Thursday, April 24, 2008

A few things all at once



Operation Phoenix records has a really cool zine archive with issues of MRR, Flipside, Cometbus and Heart Attack in PDF format. It's really nice to look at these old zines and not get newsprint hands. Check it out.





As ALL have been mentioned in this blog numerous times here's some news via punknews.org ALL are reforming to play a show at Riotfest in Chicago with Scott Reynolds on vocals. Read more here.





Anthems from the Alleyway recently posted a show which features Keith Morris and Henry Rollins performing Black Flag songs with the Rollins Band. Check it out.
Sticking with Henry Rollins. He was recently interviewed here in New Zealand on the National Programme's Saturday morning radio show since he is doing his spoken word shows here next week. The National Programme has a listening demographic made up largely of over 50's however the interview is very interesting. Listen.

Omen, Beltane, Black Boned Angel at the Adelaide Hotel April 19 2008

The week before I went to this I went to a punk show that I intended to write about on here but since I've written about all the bands before I didn't see the point of writing about them here again plus I wasn't in the right mood to enjoy the show properly.

Anyway the week after New Zealand punk band Sommerset were playing a reunion show. However I didn't go to that as I was still feeling burned out on punk and wanted to check out something different. So I went to a metal show. I missed the first band but they walked out the door real well. The first band I caught were called Omen. Twenty years ago these guys would have been my favourite New Zealand metal band but time's moved on and Annihilator's Alice in Hell album crossed with early Metallica and Megadeth doesn't grab me that much anymore.



Pic: Beltane

Next up were a two piece consisted of a male and a female who call themselve Beltane. I checked out their myspace page and they describe themselves as Black Metal. I'm not really too sure what Black Metal is but I'm sure these guys own more Candlemass than Venom albums or if they don't they should.

Last up were Black Boned Angel who I used to assume were a death metal band but thankfully this was to stay a cookie monster vocal free night. Black Boned Angel are a Drone doom band heavily influenced by Sunn O))) although if I remember rightly Terrorizer magazine described Black Boned Angel as the heaviest band in the world. Most of the twenty people strong crowd moved forward when this band came on so most people had really shown up to see them(myself included).
Anyway I taped some of the band's performance.

I love how the Adelaide makes toasted sandwiches at any time so while a band is playing you can eat a salami and cheese toastie. All music venues should be made by law to provide this service.

I just discovered a very interesting interview with these guys in a New Zealand Listener article entitled The Persistence of Metal.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Neoshark - The Extreme Purgatory (2006)



Neoshark are a metal band from Taiwan. In in an interview I read with them Neoshark stated that they were a Chinese metal band which shows where they stand on the issue of Taiwan's independence. There is a New Zealand connection here because at one point this band had a drummer from Hamilton, NZ.

Neoshark have recently changed their English name to Temple of The Brain, which isn't as catchy as their original name or as close pronunciation wise as their original name however it is very close to the meaning of their Chinese name.

Musically this band are heavily influenced by Sepultura, Slipknot and Biohazard. The song Democracy Terrorist which is only the only song on this release entirely in English sounds like it could have come off Sepultura's Chaos A.D. album. The lyrics "Leave peace alone, you fuckers" from the song Democracy Terrorist gives an insightful view of both this band's stand on Democracy and Terrorism.

You can have a sneak preview of this album by listening to the songs on the band's myspace page.

Other than Democracy Terrorist all of the seven song name's are in Chinese and I'm presently too lazy to translate.


Download The Extreme Purgatory

Beastwars - IV

After over a year off for various reasons, we have returned solely because we wanted to review the new Beastwars album. I really w...