THORR’S HAMMER + THE ACCUSED + CORRUPTED will all be performing at this years Supersonic Festival, we are over the moon with the news that we’ve finally got this confirmed and can announce these guys to join the line up for what we are sure will be our best festival yet…whoopee!!! Tickets go on sale on Thursday 2nd of April no April Fools, I tell you:)

Greg Anderson & Stephen O’Malley presents their maiden voyage into darkeness: the cult recordings by the black doom act THORR”S HAMMER. Thorr’s Hammer is raw nihilistic doom featuring the unbelievable vocals of Norwegian goddess Runhild Gammelsæter. Presented in her native Norwegian tongue, Runhild Gammelsæter’ gutteral dark vocals are contrasted by beautiful singing creating a huanting atmosphere. Funeral dirge is provided by the collaberation of Stephen O’Malley (ex-Burning Witch/SUNN0)))) and Greg Anderson (ex-Engine Kid/SUNN0)))/Goatsnake). Jamie Sykes (ex-Burning WitchWardrums, ex-CODENAME F.A.D.G.E.) and Guy Pinhas (Beaver, The Obsessed, Goatsnake, Melvins, etc) (Subharmonics). This union is raw, low and heavy as fuck, reminiscent of elder gods HELLHAMMER/CELTIC FROST,SABBATH, AND VENOM. The material contains the original three demo tracks (from 1995) and a recently unearthed live recording (“Mellom Galgene”) all originally created in the stoned winter of 1994-1995….. grim melancholy.
http://www.myspace.com/thorr39shammer

Corrupted from Osaka Japan THE absolute reference in terms of monolithic and experimental funeral doom.

The band has become legendary: consistently refusing interviews and photo shoots, the band has only been seen in Europe during a discreet tour in 2000 and a couple of appearances last year, this will be their first show in the UK.

Corrupted’s music is bleak, monumental and slow as a pachyderm… Extraordinary brutal riffs-drones played in a very low guitar/bass duo, as well as a drummer who maintains a brontosaurus like striking force on improbable slow tempos serve as a morbid box for a singer with an inimitable tone: guttural and abysmal at will, he declaims apocalyptic texts in Spanish (!!!). The band sometime uses long instrumental, melancholic breaks that admirably contrast with the force of their sound.
http://www.dxmxtx.com/corrupted/

Formed in 1981 in Oak Harbor, Washington by bassist Chibon ‘Chewy’ Batterman, Dana Collins and guitarist Tom Niemeyer. John Dahlin was the vocalist from 1982-1984. The addition of Blaine Cook (frontman of Seattle hardcore punk group The Fartz) fit nicely into the group’s migration towards a more heavy metal-based sound. In 1984, The band dubbed their style “splatter rock,” in homage to their favorite genre of horror films. Their hybrid musical formula was distinguishable by Blaine’s unusual choking-sound vocals, Niemeyer’s muted, choppy, buzzsaw guitars, dark metallic riffs, and rapid-fire drumming. The band are also responsible for creating the wild, zombie mascot Martha Splatterhead, whose likeness (created by Niemeyer) adorns most of their albums and many of their promotional items. The Accused recorded five albums, three EPs, and over 100 songs between their 1981 inception and 1990s hiatus.
The current line-up consists of Brad Mowen (also a member of Master Musicians of Bukakke and former member of Burning Witch and Asva), Dorando Hodous (also a member of Lesbian), Mike Peterson and Niemeyer.
http://www.myspace.com/kingsofsplatter

Line up for Supersonic Festival 2009:
Head Of David (first show in 23 years) / 65 Days of Static / The Accused / Arbouretum / Atomized/ Berg Sans Nipple / Caribou / Corrupted / Chris Herbert / Diagonal / Earthless /Flower & Corsano Duo / Growing / Iron Lung / Jarboe / Khyam Allami / Kim Hiorthøy Kylie Minoise / Master Musicians Of Bukkake/ Nancy Wallace / Pontiak / Pram / PRE /  Scorn / Skullflower/  Taint / Theo / Thorr’s Hammer Venetian Snares / Zu / ZzZ

Tickets on sale from Thursday 2nd of April from:
https://www.theticketsellers.co.uk

Feel free to help us spread the good news

This Saturday we have Japanese band Mono performing at the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath, tickets have now sold out online but there are a handful at Swordfish & Polar Bear and we will be keeping a limited amount available on the door. (doors are at 8pm)
support comes from Ihora, featuring current and former members of Jesu, Cable Regime and Final

Launching this Wednesday is the highly anticipated Flatpack festival, kicking off proceedings at Birmingham Town Hall is CURZONORA, a celebration of cinema’s early days featuring THE DESTROYERS

This week the ‘musical whirlwind’ known as The Destroyers will be presenting a brand-new set specially commissioned to open the Flatpack Festival. Curzonora is a tribute to Birmingham’s early film showman WALLER JEFFS, and will feature live scores to some of the films you would have found at his 1900s shows, including pioneering sci-fi movie TRIP TO THE MOON (Georges Melies), the rootin’-tootin’ GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (Edwin S. Porter) and a selection of amazing footage from the Mitchell and Kenyon Collection, shot around Birmingham at the dawn of the 20th century.

