Houston Music Blog

www.flickr.com/groups/thorriors/

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Tonight at Rudyard's, we'll be a part of the lusty and bearded throng throwing themselves in front of Valient Thorr and Early Man, with local cats the Hell City Kings and Golden Axe acting as support. Those two Houston bands alone would be enough rock and roll for one night, but alas, the gods are smiling upon us tonight while they flip both middle fingers at our long-term hearing ability.

Chapel Hill, N.C.'s Valient Thorr is simply one of the best live acts going today, and as of a few months ago featured Houston's own Warren Hatfield on guitar. Since leaving the band, he has resurrected Golden Axe is his main musical gig. Thorr live is a beardy and wooly mash of lead singer Valient Himself's MC5-ish vocal stylings and enough manic, clean riffing to light a small town.

Thorr can also count Lemmy Kilmister as a fan. During their quick set opening for Heaven & Hell and Judas Priest at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion last year, Motorhead brought out Himself to sing on "Killed By Death." If you have been paying attention to Rocks Off, you can see how tonight's show is aural catnip for us.

​Rocks Off thinks it's safe to assume that if you're the kind of person who, say, might read a music blog, then you've probably heard of GWAR. Even if you're not a fan of the ageless Richmond, Va.-spawned group's blustery metal, you're probably aware of GWAR's fondness for Fangoria-type costumery, evocative band-member aliases (Beefcake the Mighty, Balsac the Jaws of Death) and dousing its rabid audiences with fake bodily secretions/excretions.

What you may not know, however, is that - kind of like "fuck" - "GWAR" itself is one of the rare words in the English language that works equally well as a noun, verb or modifier. To illustrate this point, Rocks Off chose a story at random from Tuesday's Houston Chronicle, "Drop in consumer confidence sends stocks lower," and doctored it with a little bit of that old GWAR black magic.

No offense to either the Chronicle, Associated Press or, well, pretty much the entire profession of journalism, but we think GWARing up this rather by-the-numbers wire-service report puts the country's economic woes in a completely different light - one splattered in gallons of sticky red goo. Enjoy.

"NEW YORK - A report showing GWAR are still downbeat on the economy is giving investors reason to sell GWAR.

"The GWAR failed to hold on to early gains and edged slightly lower in late morning trading Tuesday after the Conference Board said its GWAR confidence index fell to 53.1 in September, down from 54.5 in August, and much lower than the GWAR of 57 that economists had been expecting.

[Ed. note: Sunday was the 23rd anniversary of the fatal bus accident that claimed Cliff Burton's life.]

Cliff Burton's ​When the mighty Metallica was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame earlier this year, some were curious about the appearance of a small, grey-haired man who joined the band at the podium. It was Ray Burton, father of former Metallica bassist Cliff Burton, who died in 1986 at the age of 24 after a freak bus accident while the band was on tour in Sweden.

And though he never lived to see his group become the massive worldwide success it would, his influence on thrash metal and his former bandmates remains formidable. Indeed, the three records on which his bass thumping appears - Kill 'em All, Ride the Lightning, and Master of Puppets - are often noted by Metallimaniacs as the group's best. In fact, up to half of their recent set lists drew from this titanic trilogy.

Combining original interviews along with previously published comments and Burton's own words, McIver's engaging and informative book brings to life a player who at this point is more myth than real.

Craig Hlavaty

​ Tomorrow night Lemmy Kilmister and Motorhead hit the stage at Warehouse Live, and Rocks Off will be there, at least physically. We don't plan on remembering the show so we have diligently trolling YouTube for videos to fill in any memory lapses we may have from heavy indulgence and fanboy euphoria.

The band is synonymous with danger and disarray. Their logo the "Snaggletooth" and all its interpretations denote something frightening and alternately free at the same time. Lemmy's distinctive facial features and grizzled contentment are pure rock 'n roll, even if both are subject to ridicule from their detractors. The band isn't metal and they aren't punk, but they contributed to both genres' disparate lineages and became the one group that each sub-culture could share a beer over.

 Tonight, Judas Priest, led by the inimitable metal god Rob Halford, hits the stage at Verizon Wireless Theate less than a year since the leathermen last graced Houston. They came to the shed out in the Woodlands last August, headlining the "Metal Masters" tour with Motorhead, Testament and Heaven & Hell.

The band is currently on the road touring behind their fifth live album, A Touch Of Evil: Live, as well as celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the landmark British Steel release. Halford and crew will be performing Steel in it's entirety on each date, including the one tonight.

The album stands as a steadfast testament to the band's artistic tenacity and metal master prowess. It holds up magnificently well, with singles like "Breaking The Law" and "Living After Midnight" still blowing away today's puny heavy metal folk by miles. Plus, Halford still has the pipes to keep up with the material, unlike some dudes who need teleprompters and diapers to rock sold out shows.

