Italian death metallers PERFIDIOUS have signed to Time To Kill Records for the release of their second album, “Savouring His Flesh”, details of which will be announced soon.
The band was founded in 2014 and so far have released the EP “Cursing the Nazarene” (2015) and the debut album “Malevolent Martyrdom” (2017). The band’s line-up currently features former and current members of acts such as Wargore, Onirik, Phobic, Dead Chasm, Daemoniac, Husqwarnah, Pit of Toxic Slime and Stench of Profit, among others.
PERFIDIOUS create their own bludgeoning world of dizzying and pummelling death metal where they relentlessly whip up a maelstrom of old school riffs and drum patterns, taking influences from both the European and the American traditions.
PERFIDIOUS’ mission since their inception has been to revive the greatness and restless energy found in death metal of the past and combine it with something bolder and more intense.
Watch for more details on the new album release, new tour updates, and more news on other upcoming PERFIDIOUS activities to be posted shortly.
Coming in a robust box, Make My Day: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Story Of Fast Eddie Clarke celebrates the late Motorhead-Fastway guitarist with a four-CD career retrospective and 320-page book written by veteran rock journalist Kris Needs with Clarke’s widow Mariko Fujiwara.
The book that named the set, Make My Day: The Rock ‘N’ Roll Story Of Fast Eddie Clarke charts the guitarist’s life and career including his epiphany seeing the Yardbirds at Eel Pie Island, playing with assorted bands, recording two albums with former Jimi Hendrix associate Curtis Knight, riding with Motorhead’s most revered lineup between 1976 and 1982, forming Fastway and releasing two solo albums. Mariko and Eddie’s closest friends provide detailed insights into Eddie’s life, including growing up in Twickenham, topping charts with Motorhead, overcoming personal problems, finding happiness with Mariko and becoming the smitten co-owner of Cookie the Maltese-Shihtzu cross.
As editor of the UK’s first serious music monthly Zigzag and one of Motorhead’s earliest press champions, Kris Needs spent five years close to the band during its most successful period and beyond. To this end, Needs also interviewed close friends, bandmates, associated bands including Girlschool and Saxon plus collaborators from different stages of Eddie’s roller coaster life and career, emerging with a definitive account that ends up a love story.
The CD boxset covers Fast Eddie’s recording career of over 40 years including tracks requested by Mariko, starting with The Early Years, which includes Zeus and his subsequent band Continuous Performance, along with three tracks from the legendary Muggers, who Eddie and Philthy ‘Animal’ Taylor played with in 1978 along with ‘Speedy’ Keen and Heartbreakers bassist Billy Rath.
CD2’s Motorhead highlights Eddie’s most outstanding performances with the ‘classic lineup’ of Lemmy, Philthy ‘Animal’ Taylor, including ‘Ace Of Spades’ and other much-loved rampages, three previously unreleased Bomber album demos and his vocal performances on the Headgirl project with Girlschool and ‘Stone Dead Forever’.
CD3’s Fastway straddles different incarnations of the band Fast Eddie formed with UFO bassist Pete Way after departing from Motorhead in 1982, including demos, remixes and tracks from their eight albums. Along with curios.
CD4, The Solo Years mainly draws from Fast Eddie’s two solo albums, It Ain’t Over ‘Till It’s Over and his final work with underrated peak Make My Day: Back To The Blues, created with Shakatak’s Bill Sharpe.
