Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Acacia Strain
Behemoth
Dimmu Borgir
Hate Eternal
Kataklysm
Shadows Fall
New England Metal and Hardcore Festival 10th Anniversary
DAY TWO: April 26, 2008 at the Palladium; Worcester, MA
All photos courtesy Carina Mastrocola
Monday, April 28, 2008
High on Fire
Job for a Cowboy
Children of Bodom
In Flames
Megadeth
10th Anniversary New England Metal and Hardcore Festival, Day One
April 25, 2008
at the Palladium, Worcester
All photos by Carina Mastrocola
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
If you're headed to M.I.A. at the Palladium tonight, get there early: Cool Kids have cancelled, but we're dying to see what C440R's monster party-rap duo have in store when they step in tonight as a last-minute opening act. Big Digits at the Palladium: who'da thunk it? For an idea of how much awesomeness is in store, check the video above to see what happened the last time someone offered TD and Mac Swell a nice big stage.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Lizzy Borden
Metal Blade 25th Anniversary Jam
Unearth
Cannibal Corpse (with Trevor from Black Dahlia Murder)
The Red Chord
Job for a Cowboy
Goatwhore
Shai Hulud
Demiricous
The Network
Hallows Eve
Beyond the Embrace
The Architect (Note to singers playing NEMHF: if your drummer throws a stool into the audience, the audience very well may throw it back and hit your singer in the head, thereby forcing him to complete the set in a bloody mess and then repair to the hospital afterwards for stiches. -- C.M.)
New England Metal and Hardcore Festival, Day Two
April 28, 2007
The Palladium, Worcester
Photos: Carina Mastrocola
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Dimmu Borgir
Behemoth
Bury Your Dead
Devil Driver
Walls of Jericho
3 Inches of Blood
Kataklysm
Skinless
Despised Icon
Still Remains
Devil Wears Prada
Revocation
Nora
Skeleton Witch
Thy Will Be Done
December Aeteralis
NEW ENGLAND METAL AND HARDCORE FESTIVAL 2007
April 17 at the Palladium, Worcester
Photos: Carina Mastrocola
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Bad Ash
The Red Chord
Mongrel
Municipal Waste
The Acacia Strain
Gwar
Rock N Shock Day 2
With Gwar, the Red Chord, about a dozen other bands, and a shitload of horror movie geeks
October 14 At the Palladium and the DCU Center, Worcester
Photos courtesy Return to the Pit. See more here.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
All photos (c) Aaron & Returntothepit.com. More here.
OTD caught a ride out to Worcester last night with our old friends Chris Jackson, his lovely wife Kristen Day, and Jimmy Driscoll, two of whom got shout-outs from the stage from their old pals the Bronx. The Bronx dudes, heirs to the Los Angeles punk throne, smashed through a focused 30-minute set that mostly flew right over the heads of metal nation, then were nice enough to share beer, merch, and perch space with us in the Palladium penthouse, which means we missed most of Converge -- from what little we saw they were, uh, typically Convergey, i.e. awesome -- but we slipped downstairs to catch a few songs by Mastodon, at whose altar we have been known to worship. Their new "Capillarian Crest" is already destroying, "Blood and Thunder" still kills. (Mastodon set list below, along with crappy OTD cameraphone snaps.) Mastodon's Blood Mountain and Converge's No Heroes are due out soon (or, in the case of Blood Mountain, it's out now if you live on the internet). Go buy the Bronx's self-titled Island debut on vinyl. Shit's bananas. Some things we learned poking around backstage:
- Mastodon's drummer has a purple polka dot drum kit with a Randy Rhodes tribute photo on the kick drum.
- That gorgeous six-foot black girl busting out those amazing go-go moves at the side of the stage? Rumor has it one of the Mastodon dudes picked her up in a bathroom in NYC.
- If you leave before the encore, you will always miss the full 15-minute version of "Hearts Alive."
- Mastodon's drum tech used to be in the Raging Teens.
- Mastodon are 100-percent dude.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Bury Your Dead are our favorite Boston-via-N'hampshire hardcore band ever. Last time we heard from them, dudes on message boards were implicating BYD in Sharon Osbourne's infamous plot to egg the dudes in Iron Maiden. The band vehemently denied it to MTVNews, but c'mon: for a hardcore band, laying some yolk on Bruce Dickinson's chin has got to be the highlight of your professional existence. The best part of the whole saga, though, was Bury Your Dead's awesome alibi: at the time of the crime, they were being filmed by Will Smith's camera crew, on hand to document their new buddy Jada Pinkett Smith's metal band.
