There’s been a lot of wild news about Roadrunner Records being reported over the last few days so I wanted to make sure that I posted something for our readership to be up on the developments as well. The first bit of shocking news is how the labels founder Cees Wessels has left the label, the move coming about 17 months after the labels complete sale to Warner Music Group.

The WMG company had purchased a major stake in Roadrunner Records back in 2007 and at the time many were hopeful that this would allow Roadrunner to flourish better and have a bigger financial armament behind them for use in their efforts of keeping Metal in the public eye. My own view at the time was that this would be great for the bands that fell into the Metal genre and who needed to have a label behind them but didn’t perhaps fall into the current focus of what Warner might have been doing. Now with Roadrunner being owned entirely by Warner we are learning of full office closures and additional staff layoffs. At the time of this writing, the UK and Canada office are closed and word seems to point to Netherlands office going as well. On top of this we have learned of stateside layoffs. From this one has to wonder what will end up happening to the US representation of the brand.

I am hopeful that the stateside offices remain intact because I feel the label does serve the Metal fans well and has kept us enthralled with releases by Opeth, Nightwish, Dream Theater, Slipknot and too many others to line out here for so many years. Yes some fans might slight them for paying mind to bands like Nickelback or weirder signings like Lenny Kravitz, but at the end of the day everyone needs to keep cash flowing in to keep afloat. This kind of corporate stuff is not fun at all and I am speaking from personal experience having seen my own jobs of the past vanish due to it on more than one occasion. It really is a disruptive process so I wish anyone facing it the best. Clearly there is a need for a sound Metal focused label, as we have just celebrated the 30th Anniversary of Metal Blade Records and that proves the fans are out there for the genre.

Company History Wiki: HERE

Company Site: HERE

As my readers already know, there is a lot of live concert coverage on PiercingMetal.com and whenever possible the goal is to seek out the new and exciting ways that some establishments are presenting it to the general public. With that being the case, I was absolutely intrigued and hoped to be as supportive as possible when I learned that Riff Clothing NYC down on the Lower East Side was having live music each and every Saturday. Riff Clothing was a quirky little Rock & Roll clothing shop that was holding residence in the Morrison Hotel Gallery. This same space was once the CBGB’s Gallery, and located right next to the legendary now shuttered CBGB’s club.

Riff Clothing NYC on The Bowery

In addition to selling all sorts of super cool stage wear and vintage looking shirts they had topical books and accessories along with amazing photographs of some truly awesome music personality. In the rear of the shop they had a full on back line of amplifiers and speaker cabinets along with a full on quality drum kit and this is what separated them from the pack because in this space we got free Rock and Roll music almost each and every week. Sounds pretty cool right? You bet your sweet patoot it was cool and we were able to enjoy a performance by our Finnish friends in Naked on St. Patrick’s Day of all things. I’ve linked that below for your indulgence. Just after that show I learned how the store was risking closure since the proprietor felt it was not earning what he hoped it would so discounts were offered and I was even permitted to showcase said discounts with our PiercingMetal Facebook page but unfortunately it was too late and not enough as the stage lights were dimmed and the doors closed for good yesterday afternoon. What a shame.

Riff Manager Vicky Vale, PiercingMetal Ken and Friend

I was really saddened by the closure of Riff even after only really going to one event because the overall premise was super cool. Yes the bands might not have been getting paid in the conventional sense but on the same token they were getting to perform for new people in a manner that made it all the more pure Rock and Roll. The music scene suffers when something unique goes away but that is sadly out of our control. On behalf of PiercingMetal I wish the managers of the space (Vicky Vale and Rick Edwards) the very best of luck going forward and cross our fingers that they can return like the Phoenix and bring something like this to life again. Please keep us posted if you do. We’d be happy to lend the required support.

As I mentioned up in the other paragraph, I got to enjoy a performance by two of the members of the band Naked. You can enjoy that article and photos and even some video by clicking HERE.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Why? Because the guys in Five Finger Death Punch are in charge of their own festival and they are coming to a city near you soon. The tour looks to be an exciting one and features Five Finger Death Punch as the closing headliner along with Killswitch Engage, Trivium, Pop Evil, God Forbid, Emmure & Battlecross. The tour is presented by Metal Hammer magazine which is a power house in its own right in terms of holding the banner high for the genre.

I always enjoy how Five Finger Death Punch delivers the goods on the concert stage and I am very interested in seeing just how Killswitch Engage ups their Metal game with original singer Jesse Leach back in their lineup. I already know what to expect from both Trivium and God Forbid having seen them in action before but that is it. The remainder of groups on the tour are a bit of a mystery to me. I am slightly curious about the other three being Emmure, Pop Evil and Battlecross. So will you as a Metal fan attend this Festival run? Do any or all of the bands generate a level of interest in your Metal being or could you care less? I am curious about knowing what you all think about it. I am very likely going to try and be one of the attending press for the Prudential Center show that happens in my region in August.

