw a bit comparison, sound-wise to Amon Amarth at some points.

The duel guitars of vocalist/guitarist Daniel Jakobi and guitarist Nils Förster seta  rhythm in every song that works well and doesn’t feel like an entangled ball of string. The solos aren’t at light-speed and they sound like they have a lot of feeling to them unlike some of the ridiculously nimble fingered solos that plague a lot of technical death metal these days.

Uwe Kilian’s bass playing is mixed in to their sound without is really showcasing him at all, but he’s in there laying it down right alongside the rhythm guitar and keeping the bottom end tight. Timo Claason’s drumming sounds as good as any respectable death metal drummer. Daniel Jacobi’s vocals are a deep, flemmy, throaty growl that certainly goes well with the music.

The stand out track that I really dig on this album are Thy Won’t Be Done. Thy Won’t Be Done has a slower, doom-groove at the beginning that I really dig and then picks up in to a fast, furious rhythm and in turn back to a groove with a killer solo a little more than half way through it.

Other cool tracks are Beyond Damnation, another cool track with groove ridden triplets and a nice bridge to it. When All Becomes Nothing is a pretty sick track as well.

Overall, Lay Down Rotten’s Gospel Of The Wretched is a standard death metal album with a solid, talented line up of good metal musicians. I wouldn’t call Gospel’ anything elite or epic among other death metal or metal releases of 2009 in general, but it’s not bad by any stretch.

Gospel Of The Wretched was recorded at Desert Inn studios in Edingen, Germany. It was mixed and mastered by Swede Dan Swano who is well known in the European death metal scene. LDR have set a date of May 12 for the release of Gospel.

You can pre-listen to 5 of the tracks off of the disc at Metalblade.de.

Image: Metal Blade Records

Post from: Metal Martyr

I picked up the new Heaven And Hell album today and I almost fell asleep on the ride home while listening to it. I was waiting for that one track to jolt me, to kick me in the pants but it never came. I know Black Sabbath and Dio fans alike are probably jizzing all over this thing, but it just sounds very tired to me.

When I say tired I mean slow and stretched out. I’m not saying it’s bad because there are a lot of cool riffs and signature Tony Iommi solos. RJD’s vocals sound good, as does Geezer Butler’s bass playing. Vinnie Appice’s drumming sounds programmed and slow but I only think that’s because it just sounds all too slow.

If they had kicked up the speed about 5 to 8 more beats per second I think I would have more good things to say about The Devil You Know. In fact, I ripped it using Windows Media Player and then played it at an increased speed of 1.5 X and I liked it a lot better.

I was really looking forward to this album and wouldn’t spend the money on it just to give it a bad review but I think I was expecting it to sound a bit more lively. Perhaps with time I can learn to appreciate it, but for now I’m just not feeling it.

(Image: Amazon.com)

Post from: Metal Martyr