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Summer Slaughter Tour 2013 Dates Announced

Filed Under: General News, Tours and Rumors of Tours

Apr.26, 2013

Summer Slaughter 2013

This year’s iteration of The Summer Slaughter Tour — which features headliners The Dillinger Escape Plan and support from Periphery, Animals as Leaders, Norma Jean, Cattle Decapitation, The Ocean, Revocation, Aeon, Rings of Saturn, and Thy Art Is Murder — is likely the most exciting tour I’ll have a shot at seeing in 2013. Sure, the death metal elitists and deathcore fanboys aren’t all too stoked on this year’s iteration of the annual trek, but I find it impossible to NOT get excited over a bulk of this lineup.

What makes this tour so excellent from my perspective is that they always seem to hit the appropriate secondary markets for me. Knoxville, Louisville, Cincinnati, or Columbus tend to be hit by Summer Slaughter. Sure enough, while not incredibly extensive yet (dates are still waiting to be announced) the tour at least manages to pass through the midwest/southeast. Dates are as follows:

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Tags: Aeon, Animals As Leaders, Cattle Decapitation, Norma Jean, Periphery, Revocation, Rings of Saturn, The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Ocean, thy art is murder

Rings of Saturn Wins Opening Spot On Summer Slaughter 2013

Filed Under: Tours and Rumors of Tours

Apr.02, 2013

Summer Slaughter 2013

Last week, the year’s biggest extreme metal tour Summer Slaughter announced their lineup (which includes headliners The Dillinger Escape Plan and an array of other Heavy Blog favorites like Animals as Leaders, Periphery, Cattle Decapitation, The Ocean, Revocation, and more) while letting fans vote on who they wanted to see open the show. After a neck-and-neck race between Thy Art Is Murder and Rings of Saturn, it looks like Rings of Saturn have won by a slim 1% of the vote.

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Tags: Animals As Leaders, Cattle Decapitation, Periphery, Revocation, Rings of Saturn, The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Ocean, thy art is murder

Summer Slaughter 2013 Announced! Vote For Who You Want To Open The Show!

Filed Under: Tours and Rumors of Tours

Mar.22, 2013

Summer Slaughter 2013

The Summer Slaughter 2013 lineup has officially been announced and will include The Dillinger Escape Plan, Animals as Leaders, Periphery, Norma Jean, Cattle Decapitation, The Ocean, Revocation, and Aeon, with more bands to be announced. I am so excited that I am going to faint.

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Tags: Aeon, Animals As Leaders, Cattle Decapitation, Intervals, Last Chance To Reason, Norma Jean, Periphery, Revocation, The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Ocean

Farewell, 2012: Famt Wang’s Top 10 Albums of 2012

Filed Under: Lists!

Dec.22, 2012

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Who the hell is Famt Wang, you ask?! He’s a graphic artist who has done shirt designs for the likes of Reflections and Bound by Exile, he is the creator of a line of limited edition guitar picks for Carnifex, Dweller, and Ophidian I, and member of up-and-coming death metal band Blue Waffle (for the love of Christ, don’t Google them). He reached out to us concerning his very own Top 10 list and we were happy to oblige! Read his thoughts on the year below.

So, I wanted my top 10 list to not get lost in my 1,000,000 blog posts a day on Facebook; so I asked my friend over at Heavy Blog is Heavy to post it for me. Luckily they all think my music taste is great and that I’m funny as fuck, or I wouldn’t have been worked into the last day of publishing. 2012, has been a year full of jacking off, bad relationships, and somewhat decent music; at least for me. Communications was my focus for this year, and laying low. I think I got high more then anything in the last year and just blasted music. 2013 will be much more productive; my band will actually make real music and not fuck up splits with other bands, I’ll produce more guitar picks, and I’ll still smoke way too much weed. Here’s my top 10 releases of 2012.

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Tags: Breathe Carolina, Cattle Decapitation, Dead Icons, Every Time I Die, Lord Mantis, Spawn Of Possession, Struck By Lightning, The Acacia Strain, Vinnie Paz, xibalba

Farewell, 2012: Alkahest’s Top 15 Albums Of 2012

Filed Under: Lists!

