And some support they provide. Kylesa, Red Fang, Howl and The Atlas Moth supporting Crowbar, Saint Vitus and Helmet playing Meantime. I guess the mystery’s solved on what the year’s best American tour is going to be.

Check out the latest from the PR wire and the badass tour poster from Brian Mercer:

The 2011 Metalliance Tour has just announced the complete lineup for their already impressive and highly anticipated tour. The run of dates are now complete and will be supported by metal heavyweights Kylesa, Red Fang, Howl and The Atlas Moth. The tour organizers had the honor of having Brian Mercer also provide all of the visuals and artwork for The Metalliance Tour. He is best known for creating artwork for such bands as Eyehategod, Zoroaster, Black Tusk, Lamb of God and countless others.

Dates have officially been announced:
03/17 Dallas, TX Southside Music Hall
03/18 Austin, TX Dirty Dog / SXSW
03/19 New Orleans, LA One Eyed Jacks
03/20 St. Petersburg, FL State Theater
03/21 Orlando, FL Firestone Live
03/22 Greensboro, NC Greene Street
03/23 Springfield, VA Jaxx
03/24 Worcester, MA Palladium
03/25 New York, NY Irving Plaza
03/26 Cleveland, OH Peabody’s
03/27 Joliet, IL Mojoe’s
03/29 Denver, CO The Summit
03/31 Portland, OR Roseland Theater
04/01 Seattle, WA El Corazon
04/03 San Francisco, CA Mezzanine
04/05 Hollywood, CA House Of Blues

$50 VIP tickets will be available courtesy of Artist Arena. This very special package will include:

- A General Admission Ticket
- Access to a Meet & Greet with Metalliance lineup
- A Metalliance hot sauce bottle
- A Commemorative VIP Show Laminate
- An Autographed poster
- 1 Issue of Revolver magazine

One grand prize winner will be randomly selected for a Dinner With The Bands, an autographed Mosh Potatoes cookbook and one t-shirt from each of the bands.

One second-place winner will randomly be selected for a one-on-one guitar lesson with Kirk Windstein from Crowbar and an autographed Mosh Potatoes cookbook.

VIP tickets are on sale now. Click here for more information on this once in a lifetime experience!

If the Wikipedia count is to be believed, then including 7”s, EPs, full-length albums and the occasional limited-to-100-copies CDR, Asleep on the Floodplain (Drag City) is the 25th release from Six Organs of Admittance. Starting with 1998’s self-titled and weaving his way through a number of multi-album experiments and sonic phases, Californian singer/songwriter Ben Chasny (also of Comets on Fire) has kept a base of neo-folk and acoustic guitar across the Six Organs of Admittance discography, and on the latest, he scales back some of the fuller sounds of his previous album, Luminous Night, and returns to the home-based recording style of records like 2003’s Compathia. The main difference is the growth the ensuing eight years has brought about and Chasny’s depth of melodic range. In atmosphere, despite a contribution from Elisa Ambrogio on “River of My Youth” and some natural-sounding drones accompanying electric strums on “Brilliant Blue Sea Between Us,” Asleep on the Floodplain is lonely. Not empty, and not Chasny‘s most minimal work, but very solo sounding.

The album opens instrumentally with “Above a Desert I’ve Never Seen,” displaying immediately one of Chasny’s greatest strengths in its lyrical guitar lines. He doesn’t use guitar to substitute for vocals where there aren’t any, instead capturing a listener’s attention in a completely different way. His deft fingering has always made Six Organs of Admittance stand out, and that carries over to Asleep on the Floodplain. “Light of the Light” is a shorter, vocal song with a memorable melody that leads well into “Brilliant Blue Sea Between Us.” That three of the first four tracks on the album are instrumental should say something about Chasny’s focus, but the actual feel of Asleep on the Floodplain is so smooth-running that the water-based thematics come off as all the more appropriate. The title of the album, “Brilliant Blue Sea Between Us,” “Saint of Fishermen” and “River of My Youth” all contain some reference to water, and the flow of the songs speaks to that being on purpose. Could just as easily be me reading into it, but the transitions between instrumentals that leads into “Hold but Let Go” – the centerpiece and highlight cut for those craving vocals and structure – is soothing no matter what images you want to place over-top.