Dates:

Jul. 13 – Broomfield, CO @ 1st Bank Center
Jul. 15 – Billings, MT @ MetraPark Arena
Jul. 16 – Bismarck, ND @ Bismarck Civic Center
Jul. 17 – Sioux Falls, SD @ Sioux Falls Arena
Jul. 19 – Milwaukee, WI @ Eagles Ballroom
Jul. 21 – Fort Wayne, IN @ Allen County Expo Center
Jul. 24 – Lubbock, TX @ Lonestar Amphitheater
Jul. 25 – Belton, TX @ Bell County Expo Center
Jul. 27 – San Antonio, TX @ Freeman Coliseum
Jul. 28 – Beaumont, TX @ Ford Pavilion
Jul. 30 – Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
Aug. 03 – Battle Creek, MI @ Kellogg Arena
Aug. 07 – Syracuse, NY @ SRC Arena
Aug. 08 – Glens Falls, NY @ Glens Falls Civic Center
Aug. 10 – Scarborough, ME @ Scarborough Downs
Aug. 14 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE
Aug. 15 – Wallingford, CT @ Oakdale Theatre
Aug. 17 – Worcester, MA @ DCU Center
Aug. 18 – Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center
Aug. 19 – Philadelphia, PA @ Penn’s Landing
Aug. 22 – Knoxville, TN @ Knoxville Civic Coliseum
Aug. 25 – Rio Rancho, NM @ Santa Ana Star Center
Aug. 26 – Phoenix, AZ @ Comerica Theatre
Aug. 28 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Palladium

If you are one of those fans who can use a little more background on any of the performers for this festival or find them totally new to your ears I have embedded a few Amazon.com links to some albums that should help you out with that.

For the last couple of years I have taken a page out of my fellow bloggers books and used our PiercingMetal Musings Blog to speak up about the major happenings in The Metal Republics realm. It’s honestly been the perfect place to spark up some discussion with you readers about major concert tours or big package presentations that fall under the festival model. With that being said I now present to you the official poster for the Summer Slaughter Tour for 2012 and its roster of performers. Check it out.

The most interesting part about this particular tour is that it is bringing Cannibal Corpse as the main band with support from Between The Buried and Me, and each are two of Metal Blade Records most vital acts in terms of popularity. We’ll also get The Faceless, Periphery, Veil Of Maya, Job For A Cowboy, Exhumed, Goatwhore, and Cerebral Bore. The event will also features some special guest bands in each city so there might be some cool surprises in store for the attending Metalhead. Participating labels will be of course Metal Blade Records (who have five of the nine featured bands) along with Relapse Records, Sumerian Records and Earache Records. Some of these bands have appeared on the Summer Slaughter tours of the past as well but there are those who don’t mind that at all. While I generally like to see new things I am on the okay side with the ones who have been here before for the most part.

The tour dates were announced yesterday and our New York City region will find this tour landing at Irving Plaza on August 8th. Check your own local listings for where this will be if you plan on going and by all means get your tickets early enough to not be shut out. So tell me readers, does this tour excite you or leave you left for want? Speak up in the comments section, I would be interested in hearing what you have to say.

Wowza, wowza. Talk about a milestone and something that is definitely worthy of some congratulations and a heaping dose of kudos. Metal Blade Records is celebrating their 30th year of operation and one of the coolest aspect of this is more than just the tenure, its the fact that it has been a primarily Metal focused label since its inception way back when record store employee Brian Slagel decided to start up the label to support the local regions Heavy Metal bands. The first ever album that was released under the Metal Blade Records brand was a compilation release entitled “The New Heavy Metal Revue presents Metal Massacre”; this album featured Metallica, Ratt, Black and Blue and many others at a time when all of these groups were relative unknowns. I actually thought I had this on LP somewhere but was wrong. I have a different but still ancient compilation. Oh well. Perhaps they will re-release this on CD to celebrate the iconic 30th year. Historically speaking, I think this original album came out in June of 1982, so we are very likely close to the actual launch date of the record company at this point in time. With that being the case there is no better time to jump into the fray with our congratulatory toast.

