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The Scoop: Fear Factory are clearly the leaders in the cause for Industrial Metal enlightenment and for many years they have rallied the fans with exciting show after exciting show. For their 2013 tour the band has decided to perform their “Demanufacture” album in its entirety and to up the ante they are bringing along both Hate Eternal (as direct support) and new Metal greatness in Kobra and The Lotus. The show will be he a heart-stopper for sure and that excites me to announce that thanks to the folks at Livenation we shall be putting a few lucky PiercingMetal readers into the show for free. Read on below how to take part in this coolness.
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This might bother some of you.

It was just about two months ago when we posted a blog announcement here in the Musings about the inaugural edition of the Shockwave Festival.  The event was to feature what appeared to be a co-headlining Fear Factory and Voivod (even though it seemed that FF would close all the shows and hence get a longer set) along with Cattle Decapitation, Misery Index, Havok, Last Chance To A Reason, The Browning, Revocation, Forged In Flame, Vildjarta, and Dirge Within.   Sounds pretty cool if you are into most of or all of these bands right?  I felt that it was also cool that another new festival was coming to pass because that showed promise that others would be able to follow suit if the mood struck them.  Then around the tail end of June the word got out how Revocation, Forged In Flame, Vildjarta, and Dirge Within had all dropped off the tour but it was never really made that clear as to what the reason was.  The revised tour poster is below and obviously no longer featured those bands names. I appended these changes into the original blog posting for good measure since we like to speak about tours based on our heavy live coverage on the main site but with this getting weirder it prompted a second post.

Stranger than that was the announcement just the other day (7/3/12) that Voivod had pulled off the tour and they came right out into the open and said “Shockwave tour is no longer as advertised, Voivod really wanted to be touring but the situation was out of the band’s control and the tour producers could not live up to the promises.” Those are some pretty heavy comments. That left the fans who had purchased tickets with five bands less than the originally promised eleven. No one seemed to be added to the mix and to me this was just short of a Summer Slaughter lineup in terms of bands being offered to the general public.

This morning I saw various reports about the whole tour being cancelled which came from bands like Havok and Misery Index who had also dropped off the tour since the previous day. It was not really looking good but when a couple of other websites including The Gauntlet announced how Ticketmaster was sending out notes about refunds for the event I guess it is safe to assume that this will not be happening any longer. So far as I can tell, or at least as of this posting, no comment has come from either Fear Factory or the festival promoters about the reason all the bands dropped off and why it needed to be cancelled. I guess everyone who purchased tickets already best check their credit card statements and those who paid in cash get over to where you bought your tickets to get your refunds. Lucky for you there are plenty of other shows happening this summer that will let you wisely spend your Metal $$$.

As readers of the PiercingMetal site and companion blog are very aware, we love to go to and cover concerts for the sake of larger awareness and just get a general kick out of seeing bands deliver their goods on the live stage. To me it’s very, very, exhilarating when it all comes down to it and I just find inspiration when I write about them or share photos from the performances with you all. That being said, it gives me great pleasure to announce another new festival that is launching this year for the summer of 2012. Presenting the Shockwave Festival (queue dramatic music).

The inaugural edition of the festival will feature both Fear Factory and Voivod as the apparent co-headliners and I guess depending on your level of excitement about each of them would gauge the level of anticipation in the overall event. Whatever the case may be it joins the ranks of the Rockstar Mayhem Fest, The Summer Slaughter Fest and also appears to be a good replacement for the no longer running Sounds Of The Underground Festival that ended in 2007. Check out the list of the rest of the performers on the event.

The Bands: Fear Factory, Voivod, Cattle Decapitation, Misery Index, Revocation, Havok, Dirge Within, Last Chance to Reason, Vildhjarta, The Browning, Forged in Flame.

I like a fair amount of Fear Factory and had actually just seen them the night before posting this announcement but I admit I was a little surprised to find them being the headliner for this new Festival. As far as Voivod is concerned I have only ever been a marginal fan of their output and think that my favorite material was from releases like “Nothingface” and “Angel Rat”. Still some folks find them to be right up their alley. The other bands are only half interesting to me, but perhaps its time to give those ones who I am iffy on another fair listen and focus on. What do you folks think of the lineup roster for this event? Will you be planning on attending?

Here are the dates of this Festival and as you can see it runs for about a month with limited breaks between days. It’s not as long as you might have expected but its still better than nothing for those fans who cannot wait to sink their fangs into its offerings and its probably .