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Pretty self-explanatory, this one. I don’t know what’s going on climate-wise in the part of the world you live in, but here in the Northeastern US, it has snowed like a bastard for the last month, and it’s not showing any signs of letting up. I wanted to capture that feeling of winter where you’re so cold it feels like you’re never going to get warm again. The kind of cold that makes your blood move slower.

Needless to say, there’s a lot of doom.

But it’s not all downers. Occasionally winter can offer small triumphs — snow days, good soup, an extra excuse not to leave the house when you didn’t want to anyway — and there are some songs in this 13th audiObelisk Transmission that embody that idea: Scissorfight, Lords of the North, Grand Magus, but basically, I wanted this month’s podcast to sound cold. Some of these bands are here because they’re from cold places (Celtic Frost, Yearning, Candlemass), and others just sound like winter to me (Neurosis, The Awesome Machine, Anathema). Hopefully my personal seasonal associations carry over. I think they do, but I’m hardly unbiased.

Most of this stuff is pretty recent. There are a couple deeper cuts, but the majority is from the last decade at least. I didn’t realize it while I was picking out bands and albums, but 2008 features heavily for some reason. Maybe it was especially cold that year, or maybe I just listened to a lot of music that winter. Who the hell knows.

Like last month’s podcast, I hid a couple off-kilter picks toward the end. That’s where you’ll find Celtic Frost, Bathory, Enslaved, Primordial. I like the thought of changing things up to finish. All told, the podcast is 30 songs, just over three hours’ worth of material. Certainly long enough for you to revel in your wintertime malaise as I did while putting it together this afternoon. As always, I hope you enjoy.

Full tracklist is after the jump. To listen, click on the player above, follow this link, or grab the file by clicking the banner.

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Earlier this afternoon, I got in a link exchange/battle with our very own/very dear Mike H., in which we tried to out-retro occult doom each other. He wisely played Sweden‘s Långfinger, which was a solid move, and I countered with the Finnish Vinum Sabbatum, — who you’ll see above — before he broke out some band from Ohio and I bitched about the vocals being too high in the mix and ruined the game. My fault entirely.

New Podcast Alert. There is a new podcast coming this weekend.

The collective that involves The Patient Mrs. and I — we were calling ourselves Our Dichotomy Opens the Combat for a while, but that faded — is out tomorrow night for social obligation, and Sunday evening is my nephew’s birthday, but. There. Will. Be. A Podcast. This. Weekend. So help me Robot Jeebus.

And next week! Next week will rule. I will be reviewing new albums from American Heritage, Crowbar (fucking finally) and Six Organs of Admittance and I’ll have an interview posted that I did earlier tonight with Scott “Wino” Weinrich himself. That’s right. The fucking man. We had a good chat this evening in advance of his acoustic tour with Scott Kelly and I’m fucking thrilled to say it’ll be posted next week.

We’ll also wrap up the numbers for January (of course they’re down from December, but that’s understandable) and give the latest forum statistics. If you haven’t yet, please feel free to register for the forums, because we’re this close to 500 users, and I’d like to get there before this month is out. Pure egotism on my part. What a jerk. Ha.

Be sure to check in this weekend for that new podcast, and until then, have fun, have a few drinks and please be safe. This week was a tough one with the weather and school and whatnot, but there’s good stuff to come, so stay tuned.

I’m not really sure what my delay on this one was, but I found out a few months ago about the 2010 split between Argentinian mega-trio Los Natas and more metallic side-project Solodolor. It’s the second one the two bands have done — small wonder since they share guitarist Sergio Chotsourian in common — and with Solodolor vocalist El Topo Armetta (also Dragonauta and Eight Hands for Kali) singing on three of Los Natas‘ total seven tracks, the effect the split has is more like a family/semi-collaboration than the usual one band on this side, one on the other. Because Los Natas‘ music is so fluid tonally anyway, it works.

Solodolor get the last three tracks. The lineup of Chotsourian, El Topo, drummer Gustavo Rowek and bassist Billy Anderson (yes, that Billy Anderson) showed the same three songs on the last, vinyl-only split, so it’s basically a chance for anyone who didn’t hear them then to do so now. They’re heavier than Los Natas in the traditional metal crash and bash sort of way, more High on Fire than desert rock, but even the unhinged feel of “The Battle of Mocha Poo” meshes well with the surrounding material.

