SEATTLE FALLS INTO THE VOID

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
May 312010
 

On the night of May 28, Dark Tranquillity‘s 2010 WE ARE THE VOID TOUR made its scheduled stop at Studio Seven in Seattle, and two of your NCS collaborators were present to take in all the awesomeness this show had to offer.

This was a must-see event for us, because Dark Tranquillity was one of the bands that first hooked us on extreme metal. And apart from the significance of that, we catch their live act whenever possible because they dependably deliver outstanding performances. Of course, they weren’t alone — Threat Signal, Mutiny Within, and local band Blood and Thunder were also on the bill.

So, here’s our report on the concert, plus we’ve got an unusually large batch of performance photos to show you after the all the verbiage.  (And if you think these photos are amateurish, you should see the hundreds we took that didn’t make the cut!)

BLOOD AND THUNDER

We’re not gonna say too much about this band’s performance here  — because we devoted a whole post to them yesterday. In a nutshell, they kicked massive amounts of ass: A great stage presence; technically excellent playing; and one catchy, headbangable song after another. This band churns out modern melodic death metal that deserves a wider audience.  (We do have some photos of the band’s performance that we didn’t put in yesterday’s post — so we’re putting those up at the end of this one.)

(stay with us after the jump for the rest of this review, plus all those photos we promised . . .) Continue reading »

FUNNY SHIT (and we do mean that literally)

 IQ Subtraction, Metal News  4 Responses »
May 122010
 

The May/June issue of Revolver magazine arrived in our mailbox over the weekend. What we enjoyed the most was not the cover story about the 2010 “Revolver Golden Gods” awards show (which was largely irrelevant to what we care about in the current extreme metal scene). What we enjoyed the most was Revolver’s verbatim report of a conversation that took place at a dive bar in New York City between Adam Dutkiewicz and Mike D’Antonio of Killswitch Engage and frontman Mikael Stanne of Sweden’s Dark Tranquillity.

As you may know, KSE and DT toured together earlier this year. When Dutkiewicz and D’Antonio formed KSE back in 1999, one thing that united them was their love of Swedish melodic death metal, and Dark Tranquillity in particular. As they got to know Stanne better while touring, they discovered they had more in common than elements of their music. Like a mutual attraction to the Travel Channel (?) and (wait for it) . . . eating competitions.

And green shit.

So after this threesome did some Jack Daniels shots at that dive bar, the conversation eventually turned to the subject of eating competitions, and Revolver was there to record what they said. We thought it was pretty fucking funny.

Granted, our standards of humor here at NCS are pretty low. For example, as you’ll see, we laugh at anything that involves shit. Still, we thought you might find the conversation funny, too. After all, if you’re reading this site, your standards are also pretty low, by definition. So, after the jump, we’ll give you the best excerpts of that Dutkiewicz-D’Antonio-Stanne dialogue from Revolver. Continue reading »