Rocks Off phoned Halford while he was in Cleveland for a stop on the band's current tour with Whitesnake to get his thoughts on British Steel and his band's mark on metal.

Photos by Craig Hlavaty

This week has been one of many firsts for Aftermath. Sunday night, we attended our first drunken Tejano show at an icehouse in Pearland while visiting the parents. It was an eye-opening experience, full of balls-out accordion breakdowns and Freddy Fender covers that reminded us of our Hispanic-American roots, even if we are only a quarter.

Thursday night, we hit up Walter's On Washington for our first-ever black metal show. To outsiders, the genre is corny and ensconced in laughable imagery. Some of the artists may even agree. But what we saw, amidst all the inverted crosses and droplets of blood -fake and otherwise - was actually a thriving local scene. We spoke with a photographer named Jeff, who had driven all the way from Dayton to see headliners Archgoat. The degree of fellowship and fandom we saw was something to behold.

You know Soledad. He's the vocalist from controversial Houston rap-metal act Daylight Coma. He's got a lot to say. Sometimes it's insightful, sometimes less so, but it's almost always said with conviction. This week, in honor of the fast-approaching HPMA, we asked him who he thinks are Houston's five best metal bands.

Rocks Off: The Houston Press Music Awards are right around the corner. You being you, how about if you give us the five best metal bands in town? Surely no one will have a problem with that.

Soledad: Houston has a major metal scene that often gets overshadowed by the likes of Trae tha Truth, Z-Ro, Scarface, Devin the Dude, Bun B and many other rappers. While we do have ZZ Top, that still doesn't expose our talented musicians that pack local venues every weekend. These are my top five upcoming bands that need to be recognized.

Dethmyname

We hope we aren't in the minority here at Rocks Off in saying that Marilyn Manson is the last living active rock star. True, Jagger and Bowie are still kicking around, but no one ignites tempers and soothes dark hearts like Brian Warner. Plus, the dude can't hide his pop sensibilities, no matter how many baby skeletons and hobo-skull goblets litter his kitchen. Looking back, 1996's "Beautiful People" was just as catchy as "Hey Ya!"

Manson reunited with longtime bassist Twiggy Ramirez (aka Jeordie White) after a 2002 falling out and has been recording a follow-up to 2007's blandish Eat Me, Drink Me. That album saw Manson stray dangerously close to conventionality with love songs and, sadly, power ballads.

Ron Newkirk

Maynard James Keenan

Maynard Keenan has to be one of the most enigmatic and musically schizophrenic men in rock. A soldier in the U.S. Army in the '80s, Keenan did a four-year tour of duty and then entered civilian life. He met future Tool guitarist Adam Jones in 1988 and one year later, the monolithic prog-metal group was born when the two enlisted drummer Danny Carey and bassist Justin Chancellor.

Keenan has had a myriad of side projects in music and film. He blew up modern-rock radio with the wiry and divisive A Perfect Circle in 2000, and confounded some with his solo Puscifer project. He was a semi-regular guest on HBO's Mr. Show with Bob and David as the lead singer of a fictitious metal band called - funnily enough - Puscifer.

A few years back, Keenan started a vineyard in Arizona - an area not generally associated with wine-making - with fellow vintner Eric Glomski, Since 2004, Caduceus Cellars has been producing bottles of well-received wine from his Merkin Vineyard.

Keenan hits Houston Thursday afternoon at the Whole Foods Market in Sugar Land (15900 Southwest Freeway, 4:30-7:30 p.m.). He'll be signing bottles of his wine and making spaghetti and other homemade organic dishes that he hopes to one day package and sell along with the wine. Kind of like a prog-metal Paul Newman.

Pretty wicked for the dude who sang "Prison Sex" and "Hooker with a Penis"...

Rocks Off been so far removed from mall culture that we had almost forgot that Hot Topic existed. Not that we ever meditated on where on 14-year old girls get their "Twilight" shirts and metal gauntlets from or anything...

Apparently local Hot Topic locations have been hosting acoustic shows by local artists, aiming to cultivate a grassroots scene away from those bands with shirts on their trendy brick walls. We got wind of a Ladyheat gig coming up soon at Katy Mills, plus a few scattered one-off sets at other outlying locations by other Houston bands.

Tonight, a guerilla-warfare assault of sorts is rumored to be going down at Baybrook Mall in Friendswood. As of this moment, we are negotiating our way out of a Knights of Columbus fish fry with the 'rents to hit this up.

www.unwigged.com

Legendary British heavy-metal pioneers Spinal Tap, authors of albums such as Smell the Glove and Shark Sandwich and stars of Rob Reiner's groundbreaking 1984 "rockumentary" This Is Spinal Tap - who bear a remarkable resemblance to American actors Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer - announced yesterday they will reunite for an acoustic tour that stops at Jones Hall May 1. Carrying the illusion even further, the trio is calling the tour "Unplugged and Unwigged: An Evening With Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer."