‘Make My Day – The Rock ‘N’ Roll Story Of Fast Eddie Clarke’ track-listing:
CD ONE: The Early Years 1. Intro – Fast Eddie Clarke 2. Cloud – Curtis Knight Zeus 3. The Confession – Curtis Knight Zeus 4. People Places And Things – Curtis Knight Zeus 5. Takin’ It Easy – Continuous Performance 6. In The Morning – Continuous Performance 7. White Lightning – The Muggers 8. (Just A) Nightmare – The Muggers 9. Summertime Blues – The Muggers
CD TWO Motörhead 1. Ace Of Spades 2. Step Down (Eddie vocals) 3. Lawman (Bomber demo) 4. Alligator (Bomber demo) 5. Dead Men Tell No Tales (Bomber demo) 6. Emergency (Eddie vocals) 7. Motörhead (Live) 8. Stone Dead Forever (Eddie vocals) 9. Iron Fist 10. Bomber 11. The Chase Is Better Than The Catch 12. The Hammer 13. Overkill
CD THREE: Fastway 1. All I Need Is Your Love (Pete Way Demo) 2. Say What You Will 3. Feel Me, Touch Me (Pete Way Demo) 4. Easy Livin’ (Live, Loudpark 07) 5. Trick Or Treat 6. Heft 7. All Fired Up 8. Change Of Heart 9. Deliver Me (Remix) 10. Fade Out (Remix) 11. Leave The Light On (Remix) 12. Lovin’ Fool (Remix) 13. Sick As A Dog (Remix)
CD FOUR: The Solo Years 1. Snakebite (New Version) 2. Laugh At The Devil (New Version) 3. All Over Bar The Shouting 4. No Satisfaction 5. Make My Day (feat Bill Sharpe) 6. Heavy Load (feat Bill Sharpe) 7. Walking Too Slow (feat Bill Sharpe) 8. Ethereal Blue (feat Bill Sharpe) 9. Mountains To The Sea (feat Bill Sharpe) 10. My New Life (feat Bill Sharpe) 11. Over And Out 12. 21st Century (Alternative Mix) – Black Electric
The BRIAN SETZER ORCHESTRA (sometimes known by its initials BSO) is a swing and jump blues band formed in 1992 by Stray Cats frontman Brian Setzer. In 1994 they released their debut album which was followed up in 1996 with Guitar Slinger. In 1998, for their breakout album The Dirty Boogie, the group covered Louis Prima’s “Jump, Jive an’ Wail,” which originally appeared on Prima’s 1957 album The Wildest!. The BSO’s follow up single, appearing on the album Vavoom!, was “Gettin’ in the Mood.”
Now get Guitar Slinger from the Brian Setzer Orchestra for the first time on vinyl since 1996. Remastered on 180g vinyl in two amazing Limited-Edition Colors. There are only 300 of the Red Multi-Color and 700 of the Silver Melt. Guitar Slinger is the second release from the Brian Setzer Orchestra and where the band really started to come together. As Setzer states, “With this album, it was like now I know the idea works, I know I can front a big band with an electric guitar, so now just let me write songs. I don’t have to think about writing swing songs or is this going to work or not, that point was proven. So I just sat down and started writing songs. It took a little turn.”
Listen to “The House Is Rockin’” here:
The album leads off with “The House Is Rockin’” and features the Brian Setzer/Joe Strummer (The Clash) penned tracks “Ghost Radio” and “Sammy Davis City”. There are 12 tracks in all, and it clocks in at just over 43 minutes. This is the first in a series of three reissues coming from Deko Entertainment with The Dirty Boogie scheduled to also hit by the end of 2024, with Vavoom! to follow in early 2025.
Tracklist: 1 The House Is Rockin’ 2 Hoodoo Voodoo Doll 3 Town Without Pity 4 Rumble In Brighton 5 The Man With The Magic Touch 6 (The Legend Of) Johnny Kool 7 Ghost Radio 8 (Everytime I Hear) That Mellow Saxophone 9 Buzz Buzz 10 My Baby Only Cares For Me 11 Hey, Louis Prima 12 Sammy Davis City
Before they saw their new album to the finish line, Anciients had to climb an awfully rocky mountain. It might be hard to believe, but a global pandemic wasn’t the only obstacle that stood in the Canadian band’s path after winning a JUNO Award. They had to navigate multiple line-up changes, serious health complications and newfound fatherhood. But at last, the heavy, heady and heartfelt Canucks have returned to the summit of progressive metal with Beyond the Reach of the Sun.
The album’s new single is plenty crushing, but “In the Absence of Wisdom” radiates with hard-earned perseverance.
“The hiatus is over” says frontman Kenny Cook. “We’re ready to hit it hard”.