Five of the seven Los Natas songs are covers, and the hardest part about them is choosing a highlight. For original material, they do new versions of their own “Soma” from the first album and “Rutation” from the second, but with “Thumb” and “Green Machine” by Kyuss, T.S.O.L.‘s “No Time,” Danzig‘s “I Don’t Mind the Pain,” and a Spanish-language take on the all-time classic of classics, “Ace of Spades” by Motörhead — redubbed “El Ass de Espadas” — it’s the covers that win the day. And that new “Soma” rules, don’t get me wrong, but come on, Los Natas playing the opening riff of “Thumb?” Life doesn’t get much better than that.

The only drawback to the covers is that it isn’t Chotsourian singing. He still plays guitar, and he, bassist Gonzalo Villagra and drummer Walter Broide are as tight as ever instrumentally, but a host of vocalists are brought in to cover duty. El Topo was already mentioned, and he does well on the Kyuss songs and “I Don’t Mind the Pain” — which might be my pick of the bunch, depending on my mood — while Argentinian singer Boom Boom Kid makes the T.S.O.L. song work surprisingly well and Ricardo Iorio (V8) manhandles “El Ass de Espadas.” It’s pretty clear Los Natas chose friends and people they wanted to work with, and it’s hard to fault them that.

I’ll stop short here without going into full review-mode and just say that if like me you’ve waited to check out the Los Natas/Solodolor split, consider that time wasted for not having a voice in stuck your head constantly yelling “El ass de espadas! El ass de espadas!” Awesome.

On their first, self-titled, self-released full-length, the Albuquerque, New Mexico, trio Sandia Man skirt the line between desert rock and doom metal — they call it “caveman rock” — following the riff across six heavy tracks that owe equal allegiance to Clutch and The Obsessed. There isn’t much in terms of flair to the overall style, but Sandia Man nail down some surprisingly memorable songs, starting with a lengthy spoken word intro to “Skins of the Fathers” based on a Clive Barker short story of the same name. For first-time listeners, the first 1:40 of Sandia Man’s Sandia Man are probably going to be a stumbling block, but after a couple times through you get used to it. Guitarist/vocalist Alan Edmonds (he’s the skeleton with the cool hat and the guitar on the cover above) forces his voice caveman low for nearly the entirety of the album, so once you hear that, that he does it in the beginning too is going to seem like much less of a surprise.

As a trio, Sandia Man have a classic riff-heavy chemistry between them. Edmonds takes a few done-right solos throughout, but his playing isn’t showy, and bassist Steven “Sven” Esterly and drummer Jon Knutson have no trouble following his trail of smoke to the proverbial riff-filled land. Knutson and Edmonds formerly played together in the New Mexican incarnation of Devil Riding Shotgun (now based out of Portland, Oregon), so their ability to march lockstep should come as no surprise. The start-stop progression of “Skins of the Fathers” is just the first of several distinctly Clutch-esque elements, Edmonds’ vocals being a key contributor to that as well, but the chorus moves in a different direction and is catchy in a doomier way. Likewise, “The Crows” follows a similar pattern, the Wino influence showing through in the guitar. Esterly’s bass comes on thick throughout, but perhaps most so on second cut “The Crows,” which seems to be led more by its vibrating low end than even by the riff. When Edmonds takes his multi-layered solo especially, Esterly makes sure the song doesn’t lose its ground, and when the riff kicks back in for the faster closing movement, the change is all the more effective for the bass work.

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Well, the follow-up to Colour Haze‘s brilliant All is called She Said, but as guitarist/vocalist Stefan Koglek explains in the latest newsletter for his label, Elektrohasch Schallplatten, no one quite knows when the hell it will be out. The difficulties, as it goes, are technical, and it’s a definite bummer, but better that they hold it back than release something they’re not 100 percent behind.

Here’s the latest from Koglek via the PR wire:

Since June 2010 we are working on our new album. Due to several private and artistic reasons, we needed to build up our own analogue studio for this, which we did since March 2010 with great effort. Temporally and financially we went far over the actual maximum of our possibilities, totally nuts – but the world already suffers enough from reasonable economic decisions ; ) – We think that with this creatively and artistically we made a great step onwards and recorded our best, most sophisticated and most psychedelic album so far.

