This is just a quick brief to showcase a little information about this years Triton Festival which is a Gothic and Industrial Music event being put out there by the creeptastic folks who go bump in the night – VampireFreaks.com – As many of my PiercingMetal readers enjoy the Industrial side of life almost as much (or even more so in some cases) than their Traditional Metal stuff I wanted to be sure to get this on your radar.

The event shall be held in NYC and for three days in September (5th, 6th, and 7th respectively), the assembled hordes of the VampireFreaks.com shall take over not one but two great venues. Yep. This event is going to be so massive that it will start at The Gramercy Theatre on Thursday and continue its second two nights over at Irving Plaza and bring its denizens darkly to its resounding finale. There are a score of bands performing across the three days and also plenty of DJ sets to keep you busy between the changeovers. The bands seem to keep getting added every time I hit the page. All of their page links and a little more about them can be observed on the Official Festival link below. Rather than duplicate their efforts I figured it best to just send you over there. The main site page is also the best place to get your hands on some tickets. It’s too early to know if I will be braving the Industrial storm at any point but if I do I shall surely share my findings with you on the site and blogs.

Click HERE to purchase tickets

Official Links:
VampireFreaks.com: http://www.vampirefreaks.com
Triton Festival: http://www.tritonfestival.com

Perhaps you don’t know about the bands that are performing at the Festival and could use a little push to their offerings to further entice you. Should this be the case, I have embedded a few links to items that are available on Amazon.com

It’s that time of year once again when music fans of all types head out to the area record shops in search of trinkets and limited time only special editions from their favorite bands. Even though I’ve long ago become a CD only type of music fan, I still have a healthy number of my old records and fondly remember the pleasure that they gave to me while playing them. Of course a lot of my friends and site readers are still avid fans and go exploring on a day like today so I’ve made sure to set this little reminder up for their edification.

The site below brings you to the official page for Record Store Day and its here that you can no only search for items that are interesting to you and this year you can even download an App for your iPhone or Droid device. The links for that is right on the main page so be sure to do it. One of the things that sometimes takes place on Record Store Day are special live musical performances or just appearances so you might want to keep an eye out for those as well. Depending on what I find happening in my Metropolis and how it relates to a heavier side of music I might just end up with more writing to do. That is never a bad thing at the end of the day. So I wish all of you LP explorers a good find today and hope you have a blast.

Official Website: http://www.recordstoreday.com/Home

A few years ago, I was a writing contributor to the late great Metal Edge magazine in addition to running the PiercingMetal site and one of the assignments that I was tasked with during this time was to find a “Metal Mecca” for a feature article. “Metal Meccas” focused on specialty shops that were dedicated to the Heavy Metal music scene and its products and I could think of no better place than Steve Keeler’s Rock Fantasy Hard Rock & Heavy Metal Specialty Shop up in Middletown, NY. New readers to our offerings can enjoy that piece by clicking HERE.

(continue reading…)

You readers already know how much I love sharing the cool musical freebies that the folks at Scion A/V keep dishing out and with that being the case I wanted to take a moment to showcase the full lineup and poster from their annual Rock Fest. The information was just released that the mighty Testament will co-headline the show with The Melvins and if that is not an interesting pairing I don’t know what is.

As you can see by the poster there are a LOT of interesting and amazing bands playing together at this thing, and just in case your eyes are getting like my own here is the full on rundown of the performers: Testament. Melvins. Municipal Waste, Whitechapel, The Obsessed, Corrosion Of Conformity, The Casualties, Negative Approach, Pallbearer, Six Feet Under, Impaled, Vision Of Disorder, Royal Thunder, Vektor, Arsis, A Life Once Lost, Touche Amore, Code Orange Kids, The Gates Of Slumber, Hot Lunch, Rotting Out, The Shrine, Ice Dragon, Call Of The Void, Subrosa, Gigan, ANCIIENTS, Dirty Streets, Inter Arma, Complete Failure, Indian Handcrafts and Noisem…..whew. A little of everything that is for sure.

