No Respect

Quickly: Welcome to the first “Caught In A Mosh,” the Illinois Entertainer‘s new monthly heavy music column penned by me, associate editor Trevor Fisher. While you won’t read much about Korn or Godsmack here, I’m not too snobby – underground or mainstream, if worthwhile I’ll talk about it. I never have nor will claim to be an infinite source of heavy metal history and knowledge, only an avid fan who does a decent job constructing a sentence.

Enough pillow talk.

Nobody should be surprised metal is underrepresented at this year’s Lollapalooza. The promoters’ (C3 Presents) blatant disregard for the genre’s existence is disturbing, though. Last year’s lineup at least included Wolfmother and Coheed & Cambria. Metal bands for people who don’t like metal? Sure. But at least C3 made an effort. This year? Nothing. Ditto for the Pitchfork Music Festival. Last year Intonation snagged High On Fire and The Sword, but this summer there isn’t an Intonation.

“It’s kind of baffling,” Greg Spalding, Bible Of The Devil drummer, says. “I don’t know why people wouldn’t just take a chance and throw something on there and see what happens.”

It’s even more baffling when you consider C3 had 130 fucking slots to hand out. C3 and Lollapalooza have drawn the wrath of the inaugural “Caught In A Mosh,” but I promised I wouldn’t let it spoil the mood. So let’s talk about the The Alehorn Of Power Festival, where you can see some metal.

Spalding and Tone Deaf Touring are the creative forces behind June 16th’s Alehorn (Double Door), now in its second year. The vision for the event was simple. “I just wanted to do a festival that would get more into, I don’t know if you want to use the word ‘true,’ but just kinda more authentic heavy metal that has a lot of older influences. You always see so many festivals around the Chicagoland area that are metal fests, but it’s just not, I don’t know, it’s just not for everybody I guess. It seems like it’s a lot more death metal or hardcore, and that’s great and people show up for it, but there’s not really anybody doing a fest like this.”

The Bible Of The Devil drummer admits he’s still trying to develop the festival as a brand name of sorts – something metalheads will instantly recognize and trust as a source for good underground bands. This time he’ll get help from Italian record label Cruz Del Sur, who will sponsor the fest and showcase four of their bands: headliners Slough Feg, Bible Of The Devil, Crescent Shield, and Widow. Completing the lineup are Chicago-based death metal band Novembers Doom (see Mike Meyer’s feature next month) and Virginia doomers Valkyrie.

“People do know the name even though it’s only the second year,” Spalding says. “When you’re in the metal underground word travels pretty fast. Everybody finds out about it because there’s not a lot of opportunities like this in the U.S.”

Tickets for Alehorn Of Power II are $14 the day of the show but only $12 if you get ’em in advance.

OUT NOW: In This Moment‘s debut, Beautiful Tragedy (Century Media), would be largely forgettable if it weren’t for vocalist Maria Brink. Solid female vocalists in this genre aren’t rare, but ones who pull off a death/extreme delivery are. Plenty have tried, but the results are generally spotty (Arch Enemy‘s Angela Gossow) or embarrassing (Kittie‘s Morgan Lander), but Brink is the real deal. ITM play Ozzfest’s second stage August 10th at the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre in Tinley Park . . . Being a diehard Megadeth fan doesn’t even justify buying their new DVD, That One Night – Live In Buenos Aires (Image). Unless you’re dying to see live performances of throwaways like “Return To Hangar” and “Something That I’m Not,” opt for 2002’s Rude Awakening instead. It features original bassist David Ellefson and a superior setlist . . I admit having no knowledge of Dublin, California before Dublin Death Patrol‘s DDP 4 Life (Godfodder) landed on my desk. What an idiot! It was only the childhood home of members of Testament, Exodus, and Vio-Lence among others. DDP 4 Life is, first and foremost, a reunion of early ’80s thrash band Rampage, which featured a teenage Chuck Billy (Testament) and Willy Lange (Laaz Rockit). But high-school buds back together for a few brews and a few jams isn’t so noteworthy, even when it’s Chuck Billy. So the Ram-page guys turned the record into a Dublin-area all-star effort, recruiting the likes of Troy Luccketta (Tesla) and Phil Demmel (Vio-Lence, Machine Head) to play as well as the original Rampage gang and the band’s roadie/fan Steve Souza (Exodus). The result is a surprisingly solid hunk of thrash considering some of the other contributors hadn’t recorded professionally prior to this. Billy and Souza are a solid all-star vocal tag team. . . One Man Army & The Undead Quartet‘s (led by former The Crown frontman Johan Lindstrand) Error In Evolution (Nuclear Blast) rarely varies from any of today’s Swedish death metal but gets mention here for one reason: a cover of Alice Cooper’s Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives theme song, “He’s Back (The Man Behind The Mask)”! A bold choice, and worth a salute . . . “Black metal has nothing to do with guitars or spikes or boots or white makeup on your chin and black makeup around your eyes,” reads the press material for Zweizz‘s The Yawn Of The New Age (Vendlus). O.K., fine. But it ain’t a bunch of glitchy computer bleeps, either. On Yawn, ex-Dødheimsgard member Svein Egil Hatlevik takes his former band’s electro experimentation to an extreme, substituting raw guitars and blast beats with emotionless laptop jockeying. Hatlevik might have a point saying black metal’s boundaries have become suffocating, but Yawn hardly sounds like the solution.

NEWS: By the time you read this the Chicago Metal Factory Web site (www.thecmf.com) should have received a complete overhaul, according to CMF honcho (and occasional IE contributor) Rodney Pawlak. If you’ve never visited the site, it’s the place for show listings.

Questions, comments, rants, raves, demos, swag, bribes, demands, or threats? E-mail mosh@illinoisentertainer.com.

– Trevor Fisher

Category: Caught In A Mosh, Columns, Monthly