You can't make shit like that up. And now, with crazy tours laid out in front of them all summer, we're trying to imagine what kind of havoc Bury Your Dead are gonna wreak on Strhess (with Shadows Fall) and the unburied-from-the-dead Family Values tour.
Plenty, from the sound of it. BYD's new The Beauty and the Breakdown (Victory) comes out today, and it's a monster. Some records are about singers, some are about guitars, this one's all about the kick drum. As the title suggests, they've got some of the fugliest mosh parts north of the Brooklyn Bridge. The song below is completely sick, and will set the standard for double-bass drumming for years to come. Tonight they're throwing a last minute CD-release party at the Palladium in Worcester. Check your knives and teeth at the door.
DOWNLOAD: Bury Your Dead, "House of Straw" (mp3)
Tour dates: with Shadows Fall, Poison the Well, and Darkest Hour:
7/12 - Norfolk, VA - The Norva
7/13 - Washington DC - 9:30 Club
7/14 - Buffalo, NY - Town Ballroom
7/15 - Detroit, MI - Harpo's
7/16 - Milwaukee, WI - Eagles Club
7/17 - Minneapolis, MN - Quest
Monday, May 01, 2006
From top: DragonForce, metalheads, Gamma Ray, Into Eternity, Light This City, Bronx Casket Co., Wolf, Wolf. All photos (c) Carina Mastrocola.
New England Metal and Hardcore Festival 2006, Day Three
April 30 at the Palladium, Worcester
The last day of the fest featured a lot of power metal. This was also the first time the crowd actually got hostile. I felt bad for the Bronx Casket Company (think a doomy Type O Negative) when the crowd booed them while giving them the big thumbs-down. The singer, DD from Overkill, ignored it, but the guitarist gave the booing audience the middle finger a few times.
Still, it was an exhilarating end to a fun and exhausting long weekend. Got to hear a lot of bands for the first time, like Phoenix Mourning, Inked in Blood, and Light this City, who had an amazing female vocalist. It was also great to see bands I hadn't seen in a little while, like local boys Burn in Silence and, from Canada, Into Eternity. While the Swedish metal band Wolf was finishing set-up, one of the guitarists, armed with a six-pack of Coronas, walked on stage, lay on the ground, and started drinking. Which amused me so I took a picture of him, which amused him so much that he started throwing the devil horns at the camera until the lights dimmed and the rest of the band came on to start their set.
The British power metal band DragonForce was next and, despite rumors that they perform on trampolines, in turns out they just jump really high. Their first-ever US tour will be remembered by all -- fast tempos, background choral singing, lyrics about swords and battles and heroes, and all of them continuously moving around and hamming it up. Given all the DragonForce merch in the crowd -- and the exodus for the door after the band ended -- you would have thought they were headlining. Which was a very unpowermetalhead-like thing for those people to do, given that the actual headliners, Gamma Ray, influenced A LOT of powermetal bands. Their loss. Founded by former Helloween frontman Kai Hansen, Gamma Ray performed Helloween's "I Want Out," which made everyone go crazy. Lot of music! Not much sleep! See you next year!
-- Carina Mastrocola
Sunday, April 30, 2006
New England Metal and Hardcore Festival, Day 2 April 29 at the Palladium, Worcester Words and photos by Carina Mastrocola
While Friday brought the metal, Day 2 leaned more towards hardcore and had a larger crowd than the previous night: think more moshing and less drinking. Highlights not pictured below: Embrace the End, with dual singers who didn't cease moving, jumping, and screaming. God Forbid: if the number of people singing along to every song was any indication, the new album is being well received. Montreal's Ion Dissonance, who had the club going crazy with songs that're like a non-stop beatdown that changes every two seconds. Immolation, who had the entire front of the barricade filled with legions of necksnapping metalheads. Into the Moat, who played a tight set with a few long and absolutely quiet breaks between songs. Hate Eternal: horns and headbanging was all you saw the crowd giving; their new drummer Kevin Talley is a great fit for them. And Suffocation, whom the soundman tried to cut off jsut as Frank was saying "One more," but after a moment of confusion they decided to play a final song anyway.