Unfortunately on the one hand we also had a cascade of bad luck with the gear, so all the time (expensive…) technical problems had to be solved. Furthermore because of a nearly unbelievable chain of acoustical problems on the recording side – a seemingly okay sounding room which caused some problems in the background and a basically correct but in combination difficult mic-ing – and nobody heard it all the time, several studied audio-technicians had the stuff on their ears over the course of months – all our well played and in the single signals beautifully recorded music resisted every attempt to mix it down properly yet – I invested five weeks of 11-14 hours behind the console so far – well with high-end gear you can also cause high-end problems ; ) … In the last days we analyzed the material digitally and found a few things which might work and haven’t been tried yet.

We gave everything – and everybody who knows us knows that we always try to give our very best – and with our attitude of unconditional giving we achieved so much over the years, not only for ourselves… but at the moment we came to a dead end with the new album.

Therefore we delay the release to an uncertain point later on this timeline ; ) – we won’t give up for sure – but we have to work it out now calmly, without time pressure and with deliberation…

In the meantime, you lucky European types can catch Colour Haze on the Up in Smoke tour. More info on that here.

With riffs for a week and a ’70s-boobage EP cover that’s bound to get them in trouble on one or all social media networking sites, San Diego trio Ride the Sun are flying high the flag of genuine stoner rock. Hard not to dig into their debut Ride the Sun EP. I bought some mp3s from the Doommantia store (kinda thought I was buying a disc, but for $5, I’ll take what I can get), and while that puts it in the “not gonna review this” pile, I still wanted to give interested parties a chance to listen and check out a band who are clearly worth the time.

Fortunately, Ride the Sun has posted the whole EP on their Bandcamp site. In the spirit of spreading the word and blogaraderie, here’s Ride the Sun‘s Ride the Sun EP.

From the same fertile and aggressive Vancouver soil from which sprouted stoner metallers Bison B.C. and the crushingly Melvins-esque Mendozza come oppressive sludgekateers Haggatha. The band, who issued their self-titled debut EP in 2009, now follow with the appropriately-dubbed Haggatha II full-length on vinyl through Choking Hazard Records. It’s probably not going to catchy anyone off guard in terms of overall style or affect, but the thickened sound of its seven tracks offers a fuller presentation than most of the sludge-core end of the genre while also shunning much of the “we play really fast and just pretend it’s slow” ethic that seems to typify this generation’s take. Even on the short “These Grey Days,” just 2:37, Haggatha shows a restraint that many of the beardo-abrasion types either can’t or simply refuse to grasp, and Haggatha II is a stronger album for it. Their tactics are certainly familiar, but sometimes you just want sludge to sound like sludge, not black or death metal.

Haggatha II (also referred to as “Second Self-Titled”) opens with the seven-minute “Circle of Salt,” getting its push from quiet guitar lines later echoed in the beginning stages of “Eremozoic” and elsewhere. Braden DeCorby (guitar) and Phil (bass) share vocal duties – though it could just as easily be Terry Weight on bass and vocals; the lineup info is nebulous — lending metallic screams and growls to the sizable riffage of the former and fellow guitarist Trevor Logan. “Gulag” is especially tortured in the throat-area, but the guitars contain suitable drama to add to the affect, and the drums of first-name-only percussionist Matt, who starts off and features on late-album cut “Acquiesce,” have a consistency and professional feel that helps Haggatha II come off as a record to be taken seriously. Cymbals matter. Matt’s interplay with the bass and chugging guitars is huge in filling out the sound of these songs. On second track, “Hogtide,” they practically make the piece on their own – not as blown-out as, say, early Church of Misery, but definitely up front and cutting through the other instrumentation.

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Their version might not be as rockin’ as the one Puny Human did on Sucking the ’70s II, and they may not be doing anything sonically that Monster Magnet didn’t do 20 years ago (or Hawkwind 20 years before that) but San Franciscan space weirdos Lumerians made a cool video for their cover of The Osmonds‘ song “Crazy Horses,” which they redubbed in the French “Chevaux Fous,” and I figured what the hell. For its visual oddness alone, it’s worth the two and a half minutes it takes to watch.

