Since I’ve started to try and use the PiercingMetal Musings blog to showcase some of the larger tour news, this recent event was an absolutely must discuss with you as I was super curious what you all thought about the news. Here we go.

The other day the press release came out which announced that the one and only Metallica would be headlining a festival of their own creation with the people of C3 Presents and this would go under the moniker of “Orion Music Festival and More”. The music part is pretty self explanatory but the “and more” is apparently slated for the aspect of “lifestyle and arts”. The press release stated that Metallica would of course headline both nights of this two-day festival and across the span of the nights would perform “Ride The Lightning” and “The Black Album” in their entirety.

The event is technically a one time only affair over the course of two nights and shall take place on Bader Field in Atlantic City, NJ. The dates are June 23, and 24th so hopefully it will be a nice Summer day close to the beach so fans can enjoy that as well. The roster of bands performing at the inaugural festival are listed below and I have to admit that it sounds a little strange.

Metallica
Arctic Monkeys
Avenged Sevenfold
Modest Mouse
The Gaslight Anthem
Cage The Elephant
Fucked Up
Best Coast
Hot Snakes
Titus Andronicus
Gary Clark, Jr.
Lucero
Roky Erickson
The Black Angels
The Sword
A Place to Bury Strangers
Liturgy

So what do you think? Any issues with the selection of groups. When I look at them all in a row I think that the only bands that hold any appeal to me are Avenged Sevenfold and The Sword (outside of Metallica of course). The rest might be good but I have never followed any of them nor really have an interest in dealing with a full day affair to see for the hefty price of the ticket. The show looks to set fans back about $175 for General Admission for the two days. When speaking of the lineup roster drummer Lars Ulrich compared it to looking at each band members Ipods based on the overall diversity and while that is an interesting premise, I don’t think that the traditional Metal head is looking for diversity as much as they are looking for a kick ass Metal show. There are so many starving acts out there as well as groups that only 25% of the people are aware of thanks to the limited exposure. Something like this could have found Metallica being the heralds of a new generations Ozzfest. Clearly Europe has us beat to a pulp when it comes to Festival rosters. Now I realize that I must sound closed minded in this viewpoint but come on, a band like Gaslight Anthem and Modest Mouse while interesting to some should not be on a festival under Metallica more than lets say a Firewind or Sonata Arctica. There are dozens more I can name but I don’t really want to get myself mad. Even at its worst it was always great that Ozzfest was a Heavy Metal event. Maybe Metallica should have done a fan poll to see who they wanted.

I would love to know what you all think of this so please speak up in the comments section.

Links:
Metallica: http://www.metallica.com
Orion Music Festival: http://www.orionmusicandmore.com/

As our readers know, we have been offering up some reviews of the recent crop of comics from the DC Comics line and adding them to our ever expanding Comic Booking It narratives and Convention Adventures coverages. Doing that sort of thing made this little bit of news something that I wanted to share with you all since it seems that we have come to a time when the illustrious DC Comics is opting to change their logo. I did some internet searching and downloaded some publicly available images of their logos from across the years and will offer up a little homage to them all as we approach the company newness. This has been covered by a number of other comics centric bloggers but I felt like tossing my own thoughts into the mix as well. Here is the company’s first one from 1940. Around this time the world at large had only recently heard of the mighty Superman and fantastic detective Batman. That must have been way cool to have such interesting new characters coming to life on the illustrated page.

DC Comics - 1940

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The press notes and quotes are flying with dreadful accuracy as the news about Black Sabbath moving forward in their plans to record and tour WITHOUT original member Bill Ward started posting today.

This all seemed to come to light the other day as Ward posted that he had been delivered a contract he deemed “unsignable” and how he would keep waiting for an acceptable proposal from the other members in order to proceed with the reunion plans.  Bill’s quote is cited below on the Bravewords.com website.

Bill Ward statements: HERE

I read all this as Ward being offered a paltry sum for the work and time involved and that he felt he deserved more than was being offered up.  On one side its true he didn’t compose a whole lot of tunes in terms of music and words but when you assemble something like this “for the fans”; you can expect that people want a larger piece of the pie.  I guess the ruling managerial parties involved disagree and are willing to move on without him.  I’ll admit I’m slightly disappointed in the guys who were kind of presenting this whole thing as being for the good of the genre.

Black Sabbath statements: HERE

I call this reunion tour an unevent now and one that will cost a fortune to fans and not present the full legacy lineup at the end of the day.  The funny thing was how I was more interested in this as a journalist than a fan because I felt it would be great to document the return for the site readers as the key force in Heavy Metal’s birth.  I realize some of you might now be challenging my level  of representing Metal but believe me my aim remains true for the cause.

So what do you readers think of this development?  Let me know in the comments below.

*** UPDATE *** On 2/17/2012: An announcement came out that said how Black Sabbath would only perform one day (at the Download Festival) and the remaining scheduled gigs for the Original Lineup (minus Bill Ward) would be replaced by a tour called “Ozzy and Friends”. This is being done based on Tony Iommi’s continuing treatment for the lymphoma and to allow him time to rest and recover as best as possible. We all want the Founder of the Heavy Metal Riff to be in tip top shape. Rumor has it that Ozzy will be joined by a cavalcade of stars like Geezer Butler, Slash and Zakk Waylde. Excited for this tour? Personally, I actually could care less about this nonsense now. Give us a full on original Black Sabbath reunion tour and then continue to make your own solo magic.

