When I worked at KB Toys store #1051 in Morris Plains, New Jersey, they used to call it “Green Friday,” and as I started there when I was just turned 16, that was how I came to know Black Friday, which is what most people in the US call the day after Thanksgiving — the busiest shopping day of the year and the “official” kickoff of the holiday retail season.

Black Friday takes its name not from the shadow that consumerism at large casts on American culture, but from the simple fact that it’s the day that moves most stores from the red into the black for the year. It’s when they start turning a profit. Seeing an opportunity to continue their mission of promoting independent music culture, the fine folks behind Record Store Day got involved this year, bolstering the event with special releases and other initiatives. I’d expect more of that kind of thing next year.

Late last month, when I was at Redscroll Records in Wallingford, Connecticut, on my apparently annual autumn pilgrimage, I was given a flyer for their Black Friday specials, and knowing that I was going to be in the state for the Thanksgiving holiday, kindly suggested to The Patient Mrs. that I might like to wake up early and hit up the sale, which was 25 percent off everything in stock except for turntables.

So it was. My alarm went off yesterday at 5:35AM, and when I walked into Redscroll at 6:02 or thereabouts, the place was already full. Outside, the sun was just starting to think about rising. As I suspected I might, I had the CD racks mostly to myself (at least as compares to vinyl — LPs are by far the priority for the shop), but it was easily the most crowded I’d ever seen it. People were friendly, though, making way for each other and handing off releases to other potential buyers. I used the 25 percent discount as an excuse to pick up a few odds and ends, most of which I’d already heard, but hadn’t gotten full copies of, and other discs I’d wanted to grab this year that I hadn’t gotten the chance.

For example, I long since own Sovereign by Neurosis, but a quarter off the price was enough for me to grab the 2011 reissue, and stuff like Candlemass‘ Ashes to Ashes live record and Place of Skulls‘ As a Dog Returns had just kind of slipped through the cracks in terms of getting a physical copy. I bought The Body & Braveyoung‘s Nothing Passes to include in the next podcast (no big surprise: it sounds totally fucked), and was hoping to nab The Atlas Moth‘s An Ache for the End for the same reason, but they were out of it, and I drowned my sorrows in some cheap George Carlin, Goblin and Free instead.

Now that I’ve heard the low-end centric mega-grooves of Saturnalia Temple‘s Aion of Drakon, I’m officially stoked to check them out at Roadburn next year. And because I haven’t been able to leave there without doing so the last couple times I’ve been, I picked up a Cable CD, this time the 2008 reissue of their first album, Variable Speed Drive, the original version of which I’ve been hunting on eBay for a bit with no real success.

It was just over $100 for 10 discs, which wasn’t bad and was enough to earn me a free Redscroll t-shirt that I’ll wear proudly. I went back to the motel and crashed out for a couple more hours before getting up and heading south back to Jersey to go to work, and after that, on the way further south to Maryland, I requested yet another stop from The Patient Mrs., this one to Vintage Vinyl, to pick up that Atlas Moth record and settle the matter once and for all. I also got a full copy of Invisible White by Ancestors. Both at full price, and neither with any regret.

Vintage Vinyl in the evening was empty compared to Redscroll in the morning, which was troubling, since that’s pretty much the only shop in New Jersey where I can do something like stop in and pick up an Atlas Moth or an Ancestors CD and be confident that they’ll actually have such a thing. I know they had stocked some of the Record Store Day Black Friday special releases, but hopefully they come around to the sale stuff too, because god damn, I’d hate to lose that place as a resource.

In the meantime, a package showed up in the mail yesterday from All That is Heavy with a copy of Master Sleeps by Hills, which is jammier than I thought it would be, and the Rise Above reissue of Necromandus‘ Orexis of Death, which Tony “I Have Excellent Fucking Taste and Stone Axe is My Band to Prove It” Reed recommended a while back I make mine. Altogether, this probably represents the bulk of the music I’ll buy through the end of 2011, so it was good to send the year out with a bang. I should have plenty to keep me busy until January comes.

