Mar 8
We’re all about the PP here at HBIH.
Epitaph have just released this video for Every Time I Die’s After One Quarter of a Revolution, in which two dudes force some people to touch their wangs. I’m not even joking.
There might be some other stuff going on too…probably.
This is part of the reason why I love Every Time I Die. Not only does their music just plain rock, but their shows always look ridiculously fun. Hot Damn.
- CG
Mar 4
Or at least they try to, in the promo video for their cover of ‘Sabotage’. With mildly entertaining results. Crazy Candians.
To be honest, I was completely unaware that Cancer Bats were releasing an album this year. I like them, but have never been overly into them, which is weird, because they’re exactly the kind of band I should love, a-la Every Time I Die.
This album has the potential to change that though. I really really like this song, and as a result will probably be getting Bears, Mayors, Scraps and Bones when it hits stores on April 13th.
Job done, promotional advertising. Job done.
- CG
Mar 4
I posted about these dudes a while back. Continuing the DIY ethic of their debut album Contrasts, they’ve built their own official site, on their own. In fact, I believe it was only one of them, and he knows squat all about web design. Props?
The main reason for posting this is the plethora of audible goodies you get as a result. Their Myspace page offers two of the best tracks from Contrasts, as well as some tasty new demos, but for those of you hooked by ‘When the Tiger Lost His Voice‘, ‘The Unspeakable‘ and ‘Happy Ever Afternoon‘, the player on StellaDawes.com also features the third recent demo, as well as album tracks ‘Dichotomy‘, ‘Everything Happens to Eeyore‘ and ‘Investment Intercourse: A Deposit‘.
These guys are one of my favourite unsigned British bands; blending chaotic screamo with atmospheric post-whatever, but always feeling fresh. Think how refreshing City of Caterpillar were, and you’re someway close to these awesome dudes.
I hope this spurs you on to supporting them, even if it’s the measly £3* offering, because they’re genuinely a talented bunch.
- CG
*$4.50 at time of going to press
Mar 1
Yerrrp.
Still pretty much crapping myself with anticipation for Option Paralysis, but it’s a nice view anyway. Trippy effects are trippy.
Feb 15
What? Can it be?! Option Paralysis leak?!1one!
No.
That was cruel, sorry. I am in fact referring to the recent announcement on Greg Puciato’s Twatter that the Dillinger Escape Plan will, for the second year running, be playing at the UK’s Download festival.
This is kind of a kick in the teeth after twice missing out on tickets for the TWO shows they played in London last Friday (a huge point of contention between me and the greedy London dickheads who went to both shows and/or touted the extremely limited number of tickets for phat £££ – which I don’t have </qq>), but if any of you readers are UK based, this is a better reason than any so far to go.
Me, I don’t particularly like camping, and considering I wouldn’t/couldn’t pay the £35 (about $55) for Friday, I can’t see myself going in for this either. Deftones are the only other band so far I like, and unfortunately Download caters more towards the beer-swilling, unwashed metalkind than my tastes, so I can’t see it getting that much better. That said, last year they rocked Faith No More, Meshuggah and Opeth, and past years have seen Tool, Between the Buried and Me and SikTh. I’m not saying there’s nothing good, but the delights are few and far between, and they also do things like headlining My Chemical Romance, and give bands like Enter Shi(t)kari and Bring me the Horizon stage time, when let’s be honest, a smack on the nose with a rolled-up paper is much more deserved. Amiright?
Sorry if you like those bands. No, really – it must be terrible having your condition…
That’s all, anyway. I’m feeling bitter, which may go some way to explaining the tone of this post. There is a glimmer of hope, however. This means that Dillinger will be in the UK again this year, and a little bird tells me they might have some new tunes out sometime in the next couple of months?
TOUR! TOUR! TOUR!
If there isn’t one I’m gonna break Puciato’s legs. Yes I’m only 140 pounds, but I can take ‘im, just watch me!
- CG
Feb 9
Mastodon. Pretty happy with themselves.
Mastodon just don’t stop. They played close to a hundred shows across numerous countries last year in support of Crack the Skye. They’re just about to kick off the UK leg of the tour, and beyond that they’re booked for dates in every month until June. They must be knackered.