Arch Enemy: Yes, yet another European, female-fronted metal band headlined for the second day straight!
Exodus: the crowd lost it for these kings of thrash!
On Broken Wings: wow, their newer music sounds a lot more deathmetal and less hardcore.
Overcast: yes, a reunion show featuring Shadows Fall's Bryan Fair and his infamous dreds.
Scars of Tomorrow: sounded good even though I didn't recognize the band members.
Since the Flood: they bounced all over the stage and I had the opportunity of catching Dave in midair. I can't wait to hear their new CD, their first record with Metal Blade.
Skinless: new frontman Jason got the crowd to step back from the barricade and then charge towards the stage in a tsunami of destruction.
Terror: their singer jumped into the crowd for all the key parts of their popular songs to let the crowd sing along with him.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
(OTD is stuck at a podcasting conference this weekend (you can watch it live on the internerd), but ace photographer Carina Mastrocola is at the world-class New England Metal and Hardcore Festival, where last night goateed dudes played thrash covers of "Beat It," Italian girls killed it, and a few dudes who weren't on the schedule stopped by. We're uploading her dispatches as fast as we can between presentations, more coming soon.)
New England Metal and Hardcore Festival
April 28 at the Palladium, Worcester
Haste the Day: They have a new singer, but that job seems kind of moot since everyone else in the band also sings, so all he did was the screams.
Demiricous: These thrashy Swedish-influenced metal boys -- from the Midwest -- are one of my favorite bands of the night!
The Red Chord: Our local boys made a surprise, impromptu performance that lasted three songs. Guy jumped up on the barricade to sing with the crowd for the entire time. Tight!
Arsis: They started out by playing a metal version of Michael Jackson's "Beat It," what else can I say?
Dead To Fall: How many times did the singer jump into the crowd? I forget, but it was crazy and the fans ate it up.
The Absence: My first time seeing these guys and you can definitely hear the Swedish influence. they came out really strong and left me quite impressed.
Lacuna Coil:Technically the female fronted Italian metal band were the headliners. Unfortunately, at this time of the night, a lot of people were drunk in the streets, so the crowd was nothing like when they played the Palladium two weeks ago to a sold-out crowd.
All images (c) Carina Mastrocola
Click below for more images of:
Black Dahlia Murder, who came out in fluorescent cut-off tops and white pants.
A Life Once Lost: It's always a treat to watch the singer that spazzes out continuously, jumping around and falling on his head over and over. Even when he jumped right in front of me and pretended to jack off wearing the same shorts that he always wears, I laughed.
Scarlet: The new singer was like an acrobat, doing all sorts of back flips, he didn't stop moving for a second, he was all screams and jumps.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Yes, the Haunted have played the Worcester Palladium. But who knew the Palladium was haunted?
Full details coming tonight at 9 pm on the Sci-Fi Channel's Ghost Hunters, but we had to get skinny from our girl Sylvia at MassConcerts, who was giving ghost tours to rock stars just last weekend. "On Saturday, I helped out Lacuna Coil because they needed space to do a photo shoot," she says. "I took them upstairs to the old offices and they said they felt like they were in the movie The Shining because it was so creepy. Cristina, the lead singer, brought along her digital camera and kept taking photos in hopes of catching something on camera."
So what kind of ghosts are we talking about? What dark secrets lurk in the Palladium's past? "There have been deaths at the Palladium, kids have died during shows over the years, somone once fell from [the] top of [the] roof from a skylight onto the stage," she says. (This report seems to back her up.) "I think there is also some dark history there too with immigrants killed back in early days of Worcester, coupled with the fact that they think that area was built on old Indian burial grounds. Events started escalating with the construction next door of the new courthouse. Gina [the Palladium's GM] got hit in the head with a vase that was nowhere near her. Our maintenance guy got slammed in [the] hand with [a] door, we actually had a guy do EVP (like in the movie White Noise) and even he got freaked out because when he played back the tape it said 'get out.' So he got the hell out. There have never been incidents during shows -- always after or in between show times. We always laugh and say the spirits don't like the music."
Dunno what she's talking about. Proven fact: Ghosts love metal.
While you're watching, check out the shadowy new David Banner jawn . . .
DOWNLOAD: DJ Shadow featuring David Banner and Nump, "Seeing Thangs" (mp3, via SoleSides)
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