Tag Archives: tim “ripper” owens

Features, PiercingMetal Says

PiercingMetal Spotlights: Judas Priest

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For as long as I can remember, I have maintained that in my status as a Heavy Metal and Hard Rock fan that my own “Big Three” favorites were KISS, Van Halen and Judas Priest. Over the years I have of course come to appreciate and enjoy a wider variety of acts for the genre because there are so many amazing groups out there, but this list and its ranking has rarely veered off course. If memory serves me correctly, I first heard the band in High School about a thousand years ago (give or take) and the album of note at the time was “Hell Bent For Leather”. Wait, I am wrong in this assumption – the album that I FIRST heard by the band would the live recording of “Unleashed In The East”, and was the album that captured the band in action while on tour to support “HBFL”. I had never heard anything like the vocals of Rob Halford and the twin guitar wizardry of Downing and Tipton and when you put all this together with the powerful drumming of Les Binks I could safely admit that I was a fan from that moment on. From this defining moment I would try my own hand at some of the drum parts, look into the bands back catalog and even become the town crier who hoped to convince other Metal fans to rally behind me in the bands cause. Good times to say the least.
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Features, PiercingMetal Says

PiercingMetal Spotlights: Iced Earth

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Even though we got into this band a little later than we would have liked to we feel that we began our own interest in them at a very crucial point in their career. The band is Traditional Power Metal and is the brainchild of guitarist Jon Schaffer. The musician is very passionate about his beliefs and ideals and this reflects in the bands music. His love of history and science fiction found him being able to deliver his fans some really unique albums and this made our own adventures in supporting the band a lot more fun. The band has had a number of lineup changes since their inception but this is all in accordance with what Jon’s overall vision is for the body of work he is doing. They have a lot of great stuff and we’ve been glad to support it. To learn what we have said about them you can just click the logo below to launch the query of all Iced Earth content on PiercingMetal.com – we hope you like it.
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Events, Reviews

HAIL! @ B.B. King Blues Club (1/26/2010)

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Artist: HAIL!
Venue: B.B. King Blues Club (New York, NY)
Opener: Age Of Evil
Date: 1/262009
Label: Independent Artist

When it comes to cover bands you either love them or hate them and that makes perfect sense because for every good one there are about twenty five that are bad. In some cases the cover band chooses to focus on a particular band or theme and only do material related to the artist and hence become a tribute act. The good versus bad in the tribute act realm is exponentially higher and I have to say that for every good tribute that I have been able to see that I can count ten times that many that make a mockery of the material that they are supposed to be paying homage to. Despite this the Metal Tribute bands have certainly come a long way and over the years we have enjoyed those that present us with full sets of material featuring Rush, KISS, Van Halen, Judas Priest, Slayer and Black Sabbath – the list goes on and one and would take too long to outline in this narrative so we’ll leave it at that. The act of Metal tribute makes one wonder what would happen if legends in their own right banded together and formed a tribute act of their own and with that in mind, ladies and gentlemen I give you “HAIL!”. The powerful name just makes you want to push your fist up into the air or raise the horns for the glory of the Metal and how could you resist when facing a lineup like Tim “Ripper” Owens (vocals), Dave Ellefson (bass), Andreas Kisser (guitar) and Mike Portnoy (drums). Together the guys would honor the giants of the Metal scene and most important of all – have a blast doing it. The show this evening would be at B.B. King Blues Club and find some new blood getting us all into gear. We’ll talk about them first and then get down to covering the cover band.
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Features, PiercingMetal Says

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

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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.
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Events, Reviews

Yngwie Malmsteen @ Blender Theater at Gramercy (10/26/2008)

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Guitar virtuoso Yngwie J. Malmseen was back in New York City to deliver his smoldering new album with singer Tim “Ripper” Owens as a part of his bands lineup.  The show was held at The Blender Theater and we were on point to bring the scoop to your attention in words and images.  Scroll past the logo below to see our item.

Logo - Yngwie Malmsteen

Artist: Yngwie Malmsteen
Venue: Blender Theater (New York, NY)
Opener: ANJ
Date: 10/26/2008
Label: Rising Force Records

It’s been almost three years since The Big Apple has been able to enjoy a live performance from guitar virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen, and since that last time a number of dramatic changes have taken place in the musician’s career. The first change would come with the closure of record label Spitfire Records which was for a number of years the easiest place for stateside fans to be able to obtain his last batch of recordings. The second biggest change would come when the guitarist chose to replace long time singer Doogie White with the one and only Tim “Ripper” Owens and begin working on a new smoldering release that would be entitled “The Perpetual Flame”. “The Perpetual Flame” would be a special release for other reasons outside of it continuing to remind the music fans about just why we love Yngwie’s playing so much and even about the fact about Ripper being a part of it. You see, this would be the first CD to be released on the musicians own label imprint called “Rising Force Records”. It was a bold move but we can learn more about that at a later date, for now let’s just go over how amazing tonight’s show was in the event that you somehow missed out on it. If you went, let it serve as a reminder.
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