The other thing our readers know about my postings and I is that we love hitting the Metal shows. It’s almost an addiction at this point in some sense but this particular event will be taking place in Memphis, TN so I don’t really think that I will be there. It surely sounds like fun, but its a little tricky to figure out personally at this time. Maybe something will change my mind and I will head down South for some good old Metal and definitely some regional tourism because I have a lot of time to decide with this affair being in June . If we go, you can count on some review stuff, and if not, I am sure there will be tons across the web for everyone to enjoy.

Official Website: http://www.scionav.com/event/566/Scion-Rock-Fest-2013

Perhaps by now you’ve heard of the HBO Original Series “Game Of Thrones”, the show based on the “A Song Of Ice And Fire” novels by George R.R. Martin; If not, well, that is a quick note on it. The show has been gathering acclaim since it began back in 2011 and tells the story of feuding clans and the world upon which they walk. It’s loaded with intrigue and action packed battles and plenty of characters that you will either love or hate from the moment you begin to watch.

Click Banner for Exhibit Site

(continue reading…)

Lamb Of God’s Randy Blythe (11/2009)

I woke up this morning to a barrage of posts about Lamb Of God’s singer Randy Blythe being found Not Guilty of Involuntary Manslaughter in the Czech Republic and while this news is awesome, let’s ever forget that the whole story stemmed from a tragic and very unnecessary accident during one of the bands shows in the region. The young fan of the band, Daniel Nosek, is still dead and while the larger opinion is that his injuries were as result of his own actions, it still sucks that a fan eventually died after a show. My hope is that this shines a beacon of light on how to behave at shows among the millions of fans that see them. Be careful, don’t do anything stupid during or before/after a show, and the biggest of them all……STAY OFF THE STAGE. Its not your domain, its the bands and its dangerous. That’s all my soapboxing. Oh the shot above was taken by me in 2009 when the band was opening for Metallica at MSG. In case you wondered.

I copied Randy’s statement from his Instagram account where he says “I have been found not guilty & acquitted of all charges against me. I am a free man. This photo was taken by my friend @aceyslade- it says it all. Please remember the family of Daniel Nosek in your thoughts & prayers in this difficult time. I only wish for them peace. Thank you for your support- Randy” but I did not copy the photo. You should Follow his account on http://instagram.com/drandallblythe/ because its pretty amazing.

My hope is that no snags or appeals come up about this case and that Randy remains free. Stay safe my friends.

Most of my readers know how I regularly call into the Heavy Metal Mayhem Radio Show which is a Blog Talk Radio feature and hosted by Mike “The Big Cheeze” Catricola; If you don’t, well, I guess now you do. That being said, the other day Mike invited me to tag along to a private function being held at the Terroir Wine Bar in the Murray Hill section of NYC. According to Mike, it was a “Heavy Metal Night”, and they were also celebrating an anniversary of some kind at the establishment.

Welcome To “Wine Is Terroir” in Murray Hill NYC

Tonight I was finalizing all those “New Year’s Music Resolutions for 2013″ and decided to tool around Facebook for a little while and I saw a posting that two of my friends had shared. So thanks to both Nick and Eddie for catching my attention on this and once I delved into yon link I knew I just had to share this in a posting on the Musings with some additional thoughts. The subject is the Mechanical Metal band known as “Compressorhead” and rather than explain exactly what that means right now, I will let this video do the splaining for me. Check it out, as its hella awesome.

Now as a lifelong comic book fan, I love heroic things, robots, technology and as the Metal head I love uhm….Metal, so when you put all these things together the result is very obviously awesome. What bums out the music journalist in me is the fact that the group does not seem to be stateside and is instead something being done over in Australia. I thought that I wanted to see the Finnish Dinosaur Metal band a lot but this one has stepped up the interest level for me, and I would so love to be doing this whole “Metal Scribe” thing at one of their shows. It surely looks like a blast from a jet engine. Alright that is all I have for you fine folks now. Check out their official website to learn more. It’s really cool stuff.

