The surprisingly so-so All Stars Tour now has tour dates! The trek — featuring Every Time I Die, Veil of Maya, iwrestledabearonce, and more — will run through July and August. Special guests Volumes will be performing July 26th-August 11th and Structures will appear July 19th-25th and August 12th-17th. Here are the dates:
I tend to think of these yearly summer package tours that Sumerian Records and the Pantheon Agency put on as falling on a certain spectrum. One one end you have Summer Slaughter, meant for fans of more extreme music which has now branched out to appeal to prog fans. On the other end All Stars Tour appeals to more hardcore/scene fans — think a selection of bands that you could see on the heavier end of Warped. I tend to align myself with Summer Slaughter Tour and avoid All Stars like the plague, but this year’s All Stars tour has at least three bands I’d LOVE to see!
As you may recall, iwrestledabearonce had a bit of a shakeup last year when original vocalist Krysta Cameron had a pregnant and left the band. Not wanting to let go of their crowd-drawing gimmick anytime soon, the band opted to pick up another female vocalist by the name of Courtney LaPlante. At first, she was billed as just a stand-in, with her other band Unicron — which sounds pretty much exactly like IWABO — as her main focus.
Now it’s looking like her placement in the band is a touch more permanent than all that, because they’re writing a new album with LaPlante still boasting frontwoman status. Will this have any sort of bearing on how the new material will sound? Likely not, but there’s some news that may have ruined a few days from people who care too much about silly things. I for one enjoyed Ruining it for Everybody, and I’m curious as to how LaPlante will leave her mark on the new record.
- JR
Avant-Garde is definitely an acquired taste. If someone had shown me Gorguts four or five years ago I wouldn’t have dug it; I was still scratching my head at Tool’s change from 7/8 to 13/6. However, when I discovered iwrestledabearonce’s debut LP It’s All Happening, my ears were confused. I had never heard anything of the sort. They mixed bluegrass with metalcore, interspersed with symphonic black metal moments, and even some technical guitar work. It was truly mind-boggling, but it worked. And not only did it work, but people my age enjoyed it. I knew people who went to their shows not because they were on the same bill as Asking Alexandria, but because they wanted to see something different. So, with metal purists fuming at this point in the story, how does IWABO fit in with the “avant-garde” genre?
Genghis Tron are without a doubt a band ahead of their time. While the aesthetic choice of drum machines and grindcore influence were around before they rose to the good graces of critics and fans alike, they took the “cybergrind” sound and made it their own. This wholly unique three-piece group — which only contains two synth players and a guitarist — may be ambiguous on the spectrum of avant-garde music, but they’re trailblazers in the realm of experimental metal.
The earlier work of Genghis Tron is almost tongue-in-cheek. They threw together grindcore, trip-hop, and various electronica genres which alienated many people — something any avant-garde band worth their salt should be doing. They forged a new spastic sound since aped by the likes of iwrestledabearonce and Arsonists Get All The Girls with a debut EP titled Cloak of Love in 2005. Rough around the edges as it was, its wild experimentation turned many heads, and it isn’t hard to figure out why:
After waiting over a whole goddamn year, iwrestledabearonce have finally announced a solid release date for horror movie they’ve been teasing the fans about. Titled A Beary Scary Movie, it follows the band trying to survive against Shreddy, a deranged guitarist from the legendary 80′s hair metal band White Vulture, who comes from hell to hack bands into pieces.
Featuring an all start cast including M. Shawn “Clown” Crahan (of Slipknot), Larry Parks, John Dillon, and many more, this looks to be like a great cheesy scary movie. I’m a fan of those, so this will be right my alley. In an interview I did with Steven of the band, “It’s the most offensive movie ever made. The most swear words you will ever see in a movie. A lot of nudity, and a lot of shameful things that we’re on camera doing. But I will say that it’s all acting… It’s not real, I’m doing it for my ‘career
Expect plenty of ‘adventurous’ moments. Check out Bloody Disgusting for more information and scroll below for the trailer:
- RB
Fear, And Loathing In Las Vegas01. Acceleration
02. Scream as Hard as You Can
03. Crossover
04. How Old You are Never Forget Your Dream
05. Interlude 1
06. Just Awake
07. Defeat and Beat
08. In the End, the Choice is All Yours
09. Ley-Line
10. Interlude 2
11. Don’t Suffer Alone
Do you like J-rock influenced metal? Electronica elements? Autotuned clean vocals? If these sound like the worst plagues that can be brought upon music, then it’s pretty safe to say Fear, and loathing in Las Vegas probably aren’t for you. It’s easy to see why these elements scare many people off, but it would be unfair to dismiss FALILV just because of prior bands who have used those elements poorly. An immediate comparison can be made to Eskimo Callboy, but that band misses the point completely, whereas FALILV have a completely different focus on similar themes. Their sound is a more brave exploration of the mixture of trance and metalcore, with a slight experimental slant that evokes Iwrestledabearonce and adds a clear direction that is in favor of musical integrity while bringing the aforementioned elements together. Still here? Then let’s see how All That We Have Now fares.