The label is currently the home to some of my own favorites in the Metal world and these include King Diamond, Amon Amarth, Behemoth, Between The Buried And Me, Primordial, Hate Eternal, Primordial, Falconer, Black Dahlia Murder and GWAR. I’ll stop there because I know that I could easily keep going but let me honestly state that there are many more who I enjoy listening to and I am sure you readers are in agreement with me on those named as being some truly powerful acts who regularly hold the sword of Heavy Metal high for our benefit. I always felt there was something imposing about the original logo that they used below. When you saw this visual you just knew that there was Metal to be found in close proximity. Of course, in today’s ever-changing music world, the label has even opted to offer the fans a couple of comedy albums as the hosts from VH1 Classics “That Metal Show” have found themselves delivering their standup routines to anyone who might be interested in that kind of thing. It’s a little different for sure, but one thing Metal Blade Records has never done was go through a Pop phase, a Disco phase or a Country one. When you looked to Metal Blade Records, it was for Metal. End of story and I am not complaining.

I have to say that Metal Blade Records was also one of the very first labels that we started doing articles about their artist output for when PiercingMetal.com was launched seven years ago and this is still a practice that is done whenever possible to this very day. Clicking HERE will bring you to a list of our reviews for the Metal Blade Records artist roster in terms of product releases and concert performances. As our readers know full well, we take a lot of live concert photos from all of the shows that we attend and if you wanted to enjoy the full on run of Metal Blade Records artists on the live stage you can click HERE.

So on behalf of the PiercingMetal.com website and companion blog, I send congratulations again Mr. Slagel for a job well done and for serving as an inspiration to any Metal head with a sound idea who is brave enough to run with the ball. Here is to the next thirty years. I raise a glass to you with one hand and hold the horns up high with the other. Thanks for being the Metal constant and for being the place that brought me bands that few others were willing to do so many years ago.

Learn more about the Metal Blade Records company via their Official Wikipedia Entry HERE

Official Website: www.metalblade.com

It’s that time of the musical year once again and yes I am speaking about none other than Record Store Day. This is a day that fans and collector’s of the vinyl medium come out in droves in search of things that they were missing or to take advantage of the limited edition fare that is being offered up by some of the worlds greatest providers of music. It’s surely a day that harkens back to those trips that my friends and I used to take as we searched for discs of gold and rarities.

As it would be impossible to properly reflect all of the available releases and happenings for you in this little space on the web, I instead pasted their link to the main Record Store Day site so you might do a little research on your own. I would also suggest that you look into the local brick and mortar stores in your own regions to see if anything special is going on to celebrate and perhaps even up the ante just a little bit by reaching out to bands you might see on the local circuit to see if they have any vinyl’s available for purchase. Those bands need the assistance the most since everything is coming out of their pockets and not some major corporation. You might also be happy to learn that there is an available App for Droid and Apple devices.  Off the top of my head I do know that Nightwish, Mastodon, Metallica, The Misfits, The Cult, Osaka Popstar and Juicehead will all have something so keep an eye out for those items and make sure the credit card is ready for the sudden surge in purchases.

The Musical Stash

The photo above shows what remains of my own record collection. I used to have a few dozen more but some were destroyed over time, some were shared with a diehard collector and some were even sold over the years. Hell, there are even some that got borrowed and never saw my collection again and we all know how much that sucks don’t we. Do I miss the ones that are gone? Well, yes and no but I will survive. I am confident in the happiness that they will bring to their new owners every time they get listened to. I do try to snare the vinyls that come out as collections these days and secured the Motley Crue ones but am still working on locating the Slayer and Triumph releases for a reasonable sum. My collection largely consists of a lot of Metal and Hard Rock with a strong number of EP’s in the mix. I also have a healthy box of 45′s and many of those have photo covers. The medium has really come into popularity once again and I guess the saying that everything is cyclical is true. There was just such a sense of purity and discovery when music was on an LP and much more so than a CD and definitely more than a digitally downloaded piece of data. Enjoy Record Store Day my melomaniac friends, I hope you find some really cool stuff today.

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

It’s been a couple of years since we’ve had Cactus come a calling on us in New York City and you know that when they do so that you want to be at the ready for the kind of Heavy Blues Rock that they bring to the table. The show would be at the expected location of B.B. King Blues Club and if you want to see the review and all the photos you can click the logo below to be taken to our report on the main PiercingMetal.com website. Then come back to the blog to enjoy some side images and video that is only being presented in this posting.

Click the logo for the Concert Review and Photos

(continue reading…)

This morning I received a press release from the fine folks at Hermes Press which informed the world that the classically trained actor Jonathan Frid had unexpectedly passed away on 4/13/2012. He was 87 years old and most famously known for his role on “Dark Shadows” as the vampire with a conscience Barnabas Collins. The Gothic Horror soap opera only aired for five years and from 1966-1971 but Frid only appeared on four seasons of it when he made his first appearance and took the show to an entirely new level and direction with his character. I was very, very young when this first aired but I do remember watching it with my Mother and then years later catching Frid’s performances and watching him become a cult figure like few others of his time. 2012 will see this character resurrected by Johnny Depp in a new “Dark Shadows” film and after seeing the trailers I can only attest at how frightening that actually is. Not horror fright, but shock fright as Tim Burton went comedy with the storyline and I never saw that coming.