Official Website: http://compressorheadband.com/

THIS JUST IN!!!!

I observed this on someone’s Facebook page earlier today and am sharing the information with The Metal Republic because a number of the bands that I know around the scene have booked shows there and were looking forward to doing more. This apparently took place the other day so please read on.

“Attention all our ARENA QUEENS fans & friends: Due to circumstances beyond our control, the City Marshall has padlocked and shut down Arena. We have worked diligently with the Marshall & Landlord and tried everything in our power to keep the club open during this unfortunate process, but to no avail. This is not to say that we will not get the club back open at a future date at this location, or possibly another location, but for right now the doors are shut.

We thank all our fans and friends who have supported us over the last 7 months, our wonderful staff, all the bands, promoters, DJs etc that helped make this a great place to perform and hang out at! We will keep you posted, so watch this page for any future announcements regarding ARENA QUEENS!!!”

Official Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/ArenaQueens

Sadly I had not yet been out there for a show as the schedule did not allow it but it’s always terrible to see a promising space go away but such is the way we find the scene today. I imagine that any inquiries about this matter can be directed to the venue via their Facebook Page which I have linked above for your use.

Just a little while ago I was tooling around my Facebook news feed when I should have been doing something else and learned of an absolutely surprising fact. Apparently, the Sam Ash Music stores that now reside on West 48th Street, a region most famously known as “Music Row” for decades, will be closing up these spaces and heading down to 34th Street around the Penn Station area. They’ll be consolidating all of the shops that now fill this street into one gigantic location.

Now this is not going to happen immediately or overnight so don’t worry music fans because you should still have some time to go to shop and absorb this in the same fashion that many of us used to do as musicians time and time again. It’s going to be a little bit of a process as they get the new space into proper shape to house all of their unique stores. I read how the brass, winds, and drums stores will be the first of the group to move to the new location. They’ll obviously be followed by the guitars and other electronics which seem to be their biggest batch of things offered and while the new place might be awesome to behold I could not help getting a little nostalgic about the news. Here’s why.

As a youth growing up way back when, heading over to Music Row was something I did with my bands or just other musicians I knew and we would get there almost at the stores opening and stay in the region all damned day. Back then it was more than just Sam Ash Music occupying almost all of the retail space and was instead places like Alex Music, Manny’s Music, We Buy and even Electro-Harmonix. This area was like being loose in the toy shop if you played music and if you were a regular you often got to meet many great people who worked at the places and if you were lucky you just might have run into a famous musician of some kind if they happened to be in town and needed something. As a drummer I first used to go to the Professional Percussion Center which I think was around the corner or close by but not exactly on Music Row. Sadly they ripped me and pretty much all their other customers off in what became some big legal brouhaha and after this I became a strictly Sam Ash and Manny’s dude. I loved going into Manny’s because they had all the photos of the bands that were signed and hanging on literally every inch of wall space that you would look at. As a Hard Rock and Metal fan I always smiled a little more when I saw the photos of KISS, Scorpions, Motley Crue and Van Halen along with many more of this kind. Eventually Manny’s would close and Sam Ash Music would take them over. They kept the name for a short time to transition I guess.

This was how you did it if you played anything and needed something for your arsenal. You could likely go to a more local neighborhood shop but that was not the same to a lot of people in my circle. Remember that for us older musicians, there was no online ordering yet. Oh the humanity you must be saying. According to the news that I have read, the Sam Ash building with the parking lot next to it will be torn down and in its space will come a………….condominium (where you expecting something else). I’ll def head over to the new space when its all ready to go, but it’s really kind of sad to know how something that was so unique and so memorable will be a fading memory sooner than we think.

Have any cool stories from Music Row? Please consider leaving them in the comments section.