by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: Alamo Race Track - Apples (MP3)

Amsterdam's Alamo Race Track are visiting for CMJ this week...but before that madness starts they're playing a free show tonight at Mercury Lounge. It's early, doors at 6:30 and the band on shortly after that (WATERS play the late show at the same venue). As for actual CMJ showcases, Alamo Race Track play two shows at The Delancey: Wednesday (October 19) at 8PM and then Thursday afternoon at 2PM as part of The Dutch Impact party.

Formed about ten years ago, Alamo Race Track just released their third long-player, Unicorn Loves Deer, which  is thick with horns, strings and five-part harmonies (which they replicate live). It's not that dissimilar to the folk pop of Loney Dear. You can download "Apples" at the top of this post and stream the entire album at the bottom of this post.

The Dutch Impact Party on Thursday afternoon has two more bands from The Netherlands: the rocking, calamitous De Staat (3PM) and even harder-rocking duo Death Letters (4PM). Like most day parties, it's free.

Both Death Letters and De Staat play Local 269 on Wednesday (10/19, 8PM/9PM) and De Staat also play Friday afternoon at Pianos (10/21, 2PM FREE).

Click through for Alamo Race Track album stream, plus videos from all three Dutch bands.

Continue reading "Alamo Race Track & other Dutch bands here for CMJ"

Snoop Dogg @ Brooklyn Bowl in April (more by Tim Griffin)

Having spent the better part of four years fighting for his right to travel to Britain, the hip-hop star Snoop Dogg now finds himself a rapper non grata in the Netherlands, where the authorities had him scratched from the lineup of a free concert planned for later this month, BBC News reported. Snoop Dogg was scheduled to perform at the Parkpop festival in The Hague on June 27, but the mayor and law enforcement officials there asked its organizers to find another artist to replace him to ensure the "open and friendly character" of the festival.

....

In a statement the rapper's management wrote: Snoop Dogg is astonished by the decision of the Mayor of The Hague, a town in the south of Holland, to not allow him to perform at the free festival, Parkpop. There's been much speculation that, given the enormous response by Snoop's fans to the free festival, the local authorities would not be able to provide sufficient security. Mojo, the largest concert promoter in Holland says, "We have never had any issues with Snoop, who has played magnificent shows at many of the festivals we promote such as Lowlands, North Sea Jazz and at several other promoted shows by Mojo." Snoop is a mainstay at music festivals all over the world and has performed at all of these without incident."[NY Times & response]

Snoop Dogg is on the bill for Rock the Bells on Governors Island on August 28th, where he'll perform Doggystyle in full. Tickets are still on sale.

Snoop videos are below...

Continue reading "the authorities won't let Snoop Dogg play a festival in Holland"

words by Kim Kelly,

Goatsnake at Roadburn! (Erik Luyten)

Kim Kelly knows her (good) metal, and as such, we couldn't think of a better ambassador than this Philadelphian/writer for Terrorizer/Hails & Horns/Metal Injection. Kim checks in from Roadburn (April 15-18, 2010) in Tilburg, Holland, where she will take in some of the best metal bands currently in existence (and some resurrected from the grave), reporting back on what havoc the riff, and the volcano, hath wrought... - BBG

====

ROADBURN DIARY - DAY 1 (Thursday, April 15)

The road to Tilburg is a very long one, indeed - at least if you're coming from the mean streets of Philadelphia. After an 8am flight from Newark that landed at Heathrow at 8pm London time (before the volcano!), a few restless hours of sleep in a hostel (where a very nice Scottish boy had acted as my human alarm clock after I discovered that both my US and UK cell phones weren't working), an hour-long bus ride to Standsted Airport (chauffeured by a rough-looking lad who spent the trip dancing in his seat to Lady Gaga and singing along under his breath), an hour flight to Eindhoven, twenty minutes on a bus to the city's central train station, forty minutes on the train to Tilburg, and a five-minute walk with my Terrorizer mates to the Grass Company cafe/weed emporium, I was finally there - the stoned Mecca that is Roadburn.

continued below...

Continue reading "Roadburn Festival 2010 kicks off despite the volcano - our Day 1 report includes Goatsnake, Eyehategod, a wedding & more"

by JJ Koczan

We continue with JJ's report from the Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, Holland. If you missed it, check out Day One, Day Two, and Day Three. The fourth and final day was Sunday, April 26, 2009, and that's what we have here...

Saint Vitus at Roadburn (gilles etasse)

The vibrating of an incoming call on my cell phone woke me up at 06:30 this morning. It was an old friend of mine -- probably the oldest, come to think of it -- whom I've known since third grade or so. He's a veteran now and got out of the Marines this past New Year's Eve, having done a combat tour in Iraq that provided him with nightmares and memories I can't even imagine and don't want to try and physical ailments which the military is now trying to screw him out of his health benefits to cover.

He was crying into the phone because one of his fellow Marines, with whom he was apparently quite close, died yesterday from complications resulting from terminal cancer. As I understand it, the complication in that circumstance is that you have cancer. It took two strokes to kill him, and aside from his wife and parents, he hadn't told anyone he was sick. My friend, who's already had far too much of the reality of human nature shoved into his eyeballs, was blindsided, and he'd spent that entire day making phone calls to say that another one of his buddies was dead.