On behalf of the PiercingMetal site and our absolute love of things that go bump in the night, we say Rest In Peace Mr. Frid, thank you for bringing the world so much joy with your portrayals and appearances. You will be missed but never, ever forgotten. Readers can learn more about the life of Jonathan Frid via his Wikipedia entry HERE.

Yesterday was a sad day in Rock and Roll as one of the most legendary figures in the music industry, Mr. Dick Clark, died of a heart attack following a medical procedure at age 82.

Mr. Clark was most famously known for being the host of the hit television program American Bandstand, a show that gave viewing audiences their first glimpse at artists like Madonna, The Village People, and many others in a too numerous to count list. Even KISS appeared on the show a couple of times during the course of their career and I am pretty sure that this is the place where I first saw Bon Jovi perform. It was a show that reached a demographic like few others and Clark was always the cordial and accomodating face of the youth culture. A list of all acts who performed on the show can be found HERE

He also hosted the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve program that had us all counting down to the New Year and even after his stroke in 2004, he remained on as often as possible. Historically speaking he would only miss two of the programs ever. Now I guess we shall find Ryan Seacrest (from American Idol hosting fame) being the one to uphold the mantle. New Year’s Eve shall never truly be the same without him helping us count down to the shiny new January 1st.

On behalf of the PiercingMetal.com website, I send condolences and sympathies out to his family, friends and world wide fans. You were one of a kind Mr. Clark, and shall never be forgotten. Rest in Peace.

Official Wikipedia Entry HERE

Perhaps you remember my dissecting and analyzing several issues of “Eternal Descent” late in 2010 for the growing Comic Booking It section of the PiercingMetal Blog and if not, here is a REFRESHER LINK to uhm, refresh you on our doing that. The series is the brainchild of musician Llexi Leon and the premise is that of a Supernatural based, Gothic Horror/Romance with a strong dose of Heavy Metal influx. As a longtime fan of many of these angles, I was very intrigued by the stories I read and hope to get caught up on the happenings that took place after I lost track of the series. My hectic concert visiting found little time to read so I need to fix that.

I recently received a piece of press from Llexi informing me that they were actively trying to get “Eternal Descent” to become a full on animated series and when one considers the popularity of Dethklok and “Metalocalypse” I felt this would be a very cool thing to spread the word about. We Metal heads sure seem to like our comics and animated action shows and I think that if they do it up properly, that this can be a winner right out of the gate. It would obviously be a little more serious than “Metalocalypse” which goes for the throat in its humor and premise……and….

Eternal Descent's Bad Guy Loki

it might even allow some of the Metal icons to participate in it as they had done in the comic book. The first three issues that I reviewed featured Doc Coyle from God Forbid and Gus G. from Firewind and Ozzy Osbourne’s band. That would be excellent if it could happen.

Eternal Descent's Good Guy Sirian

The images that we were sent and are posted for your indulgence really look fantastic. Very detailed and not shoddy in terms of the artistic portrayal of the characters. Loki looks like a son of a bitch while Sirian clearly seems heroic and ready to defend the innocent. Do you agree?

Eternal Descent's Femme Fatale Lyra Constance

Having read several of the comics I think that the stories might be an exciting transition to an animated feature series or film and perhaps even eventually a live action feature. Hey, we saw “The Walking Dead” go from comic book to hit television series so anything is possible right?

Eternal Descent's Femme Fatale Lyra Constance in Mortal Form

Llexi and his creative team have set up an IndieGoGo account for the project and this seems to work in the same fashion as Kickstarter does and each level of donation comes with some really cool perks. Essentially the higher the donation, the cooler the return to you as a fan such as signed comics, original artwork and even a guitar. The one thing I noticed was how all the donations will go to the project even if the goal is not met (unless I read this wrong). I think Kickstarter gives back to the donors if the goal is not met so this is a very cool thing. You can watch the trailer and perhaps even offer up some coin for the project if you believe it can work out and its something that you choose to stand behind as a fan of Metal and Comics. The link is below.

Show Support Via This Link: http://www.indiegogo.com/eternaldescent

Official Eternal Descent Website: http://www.eternaldescent.com/

For those really curious about the comic book, here is a link on Amazon.com to purchase the first trade paperback collection of the series. It features the first six issues of the title.