We’ve had a pretty steady stream of Roadburn updates the past couple weeks, and today the fest has announced that Fleshpress and Bongripper have joined the lineup for next year’s edition of the festival at the 013 venue in Tilburg, The Netherlands. Bongripper have joined twice over, as it turns out, since they’ll also be playing Satan Worshipping Doom in its entirety at the traditional Sunday Afterburner.

That’s badass enough, honestly, but Roadburn has also made available a couple more audio streams from this year’s fest, namely Candlemass‘ 25th anniversary show (featuring original vocalist Johan Längquist and Caspar Brotzmann Massaker. Here are those links, followed by the latest on Bongripper and Fleshpress being added:

Candlemass 25th Anniversary show featuring Johan Längquist:

http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/45167181#ondemand.45167181

Caspar Brotzmann Massaker at Roadburn 2011:

http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/45167199#ondemand.45167199

Today, we’re excited to announce that Bongripper and Fleshpress have joined the lineup for Roadburn Festival 2012.

Chicago’s Bongripper invade Europe for the first time through the Roadburn 2012 Festival. The instrumental doom entity coalesced in 2005 and built a cult following through word of mouth of their seven self-releases. The band is set to record for two upcoming splits before working on their next full-length.

Bongripper will be playing the first of two sets at the Midi Theatre in Tilburg, Holland on April 14, 2012. Additionally, the band will perform its 2010 album, Satan Worshipping Doom in its entirety for a special Afterburner set on Sunday, April 15, 2012 at the 013 Venue in Tilburg, Holland. Satan Worshipping Doom ranked among the best albums of 2010, as voted by the Roadburn staff and readers alike. Hail Satan. Worship Doom!

Indomitable sludge / doom behemoths Fleshpress will be playing a one-off show at Roadburn 2012′s Afterburner, set to be held on Sunday, April 15 at the 013 venue in Tilburg, Holland. Combining massive riffs, searing vocals and tense atmospheric interludes, Finland‘s Fleshpress is a must-see for the misanthropically inclined.

Fitting for a band named after a song on a Grief record, Fleshpress make malevolent, crushing music punctuated by snarling screams of pure hatred. Interspersing noise-riddled, forbidding ambience between bouts of neck-snapping riff assaults, they provide no solace for the timid and spasms of delirium for fans of filthy sludge and doom. We look forward to seeing the smoking crater they leave behind…

7:26PM – Saturday – Hotel Mercure, Tilburg

Caught the beginning of Evoken doing my beloved Garden State proud with their monstrously-paced death-doom, then decided to come back to the hotel for some respite, to empty out the camera, have another Palm Dobbel and regain consciousness. I don’t think I’ll have time to organize photos and put it online now, but I’ll get it written down, anyway, and post it later.

Since this series seems to have become as much a chronicle of my fucked up sleeping patterns as of Roadburn 2011, I’ll say I was barely conscious at 3:45PM this afternoon when Candlemass took the stage for the 25th anniversary show they were supposed to put on last year. I’d woken up only 55 minutes earlier, jumped in the shower and ran out of the hotel (well, okay, I walked quickly) to get to the main stage in time.

Well worth the effort. They started out with Robert Lowe on vocals and did a couple songs before bringing out Johan Lundquist to do the 1986 classic Epicus Doomicus Metallicus in its entirety. I’ve never seen Lundquist before, either on stage or on DVD – he might be on that 20th anniversary thing they put out a couple years ago, I can’t remember off the top of my head – but he fucking killed it. He wasn’t about to hit the super-high notes in “Solitude,” but he sounded great anyway, and had a stage presence that really helped pull off the drama in the material. Leif Edling looked proud, and rightly so.