I'll stop short of falling into some kind of "death as impetus for reflection on one's life" thing, but I think about that experience and I think about the last four days I've had, which as far as music goes have been some of the best of my life, and all I can chalk it up to at this point is privilege. I'm not rich, I can't afford this trip and knew I couldn't when I decided to undertake it after it was announced that Saint Vitus, whose logo t-shirt I'm now wearing, was playing. But I am a white American from an upper middle class background, and apparently that's enough to do whatever you want to in life. Like write about music for a living, or take the time out of the day to reflect on one's own cultural privilege -- or, more likely, not.

continued below...

Continue reading "Surviving Roadburn, Day Four: In Which My Liquified Brain Drains Out Through The Various Holes In My Head"

by JJ Koczan

We continue with JJ's report from the Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, Holland. If you missed it, check out Day One and Day Two. Here is Day Three (Saturday April 24, 2009)...

Om @ Roadburn 2009 (Herr Hanz)

Saturday night I communed with The Riff.

That's not a joke. I was just drunk enough at just the right moment so that as Neurosis took an all-too-rare trip through their back catalog, I was taken somewhere, like a living out of body experience. They opened with "A Sun That Never Sets," and split the middle with "Stones From The Sky," and ended in a huge Steve Von Till/Scott Kelly/Jason Roeder drum barrage; it was almost too much for a human psyche to endure. Survival instinct kicked in. They played for an hour and a half and I felt years pass.

The day was long, but worth the effort. I got to 013 Popcentrum a couple minutes into Grails' set and was reminded of just how much I enjoy that band and why I keep buying their records every time they put one out. Having never seen them live before, I was glad to learn that they pull off every texture and nuance of their songs on stage with presence and conviction. When Neurot put out their first two records, I was into it, but didn't really understand, and though their albums have gotten incrementally better, now I feel like I really get it. They're well on their way to being geniuses.

Amenra was in the Green Room at the time, which was full of those seeking something more abrasive than Grails could offer. "Dark" is the first word that comes to mind in thinking about their sound. "Crushing" is the second. They had a little of the post-metal cadence in their rhythms, but they were onto something much more sinister, mood-wise. Heavy as hell, seriously.

continued below...

Continue reading "Surviving Roadburn, Day Three: Relearning What Is Known"

by JJ Koczan

We continue with JJ's report from Roadburn in Tilburg, Holland. If you missed it, you might want to start with Day One. Here is Day Two (Friday April 23, 2009)...

Cathedral LIVE at Roadburn (Erik Luyten)

It's really easy to tell as you walk around Tilburg who is here for Roadburn and who isn't. Even when I first got here from Amsterdam on the train, the front of the station looked like an Eyehategod show could have broken out at any minute, all the bearded longhairs and black t-shirts, including my own, standing around looking for a bus or a cab. Like some kind of convention for the International Society Of Social Awkwardness. But oh, we do have a good time.

The thing about the "doom scene," as much as there is one, is that it's really more of a community. Maybe it's because the majority of its patrons are a little older, a little more stoned, a little more concerned with paying their rent, but there are way fewer scene rules than, say, in black metal, where the contest to be more kvlt than thou goes on ceaselessly. Certainly there's a uniform -- see "beards and t-shirts," above -- but there are some normal looking dudes running around here and no one really gives a crap one way or the other what they look like. I'd say it's refreshing, but it's been this way for as long as I've been into doom, so it's nothing new.

This is easily the best festival I've ever seen. The fact that I'm here still astonishes me. Yesterday, as I watched Angel Witch demolish bands half their age (though Saviours would answer back heartily later on), I couldn't help but look around me and be amazed at the gathering of riff worshippers. The Atomic Bitchwax, for example, played to a Green Room so packed that people were lined up into the hallway watching them through the open doors. I've seen the Bitchwax plenty of times in our shared home state of New Jersey, and most of those shows have been relatively empty. Here you can barely go from one part of the venue to the next without doing a bump 'n grind on some poor schlub. It's something to get used to, but I made a conscious decision to take a different approach to day two than I had to day one.

continued below...

Continue reading "Surviving Roadburn, Day Two: Riding To The Sabbath"

by JJ Koczan

You may know JJ Koczan from his writing at The Aquarian, the now dormant Metal Maniacs, Theobelisk.net, or as frontman of his band Maegashira. This weekend, JJ will serve as our man-on-the-scene at Roadburn in Tilburg, Holland! Look for daily reports through the weekend as he prepares for the return of Saint Vitus, as well as performances from a veritable who's who of the underground heavy metal glitterati. We kick things off with his report from Day One, Thursday April 23, 2009...

The bleach blond party boy at the surreal tropical Scottish bar -- who may or may not have been wearing white pants at the time -- warned me against Tilburg. "Why would you want to go there?" Indeed, why would I or anyone else allegedly in their right mind want to expose themselves to four days of nonstop beer, doom, shitty hamburgers and sweltering Eurosweat?

This is my first Roadburn. I booked my hotel room once Saint Vitus was announced, and the Hotel Ibis, the uncomfortable bed of which I'm sitting on now, is a chain like a Comfort Inn with a really nice bar. A big part of me wishes I could have slept down there, and not just because they had candy.

If there could have been a more appropriate beginning for Roadburn 2009 than Italian psyche-droners Ufomammut, I'm at a loss for what it might have been. Their Green-amped, thick-riffed, mostly instrumental jams pushed so much air you could feel it from in front of the stage, and as they sloshed their way through most of last year's Idolum, the main space crowd had no choice but to approve heartily. This is why we're here, dudes. Hold those cups up high.

continued below...

Continue reading "Surviving Roadburn, Day One: To The Center Of The Universe"