Opening will be the Folksmen, the popular 1960s acoustic group that appeared in Guest's 2003 film A Mighty Wind.   

Remember to wear something you don't mind getting covered with booze, blood, vomit or feces, and probably all four...

Metavenge are a gaggle of teenagers in faded Slayer shirts from the Friendswood/Alvin area, but they sound like they opened for Metallica on the Ride The Lightning tour. Ever since we first heard them back in the fall, we have been blasting "Time To Kill" on our iPod as we foolishly attempt to run at the gym.

The dudes are brutal, as any guy worth his leather gauntlets will tell you. The boys recently flew to California to work with producer/guitarist Keri Kelli, who currently plays in Alice Cooper's touring band, during Christmas break. The mastered tracks we have heard are disgustingly awesome, and don't sound like they were made by dudes who were probably conceived to the strains of "Nothing Else Matters."

There is more coming, with a proper EP in the works for the summer. Down and The Sword are cool and all, but we wouldn't have minded seeing Metavenge opening for Metallica back in November at Toyota Center. But they were probably in the crowd headbanging their impressionable young brains out, just like we were.

Leave it to the British music press to read more into something than it merits. Any new fad they see pop up they immediately have to make a celebratory month for, or start spending thousands of pounds on to trace its source. It's a dirty habit. They can't leave well enough alone.

That's how you get an article in the Guardian speculating on the origins of blastbeats. Come on, blastbeats? Alexis Petridis, who looks like Mr. Bean's stoned kid, also writes a weekly fashion column for the Guardian when he's not dissecting thrash-metal technique. This past week's dispatch on blastbeats name-checked local legends D.R.I. and Insect Warfare in its valiant search for the true spirit of the blastbeat. All of this is to commemorate International Blastbeat Celebration Day.

[Via comicvsaudience.com. Click on the image for a full-screen version.]

Denison-based Texas Hippie Coalition, or THC to fans, lays claim to the title "Kings of Red Dirt Metal," and will more than likely rock you the eff out. These guys feel like Pantera meets Lynyrd Skynyrd, so horns most definitely up. (Plus, the drummer goes by "Cowboy.") Lead singer Big Daddy Rich recently spoke with Metalocalypse about the Man in Black, horror movies and whether or not the abbreviation of the band's name is a coincidence. See if you can guess.

Metalocalypse: When was the first time you saw a Band/performer and said to yourself. "I want to do that for a living"? Who was it, and why were you so impressed?

Big Daddy Rich: Johnny Cash. I was really impressed with his stage presence, the ability to control a crowd and keep them hanging on every word, whether it was lyrics in a song or his ranting and raving between songs.

M: What is a typical Sunday like for Texas Hippie Coalition?

BDR: Hopefully some football, always some smoking and not just on the grill. Texas Barbeque and an unfriendly game of Texas Hold 'em.

[Note: this is the first entry in a partnership between Rocks Off and Houston-based metal Web site UNdergroWNd MiNdbloW. In the hot seat is all-female Toronto quartet Scarlet Sins. Enjoy.]

My name is Chris, and I have a long ongoing love affair with music. Especially heavy metal, death metal, speed metal, grindcore and metal in general. The first time I saw a live show and an unknown band hit the stage, I was a fan.

It was at the Cotton Bowl in the 1970s, and this "unknown" band came out. Their lead guitarist opened the show witha solo, which was unusual in itself. As an airplane flew overhead, someone jumped out and parasailed onto the stage.

The band was Van Halen, the song was "Eruption," and from that moment on I was a fan of the underground scene. I interview underground bands, local bands, and characters of metal, by asking "10 Questions" that they would normally never be asked.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks and months for Tool, Carcass, Bolt Thrower, All Shall Perish, Gen 1;12, Texas Hippie Coalition, Exodus, Three Inches of Blood, Metal Sanaz, Trina Mason, In Flames and many more. But for now, let's meet Scarlet Sins... 

Baroness, "Wanderlust," 2007

In the same way that Houston rarely inspires photos of snow flurries, people tend not to associate heavy metal with the South. But, if you look hard enough, you'll find a rich history of hard music with roots planted firmly in Southern soil.

In the '80s and early '90s, Louisiana produced sludge-metal bands such as Crowbar, Acid Bath and Down. Currently, Austin's retro-metal The Sword is gaining national attention by opening for Metallica, like they and Down did at Toyota Center last month.

Meanwhile, in Savannah, Ga., punk/metal band Baroness is trying not to be grouped into the "Southern sludge" genre. Still, in a phone interview after the band's recent national tour, guitarist and vocalist John Baizley (right) wears his self-professed "Southern boy" heritage on his sleeve.

Rocks Off: Where are you from originally?

John Baizley. The band all grew up in Lexington, Va. It's a very, very small town. We literally lived within a few miles of each other. In 2001, I moved down here [to Savannah], and everybody kind of filtered down here.