GEHENNA AND THEORIES MAKE A TOUR ANNOUNCEMENT

Tonight came an announcement that caught my eye because of the bands involved: The long-running West Coast “negative hardcore” band Gehenna and Seattle grindcore upstarts Theories will be mounting a two-week tour this fall. And on top of that, Arizona’s Landmine Marathon will be joining them on select dates.

As for exactly what cities will be visited on which dates, we don’t know that yet. It would be nice to find out in enough time to allow evacuation of people in an orderly fashion before the bands get there and convert everything into humongous piles of smoking rubble.

I confess that one reason I thought this was newsworthy is because I’m a big Theories fan and know the people in the band. I’m also a big fan of their debut album Regression, which Metal Blade released earlier this year. They just finished a North American tour with Goatwhore, Black Breath, and Ringworm that hit over three dozen venues in 23 cities and provinces — and then finished a string of additional dates with Black Breath on their way back to Seattle. By all accounts, that tour went really well.

But Gehenna is a big part of the attraction, too, of course. They’ve been slashing and burning since about 1993. They say Gehenna is the sound of endless warfare, a name synonymous with violence, hatred, and fear. I’m sure as hell not going to argue with them either. In a nutshell, this tour is going to destroy.

For people on the west coast who will have a chance to catch the tour but may not know what I’m talking about, I’ve picked a few teasers of music with which to end this post: a stream of Gehenna’s last EP Funeral Embrace (2014); a drum-cam video of Theories’ Joe Axler during a live performance of “Shame”; and the video for “Cycle of Decay” off of Regression. For more details about the tour, watch these spaces:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Infamous-GEHENNA/98952171508
https://www.facebook.com/theoriesgrind
https://www.facebook.com/landmine.marathon