Can’t wait any longer for the return of Anciients? RSVP for their Bandcamp Listening Party and listen to all 10 mind-blowing tracks off their new album before anyone else!
Bandcamp Listening Party Thursday, August 15 @ 7 pm Pacific Time – RSVP
By the time we arrive at “In the Absence of Wisdom”, the story behind Beyond the Reach of the Sun appears to have already reached its pointed conclusion. The shadowy galactic forces that enslaved society on the album’s firsttwo singles have been vanquished. The sun has returned to its vaulted place in the sky. Light and balance have been restored to the universe. All is well. Or so it seems…
“In the Absence of Wisdom” is the closing statement on Beyond the Reach of the Sun, which makes it stand out as an ominous coda. After all, Anciients didn’t spend the last eight years soul searching through the Canadian wilderness just so they could wrap up their long-awaited new album with a big kumbaya. A bluesy guitar intro unravels like a cry in the dark before Cook and his new axe man Brock MacInnes (Dead Quiet) are locked back into a classic headbanging riff.
“We awaken“, Cook sings, shrouded in reverb. “No one left to guide us through“.
“In the Absence of Wisdom” does build to a grand finale in due time. But the song revolves around a gloomy conceptual framework. “I was thinking about all the times we as humans have failed to learn from the mistakes of everyone who’s come and gone before us”, Cook explains. “Making the same decisions over and over again in hopes of finally experiencing a breakthrough just leaves you caught in a viscous cycle”.
The pandemic didn’t help, but Beyond the Reach of the Sun had already been delayed long before COVID-19 prevented them from performing outside Canada for two-plus years (and counting). Cook’s wife nearly passed away from heart complications after giving birth to their first child. “They’re happy and healthy now”, the grizzled frontman ensures, “but it was a bit of a road”.
As if that wasn’t enough weight for one metalhead to carry, Anciients were hit with a last-minute hurdle. A month before the band was all set to hunker down at Rain City Recorders, suddenly, they found themselves in search of a new bass player. Fortunately, Justin Hagberg, who plays the soft glowing keyboard on “In the Absence of Wisdom”, showed them Bushwhacker’s sure-handed bassist Rory O’Brien.
“We got lucky and Rory saved our asses at the last minute”, Cook says.
The journey wasn’t without plenty of pitfalls, but in the end, Beyond the Reach of the Sun is a testament to Anciients’ perseverance. “At its core, this album is all about overcoming adversity in order to seek enlightenment”, Cook says. “In the Absence of Wisdom” concludes with the fiercest and most fiery of its three guitar solos, the flaming hammer-ons fanned higher and higher by drummer Mike Hannay’s thunderous toms.
“We are now the demons”, Cook warns, “Following the footsteps / Of the ones we hate”. His growl is deadlier than ever, but it’s a prophecy from a band that’s lived to tell the tale.
The images in the visualizer for “In the Absence of Wisdom” were created by Martin Stebbing and Alison Lilly.
Tracklist 1. Forbidden Sanctuary (8:16) 2. Despoiled (5:19) 3. Is It Your God (7:07) 4. Melt the Crown (7:08) [WATCH] 5. Cloak of the Vast and Black (6:20) [WATCH] 6. Celestial Tyrant (5:52) 7.Beyond Our Minds (4:12) 8. The Torch (4:13) 9. Candescence (4:10) 10. In the Absence of Wisdom (6:35) [WATCH]
Now that their highly-anticipated third album is fast approaching, Anciients are ready to hit the road hard and fast.
This fall, the progressive metal band will welcome Beyond the Reach of the Sun with shows across Western and Central Canada. Anciients will kick off the release of their new album in a big way by headlining Alberta’s Loud as Hell Open Air Festival alongside their labelmates Beyond Creation. The band will then play three special record release shows in their hometown of Vancouver before setting out with their fellow Canucks Bison on a heavy and heady co-headlining tour of Western Canada.
“We’ve been great friends with the dudes from Bison for nearly two decades”, Cook says. “Anciients has done one-off shows with Bison throughout the years, but this is the first time we’ve toured together. We’re super excited to hit the road with them. I can guarantee these shows will crush!”
