Tag Archives: baroness

The 59th Annual Grammy Nominations For Rock and Metal Are Here

Hey it’s that time of the year again for the Grammy Award nominations and since its always a fun talking point to present the artists that our reader demographic are most interested in. I’m speaking of course about the Rock and Metal categories with a touch of Alternative thrown in for good measure. I’ll be adding my own personal choice below each category and I’ll be polling you at the close. Let’s go.

Best Rock Performance:
“Joe (Live From Austin City Limits)” — Alabama Shakes
“Don’t Hurt Yourself” — Beyonce´ Featuring Jack White
“Blackstar” — David Bowie
“The Sound Of Silence” — Disturbed
“Heathens” — Twenty One Pilots

PiercingMetal’s Pick: Wow Beyonce in the Rock Category! What is this musical world coming to? I guess we shall see her being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next. Moving on, I’m going to hope that the late great David Bowie wins the award since he left us with so much over the years that it would be a great way to respect his passing and creative genius. Disturbed also did a bang up job on the Simon and Garfunkel classic tune that they are deserving.

Best Metal Performance:
“Shock Me” — Baroness
“Slivera” — Gojira
“Rotting in Vain” — Korn
“Dystopia” — Megadeth
“The Price Is Wrong” — Periphery

PiercingMetal’s Pick: Nice. These are some great nominations for the Metal stuff and while I am personally leaning towards Megadeth I would not mind seeing Gojira or Baroness win the Grammy. These last two are newer to some listeners but they have been offering up the Heavy Metal good for a bunch of years and are to be commended for it. Good luck to all participants in this category.
Continue reading The 59th Annual Grammy Nominations For Rock and Metal Are Here

PiercingMetal’s “Best Of” 2009: The Music Part 1

Logo - The Best Of

I don’t think anyone is going to argue about 2009 going by like a train without brakes and yet here we are at the part of the year where we line out what we viewed to be “The Best” of the year in terms of albums, videos, concerts, events and books. We’ve aimed at making this a yearly thing and while it’s a lot of fun to share with you it’s also quite a bit of work; This is especially the case when you go way over a small list and keep on writing. With this this installment I’ll be offering up the albums that I got to listen to and liked the most out of the rest of them during the year. Sure we probably missed some that you are expecting to see here but you don’t get your hands on everything in this line of work no matter how you try. So sit back and relax and lets get to onto the main event.

The Best Albums Of 2009:

Mastodon “Crack The Skye” (Sire Records): Mastodon continually push their own musical envelope and this release finds them more a Progressive Psychedelic Rock outfit than a Metal band and the band’s following didn’t mind a bit based on the incredible music that was to be found on this one.

Epica “The Classical Conspiracy” (Nuclear Blast Records): Their 2nd effort for NB is this incredible concert experience that finds the band presenting mostly film score classics and then their greatest numbers with a full orchestra accompanying them. A wonderful experience and one that will impress the most difficult of fans – my hope is that this comes out on DVD sometime soon.

Heaven And Hell “The Devil You Know” (Rhino Entertainment): The most anticipated release for the first half of the year would be this new “Sabbath” album and it did not disappoint at all. Nice and heavy and loaded from beginning to end with solid Metal memories. Hoping this lineup hangs around a lot longer before pursuing other projects.

KISS “Sonic Boom” (KISS Records): Whether you support the fact that a couple of new faces wear familiar makeup or not, the band released a strong album and offered a great batch of extras with it to boot. The Wal-Mart exclusive nature of it made it a best seller that was actually a lot of fun.

The 69 Eyes “Back In Blood” (The End Records): Thanks to producer Matt Hyde The 69 Eyes were indeed back to raw Goth Hard Rock basics and moving on from the glitz they were steadily approaching. Lots of catchy stuff on this one and let’s hope this direction maintains course.
Continue reading PiercingMetal’s “Best Of” 2009: The Music Part 1