They pulled in a decent bunch of people to start, but it was a long set at about two hours (they ended early of their appointed 135 minutes) and the crowd thinned out some by the end. Nonetheless, those who stuck around definitely appreciated what they were seeing, and I was among them, having stayed for the whole set to see Robert Lowe come back out for more songs, bring out Lundquist again and the two of them front a cover of Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and Candlemass’ own “Darkness in Paradise” from Ancient Dreams. Lundquist and Lowe were both reading from a lyric cheat sheet, so there was a lot of dramatic pausing to look down – Ian Gillen tells a fantastic story about the tactic in an interview about his time touring with Black Sabbath for the Born Again album – but as they informed from the stage, Candlemass had never played the song live before, and it was something special just for Roadburn. The whole set pretty much felt that way.

Staying for their whole performance meant missing Black Math Horseman for the second year in a row, which is a bummer, as I was a fan of their Scott Reeder-produced album, Wyllt, but I had appropriate enough accompaniment for my sorrows in Candlemass’ classic doom. When they were finished, I shuffled over to the Green Room – or, once again, the hallway outside of it – to see a couple minutes of White Hills’ blown-out psych. They sounded pretty good, but I have the feeling a show of theirs in New York would be intolerable for the assholes it would draw. At Roadburn, everyone’s kind of on the same team. Team Weirdo.

Once finished with that, I grabbed some food in the catering tent. It’s easy to forget you’re hungry when you’re busy, and I’d gone downstairs for the hotel breakfast at about 8AM (obviously before falling back to sleep until almost three this afternoon), so I wasn’t starving, but I figured a couple beers were in my future – and I figured right, as it turns out – so eating was the right idea. I made it quick, though, to get back to the main stage in time to catch the start of Weedeater, which I was glad to see. Guitarist Dave “Shep” Shepherd showed no signs of lingering effects from his recently broken hand in his playing, and they as usual were in top form. Drunken shenanigans abounded and good times were had. I’d already seen them this touring cycle, but they still ruled.

Thinking rightly that Evoken would be crowded in the Green Room, I headed over there early to get a decent spot and watch them get going. The drummer from Winter, who it should be noted was in his skivvies by the end of their set last night, stood fully-clothed by the side of the stage to watch them as they set up, perhaps in a showing of underappreciated-East-Coast-death-doom solidarity. Maybe he was just lost trying to find the can. I’d like to think it’s the former.

Soon it’s back over to the Green Room for Ramesses (very much looking forward to their set), then Stone Axe in the Bat Cave if I can get in there and Shrinebuilder in the main stage if there’s time, Ufomammut playing all of Eve in the Midi Theatre, and Swans back at the 013. Going to be a busy night, a lot of moving around, but I’m feeling good despite the allergies, and this being the last night of Roadburn proper, I know it’ll be worth it when I’m reliving this in my head for the rest of this year. Note: This morning, I reserved a hotel room here for 2012. No regrets.

More pics after the jump. You know the drill by now.

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The headline pretty much says it all, but I’ll back it up with the enclosed Acid King flier and the notion that if you’re going to book a flight over to The Netherlands for Roadburn 2011, now is probably the time to do it. Shaping up to be quite a year for the festival.

No disrespect to current Candlemass frontman Robert Lowe, who’s kicked ass with the band for two albums now, but Messiah Marcolin, in this clip, basically owns the stage in front of tens of thousands of people and makes them his willing accomplices in a doomed nachtmare of monumental proportions. Too bad the guy’s (allegedly) a nutjob, because god damn, did he rule. Here’s “At the Gallow’s End” from Wacken 2005:

This one comes from Blabbermouth, and even if it is the Kory Clarke version of Trouble, a show with Candlemass is bound to be a doomy good time. They can poll the contemplative Swedish audience to see who has the goofier album title, Death Magic Doom or The Dark Riff.