It’s hard to discuss Electric Wizard, the spearheads of an occultic movement within modern doom, and not get lost in either hyperbolic praise, devil references or ’70s horror imagery. Indeed, if you look at the bulk of what’s been said about the Dorset group’s seventh studio album, Black Masses (by myself as well), you’ll find it can be classified in one or all of those categories. Perhaps the best thing I can say about that is that neither the imagery nor the hyperbole are unearned on the band’s part.

Because Electric Wizard are, in fact, one of the most important groups in doom today. Their earlier works like 1997′s Come My Fanatics and 2000′s landmark Dopethrone have an influence that pulsates throughout the genre, and even their most recent outings, Black Masses and its 2007 predecessor, Witchcult Today, have been responsible for setting much of the course thematically for a growing crop of bands. As founder, guitarist and vocalist, Jus Oborn has become the very sort of cult figurehead so many of Electric Wizard‘s songs describe.

Joined in the current incarnation of Electric Wizard by American expat guitarist Liz Buckingham (ex-13, ex-Sourvein), tattoo-covered bassist Tas Danazoglou and hi-hat shunning drummer Shaun Rutter, Oborn stripped down the ultra-fuzzed style of Witchcult Today for the latest album, putting a special focus on the interplay of his and Buckingham‘s guitars and the strength of the songwriting. Since both records were put to tape at Toe Rag Studios in London by Liam Watson, it’s that much clearer that the efforts of Oborn and the band have paid off.

The simplistic brilliance of the opening title-track, the revelatory psychedelic horror of “Turn Off Your Mind,” the misanthropic “Scorpio Curse” and the sexually-charged “Venus in Furs” all seethe with an attitude and atmosphere undeniably Electric Wizard‘s own. And of those who would pretend to their Satanic majesty (see first sentence above), it’s becoming increasingly clear that none of them can capture terrors quite as vivid. There’s only one Electric Wizard, and they didn’t happen overnight. Their demented anthems are unparalleled.

In the interview below, Jus Oborn — a week under the weather with the flu at the time of our conversation — discusses the songwriting process behind Black Masses and some of his more surprising points of influence, as well as the prospect of much-demanded touring in the US, the challenges in crafting memorable choruses, and much more.

Complete Q&A is after the jump. Please enjoy.

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As they’re already in the mixing stage of their next full-length, it’s probably safe to call the five-track Sign Here for Nothing EP (SCOJ Music) from Swedish heavy rockers Thalamus a stop-gap release. Perhaps it was the need to get some material on tape with organist Håkan Danielsson, who didn’t appear on the band’s 2007 Beneath a Dying Sun debut LP, but whatever the case, Sign Here for Nothing stands on its own, full of retro riffing rock in the grand Swedish tradition of Spiritual Beggars, Danielsson playing a large role in filling out the sound while the double guitars of Kjell Bergendahl (also vocals) and Jan Cederlund (who has since left the band) lead the way for classic hooks and palpable grooves. At just 19 minutes, Sign Here for Nothing isn’t by any means a definitive statement from the band – except perhaps in terms of lineup – or enough to form a basis for an understanding of their career, but it’s a step in the process of the five-piece sorting out the balance of their sound, and a good listen along the way for those longing for something retro but not necessarily vintage.

The title Sign Here for Nothing comes from second track “Breathe Easy,” on which the riff takes the lead over Danielsson’s organ and Bergendahl’s vocals, as they were on opener “Hope You Understand,” are front and central in the mix. I’m never a fan of this approach in heavy rock – über-featuring the vocals – and I find I’m not when it comes to Thalamus either, since it comes at the expense of both guitars and the bass work of Peter Johansson, which is lost in some of the low end of the organ and could easily be brought forward more. Not that Bergendahl isn’t a capable vocalist – his voice has a loose classic rock inflection that works excellently with both the music behind him and Danielsson’s backing contributions – but on the later “New Age Blues,” a more equal footing is achieved in the choruses, and it seems a more successful track for it. “Black Day Sunday” takes away some of the garage feel of “Breathe Easy,” putting Thalamus in more straightforward riff-rock territory, but it’s a fine line anyway, and the difference isn’t enough to make the song standout in a negative way.

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Someone once told me that if you had three of something, that was enough to legitimately call it a collection. By that standard, I’ve always considered three dates in a row as the marker for a tour. Even if it’s a weekender, you need to throw in that Friday or Monday date to really make it count. Can’t just be Saturday and Sunday.