Dec.21, 2012

alkahest

So it’s Wednesday at 3:43 AM the week these year-end retrospective lists are being published and I’m scrambling to edit my fellow writers’ contributions when I’ve barely even started mine. To be honest it hasn’t even quite settled in that 2012 is just about over. As I’m writing this, there’s about a week and a half left of the year, and it puzzles me. It feels like just a couple of months ago that I was doing this exact same thing for 2011, only this time I seem to be much busier and everything looks different. The site, wordpress, and even my staff group have all changed.

We’ve picked up a number of fresh faces this year that you’ve already seen these past few days, but you may have also noticed that a couple of people from last year are no longer with us. A lot of people have come and gone over these past three and a half years that I’ve been doing this Heavy Blog thing, and most of them sort of float around and hang out when they can. The most important ones that come to mind right now are Dan (Dormition) and Chris (Disinformasiya), both of whom were very instrumental and valuable in the growth of this site, and it was sad to see them part ways with us. Without them (Chris in particular), I might have not kept this thing going this far. I love both of those guys dearly, and you can keep up with them at The Monolith, which you should bookmark if you haven’t already. Ya jerk.

Like I’ve said, this year has been busy. I don’t talk about my personal life much here despite the fact that it’s my blog, but what better time to get all personal than a year-end retrospective? As you may have noticed, I’ve been a bit more of a hands-off editor and the scheduling of posts have been a bit less rigid and frequent than they used to be. I’m at the tail end of my college career and I’m currently in and out of internships which have kept me busy and often away from Heavy Blog. Between classes, internships, my “actual” job, and this website, my hands are pretty full. You (and I, for sure) can thank Evan (Juular) for his help with editing since Chris’ departure as well as Damien, Noyan, Gunnar (DeusExMachina), Cody (Tentaclesworth), Spencer (Inhumed), Anthony (Alucard), Greg (Red Bruschetta), Atif (Dr. Killjoy), David (Riptide), Ridge (Deadite), Colin (Momento Mori), and Geoff (Denisovich) for sticking with me and making sure there’s enough content each week and that this site keeps going strong. Also a strong word up to Ben Robson who took over Heavy Blog recently and decided to stick around with us behind the scenes and Chris Collins, our resident photographer. These guys are awesome, and they manage to put a smile on my face every single day.

2013 promises to be even busier with my next internship, impending graduation, and career, but hopefully that doesn’t stop this site from growing and providing daily content that helps to promote and further our favorite genre of music. Thank all of you for sticking with us!

So with all these feels out of the way, here’s what most of you care about, my albums of the year:

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Tags: Aesop Rock, Alcest, Between The Buried and Me, Cattle Decapitation, Deftones, Devin Townsend Project, Dream Theater, Eldrimner, Journey, Meshuggah, Periphery, Rush, Shining, Styx, TesseracT, The Contortionist, Uneven Structure, Wintersun

Farewell, 2012: Dan Wieten of The Omega Experiment’s Top Albums of 2012

Filed Under: Lists!

Dec.20, 2012

As you may have noticed, The Omega Experiment‘s fantastic self-titled debut album ended up on a few of our year-end lists. Their powerful blend of prog metal and soaring hooks — sounding like a crossbreed of Styx and Devin Townsend Project — is both thought provoking and incredibly catchy. We acclaimed the record, and we weren’t the only one who took notice of their excellence either; Listenable Records (home to fellow Heavy Blog favorites Gorod, Betraying The Martyrs, and Sybreed) just signed TOE and are re-releasing their debut album in 2013. We asked frontman and songwriter Dan Wieten to give us a recap of his favorite albums from the year, which you can read below!

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Farewell, 2012: Inhumed’s Top 20 Albums Of 2012

Filed Under: Lists!

Dec.20, 2012

inhumed

If I had my say, there would be a top one hundred list, because I enjoyed so many different albums this year. I’ve changed this list fifty seven times over the past week, so this list is me finally making a decision. It’s honestly been harder choosing this list than it has been choosing classes for next semester. I must say that 2012 has shown that music has not totally gone down the drain, because there are still so many amazing bands I’m just now hearing about, and so many great albums to listen to. So, without further ado, here are the twenty best albums to come out in 2012, and the six best albums that would be twenty one through twenty six that just didn’t make the cut.