Doom metal legends Candlemass and Trouble will join forces for a short Swedish tour in September. The dates are as follows:

Sep. 26 – Malm?, SWE @ KB
Sep. 27 – Gothenburg, SWE @ Tr?dg?rn
Sep. 28 – Stockholm, SWE @ Debaser Medis

The reputation of Swedish/Texan doom outfit Candlemass goes without saying. I know I’ve said it before, but bassist Leif Edling is in the top three great doom riff-writers, and his powers are as potent as ever on Candlemass‘ new album, Death Magic Doom (Nuclear Blast). I’ll spare the wax poetry and intellectualizing because the record has already been reviewed, but we all know they’re gods among mortals in the international doom scene.

Having interviewed Edling for his recent solo album, Songs of Torment, Songs of Joy (Candlelight), I thought it might be prudent to hit up vocalist Robert Lowe. Lowe being the Texan portion of the band as well as the singer for Solitude Aeturnus — one of the best traditional power doom bands in the US — his perspective was bound to be unique and informative about the inner workings of the band. Failing a phoner for scheduling reasons, I sent some questions via email.

The occasional trouble with email interviews is that (1:) you never get to ask a follow up and (2:) you sometimes fall into the trap of the one or two sentence answer. Particularly as the interview plays out, the subject, answering the whole thing at one, consciously or unconsciously gets bored of what they’re doing and the answers get progressively shorter. Lowe has a little bit of that going on, but there’s still plenty worthwhile in his answers, so please enjoy the Q&A after the jump.

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The second among the ranks of this year’s goofily-titled releases by legendary doom acts (the other two being Heaven and Hell‘s The Devil You Know and Trouble‘s The Dark Riff), Swedish gods Candlemass present their sophomore full-length in their incarnation fronted by Robert Lowe of Solitude Aeturnus, Death Magic Doom. Considering the vivacious sound the band had on 2007′s King of the Grey Islands — despite the fact that Lowe joined the band just shortly before it was recorded and all the material had long since been penned by bassist Leif Edling — Death Magic Doom has a lot to live up to, but with tales of demons and death, they present eight solid tracks in their trademark classic style.

Ideally, I’d like to construct a narrative about how these songs were written differently with Edling considering the power of Lowe‘s voice specifically as regards the vocal melodies, but I just don’t think that’s the way it went down. Rather, I think Lowe was picked as a replacement for Messiah Marcolin precisely because his voice already fit what Candlemass was doing; there was no adjustment necessary. On that level, Death Magic Doom continues their already well-suited coupling. After some time on the road together, Lowe does sound assured and confident of his role in the band, but it’s not like King of the Grey Islands was unsure vocally. It’s just a good match.

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In a stroke of sheer awesomeness, Swedish doom legends Candlemass have posted their entire new album, Death Magic Doom (Nuclear Blast), for streaming over on their MySpace.

One assumes they’re doing this in advance of the European release date of the album, which is the first week in April, but for those of us in the US (where it’s not out until May 5), we get to hear it an extra month early! Sometimes the internet is pretty kickass. Like when it has new Candlemass albums on it.

According to the Blabbermouth rumor mill, there’s a good chance Chicago‘s damnedest, Trouble, are entertaining the thought of calling their new album — the first with new singer Kory Clarke — The Dark Riff.

What is it with godly doom bands and awful album names in 2009? I love Candlemass more than a lot of people, but Death Magic Doom? Come on, guys. You’re not making it easy. The Dark Riff? Might as well have called it The Brown Note.

Now that I think about it, The Brown Note is kind of a kickass album name.

Trouble are basically classic rock at this point, and The Dark Riff smacks a little too much of Black Sabbath trying to hock “Psycho Man” as a celebration of their hipness when they reunited with Ozzy a decade ago. A kind of, “See how modern we are?” They should be honest and go with, Yeah We Know Eric’s Not in the Band Anymore, but the Guitars Still Rule. The Candlemass thing I chalk up to an ESL issue, despite first-hand knowledge that Leif Edling speaks better English than I do. They get a pass.

But seriously, if Cathedral decides to call their new record Doom and a Turkey Sandwich to Go, I’m going to [insert empty threat here, because what I'm actually going to do is nerd out to all three of these records, and Heaven and Hell's The Devil You Know while we're at it].