7/06/2012 Studio Seven – Seattle, WA
7/07/2012 Vogue Theatre – Vancouver, BC
7/11/2012 Pyramid Cabaret – Winnipeg, MB
7/12/2012 Station 4 – St Paul, MN
7/13/2012 The Rave – Milwaukee, WI
7/14/2012 Kool House – Toronto, ON
7/17/2012 Imperial Theater – Quebec City, QC
7/18/2012 Club Soda – Montreal, QC
7/20/2012 Northern Lights – Clifton, NY
7/21/2012 Town Ballroom – Buffalo, NY
7/22/2012 Reverb – Reading, PA
7/24/2012 Revolution – Amityville, IL
7/25/2012 Palladium – Worcester, MA
7/26/2012 Empire – Springfield, VA
7/28/2012 Mojoe’s – Joliet, IL
7/29/2012 Tebala Shrine – Rockford, IL
8/02/2012 Nakai Hall – Window Rock, AZ
8/03/2012 The Marqee Theater – Tempe, AZ
8/04/2012 House Of Blues – Hollywood, CA

Since PiercingMetal.com HQ is based in NYC our own attendance will be based on whether or not an actual performance takes place in the Big Apple. So far they are playing in Buffalo NY and Clifton NY and while the first is super far away, I don’t even know where that last one is so I am not making any travel plans. OK back to the regularly scheduled programming. Here are a bunch of album codes that will help you get up to speed on the bands that are performing on this event in case you need a little Metal guidance.

UPDATE 6/22/2012: It’s been reported that the previously announced bands of Forged In Flame, Revocation, Dirge Within and Vildhjarta have all pulled off of this tour.

UPDATE 7/3/2012:  It has been reported that co-headliners Voivod have dropped off this tour.  To my knowledge no other bands have been added in to replace the ones that have dropped off.

UPDATE 7/4/2012: It appears as though the entire Shockwave Festival is cancelled.  I hope that any fans who shelled out money for this event will be able to get their money back without incident.  Of course there is usually no bypassing the Ticketmaster Fees but maybe that is different with a full on event cancellation.

Fear Factory had embarked on their “Fear Across America” tour and this short jaunt would find them bringing along Divine Heresy, After The Burial and 36 Crazyfists along for the ride. The show happened at Irving Plaza and we made sure to get there as early as possible to document the proceedings. Just click the bands logo below to be taken to our full article on the official PiercingMetal.com site.

I didn’t take any other “happenings” photos this evening but did snare a shot of the crowd going insane.

The Fear Factory Audience Approves

Fear Factory have continued to decimate the pavement on which the Metal heads walk and tonight they would continue the process during the “Machines Of War” tour that put them together with Suffocation, Hypocrisy and Decapitated. If you think that those names sound impressive just being read aloud you should have seen this show and at least by clicking the logo below you can relive the night which we documented in full on the main PiercingMetal.com site.

Fear Factory is a musical assault on the senses and one surely wants to be in the venue when they do a gig. The show would also feature the bands Soilwork, Darkane and Strapping Young Lad so my friends and I made sure to arrive in time to see everyone. With such a killer bill being available for us, how could we not. Photos and dialogue about the entire night can be enjoyed by clicking the bands logo below. Doing that will take you over to the main PiercingMetal.com website.

This was pretty cool when it came down to it and here is why. We were smack in the middle of what is called CMJ Week and that is when the CMJ (or College Music Journal) hosts its music marathon. The week is filled with rocking events by up and coming bands and lots of panels where industry experts can line out their wisdom to the eager musician or business study. There are also a lot of parties and we had the chance opportunity to be invited to one of them. It seemed as though Munsey Ricci, the master and commander of Skateboard Marketing, was hosting an event at the Don Hills nightclub and performing at this private by invite only event was none other than the mighty Fear Factory. The band was supporting their newest album “Transgression” and if you want to learn more and enjoy some photos just click the bands logo below to be taken to my article on the main PiercingMetal.com website.

The union of Megadeth and Dream Theater on the same stage would be called “Gigantour” and this first go round festival styled event would also call upon Symphony X, Fear Factory, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Life Of Agony, Nevermore, Bobaflex and Drykill Logic to make it an experience not easily forgotten. I would adventure to Upstate NY around the Poughkeepsie way to catch this show at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center and travel with my good friends from the Sea Of Tranquility website. I photographed who were were able to get inside to see and documented as much about the night as possible. Check out that report on the main PiercingMetal.com website by clicking the logo link below.