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Farewell, 2012: Dr. Killjoy’s Top 10 Albums Of 2012

Filed Under: Lists!

Dec.19, 2012

drkilljoy

2012 has been a phenomenal year in music. Huge bands came out with some of the best music I’ve heard my entire life. Bands were coming out with such amazing stuff; it felt like they actually believed this to be the last year for humanity and had to come out with the best music they’ve ever created. This year was the year of many things; post-rock, progressive metal, comebacks, djent etc. but to me this was mainly the year of death-metal. With stellar releases by industry veterans like Cannibal Corpse, Nile, Cryptopsy and Dying Fetus, as well as newer bands like Cattle Decapitation, Pathology and Dyscarnate, I have never heard this much death-metal at once. I used to shun the genre, but this year, I converted. I came over to the dark-side (partly because they had cookie… monster. Lelelelelel. No? Okay, no more horrible puns). It was also this year that I started listening to some new genres, mainly grind and slam. I knew they existed but I didn’t see the thrill in them till recently. Boy, was I wrong. So let this year be the “Year of Resolution” on my new found sense of taste.

Reflecting back on 2012, it’s difficult not to think about some of the downright horrible news that came out this year. With the closing down of Hydra Head Records, Laurent Schroeder-Lebec leaving Pelican and the shocking death of Mitch Lucker vocalist of Suicide Silence, it had its ups and downs but I guess that’s just life’s way of reminding us that we have to take the good with the bad. Here’s to trying to keep positive for the next year.

This year is also the year I started writing for HBIH and my opinion on music started to mean something. I had been a reader of this blog for 3 years until I was approached by Alkahest to write for HBIH. Having been a jobless Indian living in New Delhi, I instantly accepted the offer and now I can pose as an online music hipster and look down on other people’s music taste with unabashed glee. Thanks again, Jimmy!

Unlike many of my co-workers here at HBIH, I opted to have my list consist only of 10 albums. I’m old-school that way. Yes, they were many albums I wanted to add to my list but I’m going to stick to the tried and tested way of the Top 10. So without any further ado, here are my Top 10 Albums Of 2012.

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Tags: Between The Buried and Me, Cattle Decapitation, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Monolith Of Inhumanity, Neurosis, pelican, The Contortionist, The Faceless, The Safety Fire

Farewell, 2012: Riptide’s Top 20 Albums of 2012

Filed Under: Lists!

Dec.19, 2012

riptide

I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but 2012 was fucking phenomenal. It had everything a music fan could ask for in terms of new releases, and then some. Personally, this year saw me furthering my tastes into more progressive and extreme stuff (with a heavy dose of jazz on the sides), and I think I couldn’t have chosen a better time to pick up on these styles, as genres like death metal and prog enjoyed a fantastic collective output. My list reflects this to a great extent, as pretty much half of the bands found below can be dubbed as death metal in one of its many forms, and even more exhibit progressive elements to at least some extent. Anyway, since most of you are here for the goods, I won’t keep you waiting.

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Farewell, 2012: Denisovich’s Top 10 Albums of 2012

Filed Under: Lists!

Dec.19, 2012

Denisovich

The first thing I want to say, as the newest addition to the Heavy Blog team, is what a privilege it has been to write with these guys over the past few months and to have the opportunity to perhaps expose more great Australian progressive rock and metal to the world.

Gushing aside, though, two things have struck me about 2012, the first of which has been the breadth and the quality of the releases by Australian bands, some of which appear on my list below. Of those releases that didn’t quite make the cut, I was particularly impressed with, amongst others, Elysian‘s Wires of Creation, Okera‘s A Beautiful Dystopia, and Avadante by Kettlespider. Promising EPs were also released by Gods of Eden and In Trenches, all of which bodes well for the future of music in this country.

The other thing that stands out to me, as I look down the list of albums that really captured my interest this year, is that 2012 has been a year dominated by mood, atmosphere and emotion. Now, to be fair, I am generally drawn to vibe heavy music, but never before have I listened to so many doom influenced bands!

At the end of the day, however, I was in no doubt as to which three albums would vie for top spot, each one stylistically, technically and structurally progressive, yet still emotionally accessible, and I am sure that all three will remain stalwarts of my collection for many years to come.

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