But, in this maelstrom of live shows, they’ve somehow managed to find the time to write the soundtrack to Jonah Hex, the upcoming DC/Warner Bros film adaptation of the comic book of the same name, about an ex confederate soldier and bounty hunter with a gnarly tomahawk-burned face.
Thomas Jane wanted the title role pretty badly, but luckily he was pipped to it by Josh Brolin of No Country For Old Men fame. That was a good film. Punisher was not. But Megan Fox is also in it, so considering her usual role as plot-hole-masking eye candy, I’m dubious as to how good it’ll be. Obviously Christopher Nolan and to a lesser degree Frank Miller and Zack Snyder have set a high bar as far as the genre goes, but people need to learn that not everything should be adapted just so the generally illiterate public, with their miniscule attention spans (waah, books r teh long, crycry), can digest the often brilliant stories to be found in literature. So if it’s shit, it probably isn’t Mastodon’s fault.
</rant>
The story is that listening to Blood Mountain inspired director Jimmy Hayward to finish the script. One fanboy-phonecall later and guitarist Brent Hinds was on the next plane* to New Orleans to visit the set. Apparently Hinds is now even in the film as the first of a reported one hundred and seventy-two souls to be slaughtered onscreen. Noice.
As for the music itself, no excerpts yet, but Troy Sanders says:
“Some of it was heavy, some of it was very moody,” Sanders said. “A lot of it was spacey, Melvins B-sides, Pink Floyd-like, surreal outer space, like Neil Young’s Dead Man. Swirling, nausea music.”
I’ve got to say, whatever the film is like, it’s basically a new Mastodon album fifteen months after the last one was released, so I’m pretty excited.
Jonah Hex hits cinemas on June 18th, and the internet sometime before or after that.
- CG
* artistic license
Feb 8
Ha. Ha. Ha. I’m hilarious…
Yet another one of those bands I came to way too late (i.e. after they broke up), Mare played a unique mix of uber-sludgy doom with part haunting falsetto, part ball-achingly screechtastic vocals from Tyler Semrick-Palmateer (vocalist for The End on Transfer Trachea Reverberations From Point: False Omniscient). Caleb Collins of Circle Takes the Square handled drums, and there was…urm…some dude on bass.
They only put out one EP before going to the great gig in the sky (re: Crydebris, Push Me Under, a load of more obvious bands I’m probably forgetting) but it got them signed to Hydrahead. They announced the split three years ago this month, but I just got wind of a one-off reunion show they played in Mississauga, Ontario last summer. Some thoughtful guy thought to film it and whack that shit on YouTube: +10 internets for him. The audio quality is pretty damn good, too, and there are some flashy song titles if you didn’t already know them.
Check the related videos for the rest of the set. It’s good.
- CG
Feb 5
“Mother Dirt is a result of too many line-up changes, alcohol and substance abuse and a general lack of faith in everybody and everything. Fast as fuck, loud as fuck, unholy sons of bitches, fuck you.” – Dan Best, Mother Dirt
Born in a tiny town in the dark hills of Worcestershire, Mother Dirt, in their own words sound like “some kind of bastardised necro doom punk.”
I don’t know what it is about our little arse-end of nowhere, but the past few years has seen Malvern churn out more than its fair share of damn good bands. From your AZWAIs, your Deacon Birches and your Push Me Unders at the heavier end of the spectrum, to more expansive artists like Orbit: Dear Beacon. I can pretty much guarantee you won’t have heard of most of them, but that’s besides the point. These bands don’t do it for the glory; they do it because there’s fuck all else to do when you live in a field.
Mother Dirt are not for everyone. In fact, they’re utterly horrible. But in a good way. They are as dirty as both their name might suggest, and as the cow shed they use as a practice space. I don’t really have a basis for comparison I can offer you bar that their vocalist sounds like Jacob Bannon with a throat full of barbed wire. Their EP has absolutely no title bar the moniker above, but it’s angry, full of contempt and should probably come with a health warning. I doubt they care what you think of the recording quality (which is raw, to put it lightly), but it really doesn’t matter with this kind of brutality – in fact, it’s kind of the point.
Live, they’re on a different level. I believe at their last gig a banister got destroyed. I’ve seen blood and beer flying, and everyone in the room fucking loves it.