Loud as Hell Open Air FestivalXII August 3 – Drumheller, AB [TICKETS]
Beyond the Reach of the Sun Western Canada Co-Headlining Tour 2024
October 10 – Kamloops, BC @ Blue Grotto [TICKETS] October 11 – Vernon, BC @ BBDBS [TICKETS] October 12 – Revelstoke, BC @ The Last Drop [TICKETS] October 15 – Calgary, AB @ Dickens [TICKETS] October 16 – Edmonton, AB @ Starlite Temple [TICKETS] October 17 – Regina, SK @ The Exchange [TICKETS] October 18 – Winnipeg, MB @ Side Stage [TICKETS] October 19 – Saskatoon, SK @ Black Cat Tavern [TICKETS] October 25 – Nelson, BC @ The Royal [TICKETS] October 26 – Kelown, BC @ Jacknife Brewing [TICKETS]
Beyond the Reach of the Sun Record Release Shows
September 20 – Victoria, BC @ Lucky Bar with Fearbirds and Black Thunder [TICKETS] September 21 – Nanaimo, BC @ The Queens with Fearbirds and Black Thunder [TICKETS] September 27 – Vancouver, BC @ The Rickshaw Theatre with Waingro, Bloodrhine and Empress [TICKETS]
It’s been a rough handful of years for British Columbia-based extremity-laced progressive rockers, Anciients. When the quartet unleashed their Voice of the Void album in 2016, the world appeared to be their oyster and things seemed ripe for the picking. They were coming off the success of their Heart of Oak debut from 2013, its ascendancy due in large part to a collective uptick in interest for involved, forward-thinking music. The public had moved beyond toe-dipping and tire-kicking, and were instead doing headfirst dives into exploring the likes of Opeth, Mastodon, Baroness, The Ocean, Intronaut and others who originally hailed from the extreme music underground, but had since grown, matured and scrubbed behind their ears to include heaping and healthy chunks from the outskirts of their record collections and influence pools.
The Band That Auto-Correct Loves to Fuck With™ shared stages with everyone from High on Fire and Goatwhore to Boris and Lamb of God, were in the midst of a European tour when they discovered they were JUNO Award (Canadian Grammy equivalent) winners in the heavy metal/hard rock category. The world was ready to accept Anciients into its welcoming arms. Anciients was gearing up to employ takeover methods, specifically their brand of thunderous rhythms and labyrinthine riffing bolstered by a road warrior mentality. And then, the momentum petered out and the band seemingly fell off the face of the earth.
Today, Anciients are ready and poised to resume their spirited quest for heavy metal paramountcy. There’s no doubt the band is back and with a stunning and beautiful collection of ten songs on offer in the form of new and third album, Beyond the Reach of the Sun, they are positioning to reestablish themselves as a dominant force for those who love windmilling their tresses around thoughtful tempo changes, complex harmonic layers and driving power chord shifting. But what the hell happened and where did they disappear to?
“Basically,” explains guitarist/vocalist Kenny Cook, “right before Voice of the Void was recorded, my wife had our first kid. She ended up having heart complications and almost passed away from it. We recorded the last record and once it came out, I was kind of just focusing on her, dealing with her health issues and keeping that in check. I wasn’t at the stage where I could be gone for half a year, especially with a new kid. Long story short, she’s happy and healthy now, but dealing with family issues was the main priority. It was a bit of a road.”
Adding to that bit of Anciients camp turmoil, guitarist/co-vocalist/co-founding member, Chris Dyck and the band parted ways in January of 2017. This left a gaping lineup hole at an inopportune juncture in the band’s timeline. Not only did Cook have to deal with the absence of his long-term song and lyric writing partner, but Dyck was also someone he had been splitting vocal duties with since the pair formed the band in 2009. And then, while helping his wife with her recovery, raising their new born and “because we wanted to raise our son in a small town environment,” the Cook family uprooted to Columbia-Shuswap four hours east of the Vancouver area, where drummer Mike Hannay, Brock MacInnes (Dyck’s replacement) and brand spanking new bassist Rory O’Brien still reside.
