After the Burial‘s Road To Metalfest tour was a progcore dream tour! Featuring support from Within The Ruins, The Contortionist (who had Last Chance To Reason‘s Michael Lessard filling in on vocals!), and Glass Cloud, the trek took the bands to and from the annual New England Hardcore & Metal Festival. Needless to say, the Eastern US got rocked — hard. Our regular contributing photographer Maclyn Bean shot the stop in West Chester on April 22nd, and photos from the show can be viewed below!
As many of you may remember, one of last year’s biggest headlines on Heavy Blog was the story of King, a Michigan tough-guy hardcore/nu-metal sort of group who caused the cancellation of the Lansing, Michigan stop of The Contortionist‘s headlining tour with Jeff Loomis, Chimp Spanner, and 7 Horns 7 Eyes. For those who don’t remember, the King refused to stop playing their local opening set, so the venue cut their power to let the nationally-touring bands play, which caused a riot that lead to the cancellation of the show. A member of King is said to have hit someone with a baseball bat during the event. The whole episode was just despicable and I wished nothing but bad things for the group.
Unfortunately, it looks like contributing to such an event can lead you to a record deal and a ridiculous advance from Roadrunner Records, if this email sent to Heavy Blog last month and recent rumors are to be believed.
Since Jon Carpenter made the decision to leave The Contortionist to focus on his fiance (once again, congrats dude!) and his future family, videos have been popping up everywhere of people auditioning to their song ‘Holomovement‘ and ‘Geocentric Confusion’ from their most recent LP Instrinsic. However, as of late last night, some new information came up and it’s very interesting stuff. Keep in mind none of this has been confirmed by the band yet, so this may all turn out false, but right now, it doesn’t appear that way.
This year’s Road To New England Metal and Hardcore Festival features a top-notch selection of bands from this year’s NEMHF. Headlined by After the Burial with support from The Contortionist, Within the Ruins, Glass Cloud, and City in the Sea, the tour takes the aforementioned bands to and from the annual fest across the Eastern US for those of us who aren’t lucky enough to make it to the big event.
Thanks to Live Nation, we have two pairs of tickets for the tour’s New York City stop at April 21st at Santos Party House! To enter, send us an email with the subject ROAD TO NEMHF to mail[at]heavyblogisheavy[dot]com with your full name and cell phone number. You have until next Friday, April 19th at 5 PM EST to enter! Good luck!
- JR
Fallujah01. The Dead Sea
02. Silent
03. Venom Upon The Blade
Californian death metallers Fallujah had a sleeper hit on their hands in 2011 with their debut album The Harvest Wombs, which was met with a rapidly growing fanbase and high-profile supporting gigs, both local and international. Initially compared to the likes of The Faceless and the legion of bands that followed in their wake, Fallujah’s depth of sound and wide array of influences set them apart and established the band as stand-out up-and-comers in the emerging trend of prog-influenced death metal. The band has done quite a bit of maturing over the past two years, and now their potential is already starting to become fully realized with their new three-track EP, Nomadic.
Major bummer, everyone: Jonathan Carpenter, vocalist and keyboardist for The Contortionist, has left the group to focus on his personal life, as he got recently got engaged and is expecting a child:
“It’s going to be a jarring change of pace for my life, not being on the road most of the year. Making songs with the band and then performing them in front of the best fans has been a once in a lifetime experience. I wouldn’t trade the perspective I’ve found in the past few years for anything. I got to meet so many amazing people and see a good chunk of the world. I absolutely intend to keep creating and playing music in the future, albeit in a more personal pursuit.”
“I will miss seeing everyone in the TC family very much. I wish the best to all of my band buds and everyone who supports live music and all this heavy banger music we’ve been making. I feel very excited for my future with the love of my life and our pups, and our little one on the way.”
“Music has always been one of my passions and that’s what drew me to this band in the first place. The music comes first, and I know that the talent of the band will rise above this member change and they will find a new arrangement that will blow your minds.” - Jonathan Carpenter
Progressive Deathcore outfit The Contortionist have been getting on a lot of big bills lately. Recently they have been announced as support for Deftones, which is huge for such a small band, especially in comparison to some of the recent bands that have supported Deftones! They’re also playing New England Metal and Hardcore Festival which has huge string of dates with several tours all converging on the festival. The Contortionist have decided to do a small four date trek to the first tour leading up to NEMAHF with Within the Ruins and I Declare War. Then, it connects directly to the After the Burial headliner on the Road to New England Metal and Hardcore Festival tour which leads to, you guessed it The New England Metal and Hardcore Festival. I’ve decided to compile the dates for you after the jump!
In the lead-up to the annual New England Metal and Hardcore Festival, After The Burial have announced a new headlining tour featuring Within the Ruins, The Contortionist, Glass Cloud, and City in the Sea. This progcore dream tour is a must see for fans of non-shitty metalcore. Of course, some would argue that there’s no such thing but then again those types of people wouldn’t frequent this site anyway. So yeah, let’s all gather around and salivate over this evening of sweet breakdowns and noodly guitars.
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:
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.