You’re not likely to ever get your hands on a copy, so hit the link below if you think you’re ‘ard enough. As an extra treat, you can also download their live set from The Purple Turtle in London last year over at their Last.fm page. Better quality, equally as nasty.
Myspace // Last.fm // Download
- CG
Jan 30
It’s a good feeling when something you’ve been working on for a long time comes to fruition. After months of hard slog for very little gain, you might finally feel as if it has all been worth it, and you can allow yourself a pat on the back and maybe a few drinks down the pub. For Malvern-based hardcore quartet AsZerosWeAreInfinite, or AZWAI as they are more colloquially known, that drink should be at least three fingers, and the hand should belong to a big sweaty gorilla.
You see, their self-titled EP was recorded over a year ago, but only now do you, the lucky public, get to sample the fruits of their labour.
The opener, ‘God, By Any Other Name‘, kicks in with the lyrics “between my broken teeth and self-prophesied lies, you will discover salvation for your ache”. This could be as much a comment from anybody who has found their way to the front of the stage during one of AZWAI’s shows as it is about the actual subject, one Wayne Bent. Bent, also known as Michael Travesser, is the charismatic leader of the Lord Our Righteousness Church in New Mexico, a religious community who were featured in the Channel 4 Documentary ‘The End of the World Cult‘.
It’s a belter of an opening track, driving home with the force of something big and forceful and un-clichéd as possible. You might be surprised that there is only one guitar at work here, as the entire band works hard to create a ferocious, full-bodied sound. Vocalist and lyricist Adam Murkin is great at taking a perspective and writing intelligently from it, no matter how bizarre or convoluted the perspective of that person might be. The clout with which he delivers his lines is unrelenting across the board, too, and conveys in part his mighty stage presence (both in front of and mid-crowd).
Next up is ‘Snakeskin in the Shape of Wedding Band, which claims the crown for the longest track on the EP – marginally. And that’s one of the great things about AZWAI’s refined style. The tracks are long enough to have enough substance to hold your attention (I’m looking at you, Ampere), but aren’t so long that the onslaught becomes wearing. I know that this will be a firm crowd favourite – enough breakdowns and catchy lines for them to really get into.
Closer ‘Poor Syntax’ stands out as my favourite. I am still in awe as to how drummer Dan Taylor can manage as many stick-clacks in the space of a single second as he does to bring in this track, but this is by no means the highlight of the track. The influence of The Dillinger Escape Plan is clear from the outset, but it’s no mere consummate rip-off: the guys know how to build on their influences, rather than rehashing existing songs.
The EP may only clock in at seven minutes and thirty-one seconds, but it’s more than enough. It is an unrelenting juggernaut, devoid of unnecessary trimmings or lyrical waffle. Hear me; salvation is coming – and it’s name is AZWAI.
- CG
Jan 28
Seriously, why have Stella Dawes not been signed yet? A clutch of glowing reviews like theirs, and you might have expected someone major to have taken notice by now.
I first received my copy of ‘Contrasts‘, their debut full-length, in the summer of 2008. Boy was I excited. I’d been keenly following this band for a while, ever since vocalist Mike Shakespeare, ferreting his way around Myspace one day, politely messaged a bunch of like-minded people in my area asking us to check out his band. Words such as ‘Mare‘, and ‘Eden Maine‘ were bandied around, and I’ve been in love ever since.
I had known the album had been in production for a while. Mike and guitarist James Barter were taking on the entire process themselves, fitting it around day jobs, so a delay was to be expected. But when it came, I was stunned. Two tracks, ‘Dichotomy‘ and ‘Everything Happens to Eeyore‘ had been favourites for a while, and the recently previewed ‘Happy Ever Afternoon‘ and ‘The Unspeakable‘ had satiated my desire for new material, but even these didn’t prepare me for the majesty of the beast.
You see, with a lot of albums, and ones of this genre in particular, the songs – the lyrics and the heartfelt meaning behind them – can come out quite same-y. Not entirely, obviously, but I quite often find myself having to check the name of the track against the listing to get a bearing of where I am in the record. This is never the case with Stella Dawes. Every song has a unique hallmark, not least in thanks to Bart’s unique guitar sound – something akin to the love-child of a chainsaw and a cheese grater. You know it’s ‘Gut‘ because of the throaty staccato opening. You can differentiate between the two ‘Investment Intercourse‘ tracks (Deposit and Return respectively) because the former kicks you squarely in the groin at 1:31. You know you’re listening to what is arguably the album’s centrepiece ‘When the Tiger Lost His Voice‘ because, well, who else sings about tigers except Survivor? No riff or chord progression is repeated between songs, and they could have, because they’re all good.