“We knew Brock from other bands he’d been in and we knew he’d be a great fit,” explains Cook. “He actually filled in for Chris on a tour we did back in 2015. As far as the vocals, I just found myself picking up the slack on both ends. It felt somewhat natural, it was definitely different. Doing the lyrics myself for the first time was somewhat daunting, but it was also something done out of necessity. But even when Chris was in the band I handled 80-90% of the vocals anyway, so it didn’t change all that much.”
Then, that whole COVID-19 thing you probably heard about once or twice hit in 2020 and put another restraining bolt on Anciients’ activity, especially touring as the Canadians found themselves dealing with stricter travel restrictions and mandates than many other countries; most notably, not being able to cross the border for almost two years. Once the dust settled, Cook had to adjust to being the lone vocalist and how that impacted the material he was writing while navigating being creative with distance between Anciients’ members for the first time. Not a biggie, as in-person writing sessions are more of a rarity these days, but because of the time elapsed since Voices of the Void, things/interests/influences changed and the band ended up scrapping half of an album’s worth of material and starting fresh. When they put their heads down at the end of 2021 with the focus being Beyond the Reach of the Sun, what was revealed a year later was more streamlined and slithery, more chest-thumpingly direct, more epic and triumphant sounding. Riffs come in explosive layered packets. Leads, harmonies and melodies are more on par with wind-tussled mountain tops instead of sweaty bar shows and the band moves with finely honed, martial accuracy as conducted by Hannay’s rocket-in-the-pocket staccato swing and accents.
Songs like “The Torch” blaze with the shirtless glisten of ‘70s stadium rock power. “Cloak of the Vast and Black” swirls and whirls with a combination of hardcore intensity, grunge groove and expansive six-string parries. “In the Absence of Wisdom” is a hurricane-sized maelstrom of classic and prog rock elevated to grandiosity by a return to their growling sludge/death early years as the song/album concludes. The album’s first single, “Melt the Crown” mixes cues from legendary fellow hosers Rush and Harlequin, turn-of-the-millennium post-metal and the most psychedelic corners of the Rise Above Records roster.
“The new record has a lot more of our rock side,” Cook offers, “and leans towards those elements of our sound and personalities, whereas Voice of the Void was pretty crushing all the way through. With the new material we’ve tried to add more dynamics to the music and give the songs more room to breathe.”
Album opener “Forbidden Sanctuary” is the soundtrack to exploration, of new worlds and sonic arrangement as sine-wave guitars pull from vintage Mercyful Fate covens and Krautrock communes with synths opening up novel textural avenues, as they do on the ethereal wispiness and space rock/sci-fi soundscapes of the instrumental “Candescence.” Beyond the Reach of the Sun sees synths and keyboards making their first appearance on an Anciients record and were played by producer/mixer Jesse Gander and Justin Hagberg at the former’s Rain City Recorders studio. In addition to augmenting the album with his skill on the black and whites, Hagberg — a member of the recently reunited 3 Inches of Blood — also helped Anciients navigate a significant last-minute hurdle, one that threatened to pull the reins back on their comeback roar.
“We lost our bass player literally a month before we were going in to record and were kind of up shit’s creek. Justin also plays in a band called Ritual Dictates with Rory and is the one who brought his name up.”
O’Brien, a former member of Vancouver’s Bushwhacker, was absolutely interested when approached by Anciients.
“We got lucky and he saved our asses at the last minute.”
Cook stepped up to the challenge of being the sole lyricist to drape Beyond the Reach of the Sun in deeply personal expressions of the inner turmoil, fear and isolation he’d experienced in himself and saw in others over the past few years. There were moments where he didn’t know whether loved ones were going to pull through and what life was going to look like were tragedy come to pass. Mental health and people living life without being able to see any light at the end of the tunnel became a very prevalent theme to tracks like “Despoiled” and “Beyond Our Minds.” And while the line that became the album’s title is taken from a David Attenborough-narrated Planet Earth documentary, it speaks more to the coming and going of despondency when one doesn’t know how dark the darkness is going to get, as in “Is It Your God,” which pulls from the manifestation of grief and how it can shatter belief systems.