Photo by Jeremy Saffer
This year’s Vans Warped Tour is in full swing, but it isn’t without its hiccups. The polarizing group iwrestledabearonce had a bit of a surprise in store recently which put vocalist Krysta Cameron out of immediate commission: She’s pregnant as fuck. Guitarist Steven Bradley gives us the details:
“So here it is… complete transparency. A press release written by me (Steven, original IWABO guitarist) with the truth on what’s going down.
The day before our Warped Tour show in Dallas, TX we had a day off in the DFW area. Krysta lives there now, so she went home to relax and do some laundry. The next day, we received word from her minutes before our set that she discovered she and her fiancé are expecting a kid and she would not be returning to finish Warped Tour with us. Obviously this is an insane curveball for everybody, but in typical IWABO fashion we will press on. And no matter what happens, Krysta has been our best friend for years and we want her to be happy.
So what the fuck is the plan then, you ask? Well on literally a few minutes notice, our friend Courtney LaPlante flew her ass down to meet up with us today so that won’t miss a single show of this tour. Courtney is a beast in both the singing and screaming departments and is also an incredibly awesome person. We wouldn’t tarnish the years of work that we’ve put into this band by having somebody half-ass it on stage with us, so please come to a show and give her a high-five and make her feel welcome for doing us this huge favor. It makes it feel even better and more natural since she has been a long-term fan of our band and already knows the material.
So long story short; Fear not friends and Bear Fuckers… We will continue to play Warped Tour and we hope that you will continue to support us. Getting to play for and talk to so many of you on a daily basis is honestly what we live for, and we will definitely continue with our plan to high-five everybody on Earth. We will update you with more info soon, including some new tour dates and info on our recently-finished full-length horror/comedy/whatever film A Beary Scary Movie!
And finally, thank you so much to everybody who has been so supportive of us for all these years and we hope to see you again soon!
Love,
- Steven / iwabo”
As the statement says, she will be temporarily be replaced by Courtney LaPlante of the band Unicron. Having listened to them, I find it as no surprise that she was a fill-in; they’re basically an even more unrefined version of IWABO, so it looks like it’s all going to work out. The statement does seem unclear whether or not Krysta’s gone for good (the press release does refer to LaPlante as a “Fill-in”), but good on Krysta for taking the time off from the stressful touring cycle for the sake of her health during pregnancy. Whoever said IWABO were irresponsible goofballs didn’t know what they were talking about. Best of luck!
- JR
Have you ever heard progressive/avant-garde grindcore? Well, I’m going to assume you haven’t, so I will be talking about !T.O.O.H! today. What a band name, right? It stands for The Obliteration Of Humanity. Anyway, if you’ve read my previous Obscure Gems, you’ve seen me talk about Lykathea Aflame, and how their album is amazing. Remember how they are from the Czech Republic? Well, so are !T.O.O.H!! Apparently, during the 90s and 00s, the Czech Republic was the go-to place for mindblowing metal. Unlike Lyklathea, !T.O.O.H! (Okay, I give up; I’ll be calling them TOOH from now on) write their songs entirely in Czech. This adds yet another level of obscurity to their already hard-to-grasp songs, but they’re even more frantic and better because of this.
As polarizing as the band are, iwrestledabearonce won me over with last year’s Ruining it for Everybody. I think the record was legitimately fun and enjoyable, and I don’t really understand where all these accusations of the band being all ironic about their music came from. Sure, they don’t take anything seriously and they like to have fun, but you can sort of tell they write and play their music because they care, not because of some inside joke that amounts to, “it’d be kinda funny if we were in a shitty metal band, you know?”
Or I could be wrong. Whatever. It’s hard to tell these days.
Based on what I’ve heard, IWABO can put on a good live show. I’ve never seen them personally, but I know Noyan and our good friend Tre Watson saw them last year and they ended up playing instrumentally because vocalist Krysta Cameron was sick, and they thought the set was excellent. Maybe some cities on their upcoming Road To Metalfest tour (featuring the likes of Molotov Solution, Glass Cloud, and The Greenery) will be as lucky and feature the band as instrumental. Not that I hate Krysta with a passion (only slightly!), or anything. It’d just be rad as shit. Fingers crossed!
Here are the dates, below.
04/16 Oklahoma City, OK – Conservatory
04/17 Memphis, TN – New Daisy Theater
04/18 Knoxville, TN – Valarium
04/20 Springfield, VA – Empire
04/21 Worcester, MA – The Palladium (New England Metal And Hardcore Festival)
04/23 Pittsburgh, PA – Altar Bar
04/24 Evansville, IN – Boney Junes
04/25 Bloomington, IL – The Castle Theater
04/26 Des Moines, IA – Vaudeville Mews
04/27 Iowa City, IA – Blue Moose
04/29 Denver, CO – Marquis Theatre
04/30 Albuquerque, NM – Launchpad
05/01 Flagstaff, AZ – Cinnabar
- JR