For me though, it’s the very lyrics I mentioned earlier that make this record for me. Furious wrath and hardcore go hand-in-hand, and that’s all well and good, but I like my lyrical spice to take a more intelligent twist than your average ‘argh, I’m so misunderstood!’. Mike knows what he doesn’t like about the world, but he expresses it intelligently and, above all, poetically. Lines like ‘we polish shit, but like it or not, nobody here is perfection’ ring true, as well as being delivered with consistent gusto and conviction.
Just a little note on the packaging. If ever there was a reason to buy a physical copy, this is it. The brown cardboard case is beautifully DIY (in keeping with the ethos of the whole package), and charming to boot. The insert, chock full of handwritten lyrics, continues the theme, and a nice little bonus was the typed insert thanking me for buying the CD. It’s these little touches that might draw the ever-increasing number of pirates away from torrent sites and towards their wallets, were the majority of albums not merely templated jewel-case jobs. Anything to help in the war.
I know the band is not currently gigging due to the departure of founding bassist and drummer, Steve Butcher and Simon Kendrick, but I wish them the best of luck finding suitable replacements to fill the void. Based on a heavy amount of speculation (and the appearance of a couple of demos on their Myspace page recently), I suspect that the rest of the band will use this time to gather their creative thoughts, and I hope they will hit us with a stunning sophomore release sometime soon.
[The boys are very reasonably offering you to 'set your own price' on what you think is fair for the music. You can choose to pay either £3 ($4.84), £5 ($8.07) or £7 ($11.30) + shipping. Check out the link above to hear what you're letting yourself in for. It's hardly expensive, and the packaging alone is worth it.]
- CG
Jan 26
Bossk. Bossk were good. The first time I saw them, they outshined the headliner of the evening, Envy. Some dude lay down right in front of the stage and just took them in. I felt like joining him.
But as so many great bands do, they broke up, and our stages seemed a little darker. But towards the end of last year I got wind of bassist Tom Begley’s new project, formed with ex-members of Centurion.
They call themselves The Mire, and are as much a spiritual successor to Bossk as we’re going to get. They’re largely akin to Isis or Cult of Luna, but something about them just feels fresh. So far they’ve only put out a two-track sampler, but I’m already clamouring for more.
Did I mention it’s free? Yeah, probably should have mentioned that. Make haste, minions.
- CG
Jan 25
“This goes out to the guy who yelled to turn the bass down. What kinda fuckin’ show do you think this is?”
So that was Glassjaw. Six years, £18 [roughly $30 for us American folk - Ed.] and three hours travel, and finally, FINALLY, I get to see them.
Glassjaw have had a hard time of playing in the UK. Their first tour over here, back in October 2002, was postponed due to Daryl Palumbo’s ill health. The rescheduled shows that December were also canceled, and then four shows into the tour the following April, Palumbo relapsed once again. That’s a lot of disappointed fans.
Basically, you take any opportunity you can get to see Glassjaw over here, and so when they announced a run of headline shows ahead of their support slot for Brand New at Wembley, I literally jumped at the chance.
A lot of the songs you could probably predict (stand-outs included John Lennon, Ape Dos Mil, Two Tabs of Mescaline, and Pretty Lush), but there was a healthy slice of juicy exclusivity. I nearly screamed like a girl when the drummer started playing the intro from El Mark, which Daryl informed us was the first time they had ever played it live, ten mighty years since it was written. They also played a brand new song entitled ‘All Good Junkies Go To Heaven’, which was met with a very healthy response.
I came away sore, soaked and smiling. So was it worth it after all this time? Well, yes, of course, but my one small gripe was the lack of support act. The rest of the UK got Pulled Apart by Horses and one of my favourite up-and-comers, Shapes, so why no love for Portsmouth?
But fuck it; it was a hiccup in paradise. Euphoria’s endearing, so I’ll let them off.
Thinly-veiled Glassjaw lyric-references over. Promise.
4/5 | B- CG