Sometime last year we were supposed to get a tour that was called “Three Guitar Heroes” and the event would feature Leslie West (Mountain), Uli Jon Roth (Scorpions) and Michael Schenker (Scorpions & MSG) but complications prevented this from coming to pass for the foreseeable future. Fast forward to 2012 as our first month into the New Year comes to an end and folks that were hoping for that particular show would be treated to 2/3′s its coolness as both Leslie West and Uli Jon Roth would be delivering the goods for us. I’ve been trying to hit Uli’s shows whenever he comes to visit us in NYC and who from this region doesn’t enjoy what Leslie has given us over the years with Mountain and his solo projects so it was a very exciting thing to see this taking place. For this show I also decided to try something new and share the coverage with my colleagues who would be present and rocking out as well. Click the logo below to learn what Joe Kaufman, Skeleton Pete and I thought of the gig and then scroll down for some side visuals and video that you can only enjoy here.

Click Logo for Concert Review & Gallery

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If you have an iPhone you have no doubt already heard about and have been using the application known as “Instagram”. If I had to venture a guess, I would say that almost everyone I know must have an iPhone because I am constantly seeing their captured visuals on their Facebook pages and Twitter posts. So what is Instagram and why am I adding it to this little series of narratives you might ask? Well, let’s get down to it shall we.

Launched to the public as a free application in October 2010, Instagram is a photographic application that makes use of your Smartphones camera and let’s you change images around a little bit in terms of their design and shading to make them even more appealing or interesting. You can even add captions to them that your friends/followers can read or comment back on. Similar to the Facebook Liking system, there is a little heart that you can click to approve an image. Sadly, at this point in time when I post this for you, its only something that the iPhone users seem to have to their advantage in their application arsenal. Mind you I can take photos with my Droid Incredible device and then share with my Twitter and Facebook as well, but the tinkering that people can do in Instagram adds a new level of coolness to doing this kind of thing and that is what is driving more and more people to download it. Those who want to play around can get it via the iTunes Store.

Now to the reason I added this to my little Social Networking narratives. The answer to that is very simple. With so many people networking and sharing information via the two giant Facebook and Twitter mediums, the use of Instagram has created a sort of photo social networking. I’ve not been able to really experiment by being a Droid user, but I have looked at friends phones and their accounts with them to see how they are chiming in on celebrity account photos or following people of note or friends that they find more interesting than some others. The following and commenting on and sharing of these images makes it a bit of a Social Network of its own to me but on a slightly different level. It’s pretty cool as long as people keep using this for good and not to do anyone harm. I will add that I do not know offhand if Instagram will work on the new iPad’s that are coming out in March so if any readers get one and can play around perhaps let us know in the comments section of this posting.

UPDATE 4/3/2012: I am happy to be able to share this news with you readers and Android device users because today anyone with a Droid phone will be able to download and use Instagram. For me this is a kind of technological birthday present for the website because tomorrow is the anniversary of PiercingMetal’s launch. I downloaded it and can be found under the user name of “PiercingKen”. I might create a more music scene focused ID like PiercingMetal and this way can share exclusive finds that relate to my journalism and photo adventures. For now though I will use this ID and dabble about to see what I can learn. Follow me if you want.

PiercingKen on Instagram = HERE

UPDATE 4/12/2012: Wow, Facebook has purchased Instagram. Will this be good or bad? You decide. I am on the fence about it.

UPDATE 9/15/2012: I’m heading out to see Nightwish and Kamelot in New York City this evening and since its a big event for Metal I decided that I would act upon my months ago comment about potentially creating an Instagram account purely for PiercingMetal.com adventures in music and media. My readers already know that I take a lot of photos so this makes sense and lets me instantly get some more cool ideas out before I sit down and write the articles and blogs up. I think that it will be a lot of fun so please come and follow that account via the link below.

PiercingMetal on Instagram = HERE/

Official Website: http://www.instagram.com
Official Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram

Today is February 1st, 2012 but if you write it out in numbers alone it’s 2-1-12. Get rid of those little dashes and you will see it as “2112″ which I guess in some sense makes this a day to celebrate the band Rush. Why not? So today let me as the Master and Commander of the PiercingMetal Enterprise wish you all a very Happy 2112 Day. I have to say that we love Rush over here at the command center and while I’ve not yet examined the entire catalog in terms of review, there is a decent amount of content for you to enjoy on the website. I’ll link to that stuff down below but first here is a photograph to commemorate the day.

Silly I know, and I actually used this before over on the PiercingKen blog after a trip to Atlantic City. Since I didn’t have all that many images with such numbers on them, I decided to use this one more time for good measure. I hope you’ll forgive me for this but I had limited resources and really wanted to have a photo along with this wish.

That being said, please check out our existing review content for the almighty Rush by clicking HERE. Since PiercingMetal is an ever expanding thing you diehards can be rest assured that the band will continue to be reviewed and added to the site as time goes forward. There is a very expansive catalog to feature after all.

Thanks for listening. Now please continue along with your day and I’ll see you all again soon with more concert reviews and other Metal industry related thoughts that I come up with.