“That one is a little more personal to me and my situation,” Cook says somberly. “I had a good friend of mine from when I was younger pass away from cancer. His mother was super-religious and there were ideas taken from her questioning how could something like that happen to her when she had such a strong faith.”
The title and themes of stripped away hope and piled on anguish and tumult were parlayed into the album’s spectacular cover art. Created by Adam Burke (Nightjar Illustrations), the drawing is part-pulp novel cover, part-Franzetta landscape, part-sci-fi movie poster and all a vast illustration one can easily lose themselves in while the record spins in the background.
“We gave him the concept and basic outline of how we wanted the cover to look and he took it to a whole new dimension. It turned out pretty wild!”
With all being said and done, Anciients have returned! They stand ready to ascend the prog metal ladder and get back to doing what they do best with a weighty and dense, but wholly accessible, album. It’s a collection of ten songs that possesses the ability to have those furiously banging heads also tapping into their power of self-reflection and contemplation to ponder the finality of existence, the value of life and their place in the universe.
“Totally! We’re going to take as many of the opportunities that come to us. The hiatus is over and I think with the new members and everyone being on the same page we’re ready to get out there as soon as possible. We missed out on a huge block after the last record, so we’ve got to make up for lost time. Now that everyone is happy and healthy, we plan to hit it hard.”
It had to happen. But who could ever have imagined that it would sound like this?
Taylor Swift has been deserving of a tribute album for almost as long as she’s been a superstar. But A Strange Tribute to Taylor Swift doesn’t simply live up to its title, it does so with a passion and a power that even your wildest dreams (or freakiest nightmares… you choose) would struggle to match.
You wanna hear Runaways legend Cherie Currie leading Cleveland’s finest Dead Boys through “I Can See You?” It’s the latest single from the album, and you can stream and download it now at https://orcd.co/cheriecurriedeadboys_icanseeyou.
Rockabilly queen Linda Gail Lewis pounding her way across “Love Story”?
Garage rock Goliaths The Fabulous Courettes stripping “Shake It Off” back to the sixties?
Southern rock legends Black Oak Arkansas contemplating “Blank Space”?
Platinum pop singers Tiffany and Samantha Cole, enigmatic Curved Air vocalist Sonja Kristina, Missing Persons, the Dollyrots and more, much more, all await within A Strange Tribute to Taylor Swift – an album that will haunt your days, dance through your nights, and ensure that some of the greatest country pop songs of our generation are country pop no longer.
This weekend, between July 26 – 28, 2024, Cottbus, Germany, will be on fire again with the new edition of the much-acclaimed BLUE MOON FESTIVAL!
Featuring an eclectic line-up of both international scene heavy weights of such as WOLFMOTHER, BRANT BJORK TRIO (ex-KYUSS / QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE), ORANGE GOBLIN, WEEDEATER, AHAB or ROTOR, as well as the underground’s finest acts such as GODSLEEP, SOLAR TRIP, PRAISE THE PLAGUE, DAEVAR, HIPPIE DEATH CULT and many more, BLUE MOON FESTIVAL 2024 promises an ultimate experience for all lovers of stoner, doom, metal and psychedelic rock.
The festival will be taking place at Strombad in Cottbus (camping possible), and in addition to an excellent line-up, among a chill area there will also be other activities such as archery, beer yoga, jam sessions, the “Funkelfix” short film Cinema, and much more!
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s ASA unveil the long-overdue release of "Collective Failure" + first music video for title-track! Check it out and stay tuned for more news! Click image to watch the video
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s SARCOFAGUS return with a Historic 2010 Concert Video Premiere on YouTube! Click image to watch the video
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Visionary artist KIMMO KUUSNIEMI's ANCIENT STREAMING ASSEMBLY (ASA) have released “Aurora Nuclearis”, a powerful 12-minute audiovisual experience, dedicated to the Late Keyboardist Esa Kotilainen. - Click image to watch the video
Click image to watch the video
Metal Shock Finland (World Assault ) 