California’s Facedown fest will take place on April 3rd and 4th this year at The Glasshouse in Pamona, California. So far the bands that have been confirmed for the show are as follows:

Friday

Sleeping Giant, War Of Ages, For Today, Wrench IN The Works, Take It Back!, The Great Commission, Hands and My Epic

Saturday

Impending Doom, xDEATHSTARx, A Plea For Purging, No Innocent Victim, Call To Preserve, Earth From Above, Thieves And Liars, A Hope From Home, Hope For The Dying and The Reckoning.

You can get your tickets at Ticketmaster for $15 for a single day or $25 for a two day pass. For more information on the bands on the roster, visit Facedownrecords.com.

Image: Facedown Records

I swung by FYE today to pick up Austrian Death Machine (Which kicks ass, but I’ll get to that later this week) and I had two other cds that I wanted…ok, there was a sh*tload that I wanted and they were all good but I didn’t want to drop $200 in cds. Anyway, I had White Chapel and War Of Ages in my hands. Now for some odd reason I chose to take home the War Of Ages and not White Chapel. I kinda wished I had chosen White Chapel but I’m still cool with War Of Ages.

I’m basically going to break it down like this. If you like As I Lay Dying and Haste The Day and you like Jesus too, then you will dig War Of Ages Arise And Conquer. Even if you’re not a hardcore Christian or a Christian at all you might still like these guys. It was produced by Tim Lambesis of As I Lay Dying and his track record is getting pretty good so far.

White Chapel will be bought this weekend.

Way Too Loud recently interviews As I Lay Dying’s Drummer Jordan Mancino. They discussed everything from his new handle bar mustache, shooting videos and touring with satanic bands such as Behemoth. Here are a few excerpts.

WTL: Well, since the first new thing I’m noticing is the handle bar mustache, you’ve got to explain that. It’s huge! You look like a Hell’s Angel!

Jordan: (Laughs) I was growing a beard in December, and then we had a photo shoot for DW ( the drum company), and I didn’t want a beard for that, so I shaved it into a moustache just for fun, and it just kind of grew on me for a couple of days. They were digging it, so I was like “Sweet!” Then they said they wanted me to do a commercial too! It’s been cool because it’s getting me work!

WTL: The video for “Nothing Left” debuted recently. What’s it like shooting a video, especially from the position of the drummer? And does Tim scream or lip-sync?

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I was scanning through CD Warehouse today looking for something new and interesting, neither of which was easily found due to the massive amount of crap this place has. I was looking through the “D’s” to see what Danzig or Dream Theater CDs they had and I came across xDEATHSTARx ‘We Are The Threat’ on Facedown Records. Curiosity got the best of me so I asked to sample it. xDEATHSTARx is nothing new (been around for 6 years) or epic but they have a cool hardcore sound to them as if they got a lot of influence from Hatebreed. Basically if you dig Hatebreed you will dig xDEATHSTARx. With three singers you get a little bit of variety in the vocals. xDEATHSTARSx’s myspace introduces themselves as so:

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Back when I first started this blog I had a two part post about how metal has been deemed the Devil’s music and how a lot of the gimmick behind metal is Satan and about anti religion lyrics. I also said something about how Christian metal isn’t exactly “Flying off of the shelves”. I was wrong!

While metal is still deemed the Devil’s music there are a lot of Christian metal bands out there that you really wouldn’t know were spiritual if you didn’t read into it. Read more