Enter Italian fuzz rockers Black Rainbows, whose quality second album, Carmina Diablo, was released last year on Longfellow Deeds. They’ve got a tour scheduled, and on the poster, they list a series of Friday/Saturdays and then, toward the end of March, a five-date run.

My question is this: Does the entire group of shows count as a tour? They’re all certainly supporting the same album, and even though the shows until the March 22 TBA date are all in Italy, they still require the band to get in a van and drive somewhere. The last five dates certainly are, but are all the shows part of the same tour? Does this count?

Feel free to check out the poster below while you decide:

Whether or not you think it’s all part of the same tour, if you’re in any of these places, you should go see Black Rainbows.

To be fair, they probably could have milked this for more than one press release. Nonetheless, venerable NYC imprint Tee Pee Records has made public its plans for both this year’s SXSW music festival and a considerably sized European tour that will take its bands through Roadburn and beyond.

Before I give it all away, here’s the PR wire:

Tee Pee Records is proud to announce the details for its 2011 South by Southwest (SXSW) label showcase. The independent record company will spotlight its diverse family of artists on Friday, March 18 at Headhunter’s (720 Red River Street, Austin, TX). This year’s lineup will feature Iron Age (Austin, TX), Sweet Apple (feat. Dinosaur Jr.‘s J Mascis), Night Horse (Los Angeles, CA), Lecherous Gaze (ex-Annihilation Time; Oakland, CA), Weird Owl (Brooklyn, NY) and The Main Street Gospel (Columbus, OH) and marks the 10-year anniversary of Tee Pee‘s annual SXSW “rock party.”

This April, Tee Pee will highlight its roster with its first ever European label tour, which will kick off on April 5 in Wiesbaden, Germany and will be headlined by stoner rock legends The Atomic Bitchwax. Also performing will be fast rising New York heavy psych band Naam, Toronto-based psych rock band Quest for Fire and NYC rockers Mirror Queen, rounding out the bill.

The 2011 Tee Pee European label tour itinerary is shaping up as follows:
Tee Pee Records 2011 European Tour
04/05 Wiesbaden, Germany Schlachthof
04/06 Vienna, Austria Arena
04/07 Würzburg, Germany Cafe Cairo
04/08 Dresden, Germany Groovestation
04/09 Hohenstein, Germany Schützenhaus
04/10 Berlin, Germany Magnet
04/11 Hamburg, Germany Molotow
04/12 Marburg, Germany KFZ
04/13 Dortmund, Germany Piano
04/14 Tilburg, Netherlands * Roadburn Festival (feat. The Atomic Bitchwax, Naam, Quest for Fire)
04/15 Jena, Germany Rosenkeller
04/16 Salzburg, Austria Black
04/17 Millstatt, Austria Bergwerk
04/18 Maribor, Slovenia Dvorana Gustaf-Pekarna
04/19 Torino, Italy United Club
04/20 Brescia, Italy Latte & Live
04/21 Luzern, Switzerland Sedel
04/22 Winterthur, Switzerland Gaswerk
04/23 Weil der Stadt, Germany JH Kloster
04/24 Paris, France Nouveau Casino
04/25 Rotterdam, Netherlands Baroeg
04/26 Antwerpen, Belgium Trix
04/27 London, UK Underworld

Proliferating an extreme take on sludge and more traditional death metal, Little Rock, Arkansas, four-piece Napalm Christ (how was there not already a band named this?) come with built-in interest owing to a pedigree tied to Shitfire, Shredded Corpse, and most notably, Rwake. Judging by the one track Napalm Christ has put online — pick your social network — they’re not afraid to either squibbly, blast or riff out; “The Seasons of Dirt” makes use of all the above in its short three-minute runtime.

Pushing sludge into the angrier, extreme metal territory might not be everyone’s thing, and I’m pretty sure they’re not the first ones to do it, but the fact remains that this is how genres grow. Napalm Christ‘s “The Seasons of Dirt,” apparently instrumental until recently, is formative, to be sure, but there aren’t many bands out there transgressing these stylistic lines. Whatever hype follows them because of their alliances, I hear a lot of sludge, and not a lot of it sounds like this.