Weds 11th March, 7.30pm at Birmingham Town Hall, Birmingham B3 3DQ
Book tickets online, at the venue or by calling 0121 780 3333
> http://www.thsh.co.uk/view/flatpack-festival-presents-curzonora
> http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/event.php?eid=69594063311
> http://www.flatpackfestival.org.uk/09/festival/event/curzonora

Flatpack Festival 3 runs in venues across the city from 11-15 March.
More info at http://www.flatpackfestival.org.uk

Other events during the festival include a screening of the Led Zeppelin film ‘The Song Remains The Same‘  with a talk by music archivist Chris Phipps as part of our Home Of Metal celebrations. This will take place on Saturday 14th, 4pm at South Birmingham College in Digbeth.
Other music related events as part of the festival include a film about singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan, a performance by the lovely Bela Emerson, Sublime Frequencies film Sumatran Folk Cinema + heaps more amazing stuff. Go check stuff out!!!

We’re really pleased to announce the addition of IRON LUNG to this years Supersonic Festivals line up.

For those uninitiated, IRON LUNG are a two-man band from Reno, NV that specialize in a brand of audio violence heretofore unknown in the extreme underground. Bearing marks of grind, power violence, thrash, and even oldschool HC, they are one of the handful of bands that have applied new and innovative approaches (arrangements, chords structures, thematic unities, etc) to their underground musical machinations. If you are one of the handful of people who remember the all-too-brief existence of KRILEZAC, then you know the foundation upon which this was built (IRON LUNG was born of the KRILEZAC ashes, although they have a more measured and sharp sound).

(taken from http://www.inmusicwetrust.com)

http://www.myspace.com/lifeironlungdeath

They join the initial Supersonic 09 line up – Head Of David/ 65 Days of Static /  Atomized/ Berg Sans Nipple / Caribou / Cave/ Chris Herbert / Diagonal / Earthless /Flower & Corsano Duo / Genghis Tron / Growing / Jarboe / Khyam Allami / Master Musicians Of Bukake/ Nancy Wallace / Pontiak / PRE /  Scorn / Skullflower/  Theo / Venetian Snares /Zu / ZzZ’s

Weekend tickets go on sale today exclusively for those on our mailing list – general release in April from
www.theticketsellers.co.uk

Frank The Pup

Frank is at work today, quietly sitting under my desk, just listening to some music and keeping an eye on everything, whilst looking after ‘Suckles the Clown’. On the whole he is pretty well behaved in the office other than when he decided to wee on Jens camera bag.

If you like this picture check out stuff on my mutt for such beauties as:

Could be me & Jen…
and of course for fans of the feline stuff on my cat

Thanks to Dorian Wood for introducing us to these sites, we spent a good few hours of browsing on Sunday afternoon with slices of cake.

We’re pleased to announce some additions to the line up for Supersonic Festival 09,  24th – 26th of July, taking place in and around the Custard Factory in Birmingham. First up to be added are the beautiful dissonant occult noise act SKULLFLOWER, also joining the line up is SCORN aka Mick Harris (king of the blast beat)  and the new project combining Russell McEwan of Black Sun &  the electronic-vocal attack of Lea Cummings (Kylie Minoise) in the form of ATOMIZED .

To the uninitiated, Skullflower is one of the better-known bands that originated in the early 1980s power-electronics / noise scene, and one of the few to achieve any real recognition outside their homeland, especially in the United States . Unlike most of their contemporaries (such as Whitehouse, Con-Dom, Grey Wolves, etc.), they are an actual band (as opposed to one or two musicians employing a mix of instruments, synths, and tapes), and retained just enough of rock’s basic structure to attract the attention of people beyond the power-electronics genre.

Skullflower’s roots are in the European power-electronics / noise scene taking place in the early 1980s. A number of experimental musicians and bands who had grown bored with punk began experimenting with a more confrontational brand of volume-dependent artistic expression. Bands like Whitehouse, Final, Napalm Death, Con-Dom, Throbbing Gristle, The Grey Wolves, and the like were pushing the boundaries of sonic assault, employing damaged synths, guitar noise, unsettling tapes, and extreme volume to confront audiences. Swiping a page from punk’s DIY manual, most of them were also releasing their own material (and in some cases, the material of a great many others) on cassette and (when they could afford it) vinyl, to be sold at shows or by mail order.

SCORN

Scorn is the project of former Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris. The project was formed in the early ’90s by Harris along with Nic Bullen (one of the founder members of Napalm Death in 1981). Bullen left the group in April 1995 and the projects continues on to this day as an essentially one man show.

Scorn is/was often associated with industrial and experimental music, particularly in their earlier years as a duo with much of their Earache Records era output. Scorn considered a rare example of a successful industrial/downtempo crossover artist. Since the departure of Bullen, much of the output has been minimalist beats with an emphasis on very deep bass lines, often resembling dub and trip-hop in structure.
http://www.myspace.com/mjhscorn

ATOMIZED
Atomized is the what occurs when you combine the tribal percussion and bellows of Lovely Feyde Rautha (Russell McEwan of Black Sun) and the electronic-vocal attack of Lea Cummings (Kylie Minoise) as they reinterpret some well known pop songs from the 80s, or as they describe – “Raped versions of pop classics by Madonna, Visage, Howard Jones, Haircut 100, & Culture Club.” As you can imagine, the songs sound nothing like the original chart toppers, dwelling in a nocturnal grey area between Mummy and Daddy era-Whitehouse (especially on their Madonna and Visage cover) and Swans at their minimal best.

Equal parts industrial, noise and no-wave – it’s a heavy and merciless release from these two, the audio equivalent to Boy George’s night terrors in the clink. This will be released from Lea’s Kovorox Sound label in the not so distant future, be sure to catch their debut performance of this material at Glasgow Implodes this March.
www.kovoroxsound.com/

Initial Supersonic 09 line up – Head Of David/ 65 Days of Static /  Atomized/ Berg Sans Nipple / Caribou / Cave/ Chris Herbert / Diagonal / Earthless /Flower & Corsano Duo / Genghis Tron / Growing / Jarboe / Khyam Allami / Master Musicians Of Bukake/ Nancy Wallace / Pontiak / PRE /  Scorn / Skullflower/  Theo / Venetian Snares /Zu / ZzZ’s

Tickets go on sale the first week of March exclusively to those on our mailing list, followed by additional tickets in April
You can join the mailing list here to guarantee first round of tickets. join now

As part of Flat Pack Festival in collaboration with Home Of Metal
Screening of: The Song Remains the Same & talk by Chris Phipps

@ South Birmingham College
Saturday 14th 16:00pm
£4
Tickets

Dir. Peter Clifton & Joe Massot
UK/USA 1976, 137 mins
Feat. Robert Plant; Jimmy Page; John Bonham; John Paul Jones

Back in the day when psychedelic concept movies were compulsory for any self-respecting rock band, Led Zeppelin took the plunge with this patchy but often entertaining document of their 1973 Houses of the Holy tour. The meat of the film is a performance at Madison Square Gardens shot over three nights in which the group steam through ‘Stairway’, ‘Black Dog’, ‘Heartbreaker’ and the rest to thunderous effect. Also scattered through the movie are fantasy sequences which Spinal Tap might have cringed at, including Plant rescuing a fair maiden and Page meeting a hermit up a mountain. The simplest and most touching is John Bonham’s, shot on his farm near Droitwich.

The making-of story is an epic in its own right, and today’s special screening will include a talk by Birmingham-born documentary maker and music historian Chris Phipps. Combining personal anecdotes with music fact and urban fiction, Phipps will provide a unique decoding of a band and film which often defy description. As he says, “you may leave with more questions than answers, but that’s Zeppelin.”

For further info about Flatpack Festival:
http://www.flatpackfestival.org.uk/

Don’t forget you can upload your photos, ticket stubs, programs etc to the Home Of Metal Archive

Two more stunning gig posters have been created by artist Ben Javens for our future Capsule gigs, firstly for a show with Savannah, Georgia’s BARONESS (Relapse Records) with support from Alabaster Suns (ex Capricorns) and Birminghams very own thunderous foursome Mothertrucker which takes place on Friday 10th of April.

Followed a week later by the godfather of Drone, Dylan Carsons EARTH with support from Ko-Guma-za, which sees the guitar section of Nottingham band Wolves Of Greece reunited for the first time since their involvement with NYC composer Glenn Branca’s orchestra in 2007.

Both these gigs will take place at the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath, advanced tickets are available from www.theticketsellers.co.uk or Polar Bear on York Road in Kings Heath, also at Swordfish on Temple Street in Birmingham city centre.