03/17/11 Dallas, TX @ Southside Music Hall
03/18/11 Austin, TX @ Dirty Dog / SXSW
03/19/11 New Orleans, LA @ One Eyed Jacks
03/20/11 St Petersburg, FL @ State Theater
03/21/11 Orlando, FL @ Firestone Live
03/22/11 Greensboro, NC @ Greene Street
03/23/11 Springfield, VA @ Jaxx
03/24/11 Worcester, MA @ Palladium
03/25/11 New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
03/26/11 Cleveland, OH @ Peabody's
03/27/11 Joliet, IL @ Mojoe's
03/29/11 Denver, CO @ The Summit
03/31/11 Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater
04/01/11 Seattle, WA @ El Corazon
04/03/11 San Francisco, CA @ Mezzanine
04/05/11 Hollywood, CA @ House Of Blues

The track listing for the disc is as follows:

01. War of the Gods
02. Töck's Taunt - Loke's Treachery Part II
03. Destroyer of the Universe
04. Slaves of Fear
05. Live Without Regrets
06. The Last Stand of Frej
07. For Victory or Death
08. Wrath of the Norsemen
09. A Beast Am I
10. Doom Over Dead Man

The band will be one of 40 performing on the 70000 Tons of Metal cruise which kicks off Monday, January 24 in Miami, Florida, sailing to Cozumel, Mexico and back. For more information on that insane event, click here.

Times of Grace, The Hymn of a Broken Man (Roadrunner): This is a reunion/side-project​ featuring Killswitch Engage guitarist/producer Adam Dutkiewicz and the band's former lead vocalist, Jesse Leach. Though their new endeavor shares its name with a Neurosis album, don't come in expecting arty doom, or any other kind of departure from the melodic Massachusetts metalcore Dutkiewicz has made his specialty. Basically, these songs could have been recorded by Killswitch Engage and no one would blink twice. Only the slight advances in recording technology since the making of Alive or Just Breathing, the 2002 KSE disc Leach sang on, make this sound different from that. Which is fine. Lots of people like melodic-yet-crunchy metalcore, and this delivers. They'll be touring, too, and I predict the hordes will come out and shout along with the choruses, fists in the air.

Electric Wizard, Black Masses (Rise Above/Metal Blade): The US release of the long-running UK stoner-doom outfit's seventh album, out in Europe for a couple of months already. It's really, really good. If you need to know more, go back and re-read the interview with mainman Jus Oborn from yesterday.

Ghost, Opus Eponymous (Rise Above/Metal Blade): This album, which has also been out in Europe for a little while, seemed like a joke at first. The band hides behind hoods; the vocalist dresses like a zombie Pope. Their cover art is determinedly retro (in fact, it's a rejiggered version of the cover to an old paperback edition of Stephen King's Salem's Lot). So is their sound—but that aspect, at least, is no joke. These guys mix guitar and organ, high vocal harmonies and thudding, cardboard-box drums, in a way that sounds like nothing so much as classic Blue Öyster Cult, right down to the analog production. The lyrics are extremely occult, Satanic in a way that doesn't suggest horror films so much as hymns, not unlike the Sabbath Assembly disc Restored To One, which consisted of songs written by and for the post-/anti-hippie cult The Process Church of the Final Judgment. (They've got a fascinating story; check out the book Love Sex Fear Death, written by ex-members.) But where that disc had more of a '60s rock vibe, even as vocalist Jex Thoth channeled Patti Smith, Ghost are in full-on '70s arena-rock mode. These guys would have been competing with, maybe opening for, BÖC in the olden days.

Farewell to Freeway, Filthy Habits (Victory): A nice 'n' punchy metalcore record from a young band worth your time if you're into this sort of thing. Growly vocals balanced out by smooth backup crooning; crunching guitar riffs erupting into high, squealy leads; downtuned breakdowns broken up by anthemic, almost-memorable choruses. You know more or less what this record sounds like, and/but the band does it at least as well as their peers, and better than many.

Wino, Adrift (Exile on Mainstream): An acoustic album from a god of stoner rock. Wino's been in so many great bands, you can't call yourself a fan of doom if you don't own at least a half dozen of his albums, whether with Saint Vitus, The Obsessed, Spirit Caravan, The Hidden Hand, Shrinebuilder, or as a solo act. He's never made an acoustic album before, though, and that's what Adrift is. Other than a few electric lead lines here and there, it's Wino strumming and singing, and getting, frankly, somewhat morose. Many of the songs are about lost love or missed opportunities; it was recorded in the wake of his marriage breaking up and his bass player dying, and it sounds like it. Even a cover of Motörhead's "Iron Horse" doesn't perk things up; it's dirgey, like the biker narrator is looking back on his life with regret, instead of defiantly standing up for his choices. A side of Wino you've never heard.

I talked to Oborn last week; here's the transcript.

Your vocals seem more prominent on this album, and on “Venus in Furs” they’re in kind of a higher register than usual—what brought about the change? Are you training yourself to be a better singer?

I’m not sure. Vocals are a muscle, I guess, so they get trained after a while, involuntarily. I just approached them differently on this album with different songs, just trying out different ideas, I guess. I’m not a real natural singer so I just kind of play it by ear and approach each song individually. It turned out pretty cool in most ways.

 

In what ways do you think this album improves on the one before it?

This album is more direct. It’s a continuation—each album is different, they’re not better or worse, just different. There’s an individual atmosphere for each record. But this one is a continuation of Witchcult Today. Witchcult Today is kind of an initiation process, a luring record, and this one is the affirmation of everything we stand for, and the idea is to sort of put our stamp on it.

 

What would you most like to improve about the band or the music at this point?

More amps, I think. I’d like to be louder.

 

In what ways does having two guitars benefit the band?

It’s opened out the possibilities. We’ve been listening to a lot of stuff, from Yardbirds through Judas Priest, just to get inspiration from two-guitar set-ups. I like the way it works, and the band has to progress in certain ways. We’ve been going for almost 20 years now.

 

Who does most of the guitar soloing, you or Liz?

I do probably the most, because I have a big ego. She likes to use quality of notes, I just go for it.

 

What role does a producer play in shaping your sound? Can you point to anything where someone outside the band had a strong voice in how things turned out?

It’s having someone else’s ideas. It’s hard being objective yourself, so if you find someone whose opinion you can trust, you can at least get an opinion on where you’re going. Because it’s really quite insular, you know, we’re creating our own sound, so you can get lost in it sometimes. So it’s good to have someone who can look at it from the outside and say “Wait a minute,” or “This is really good; you should be doing this.” You can discard stuff cause you get too intense, you know, and it’s good shit. Or you can keep going with something shitty.

 

Does the band record live in the studio, or do you lay down one instrument at a time?

We record live. We always have. For this style of music, there needs to be a hypnotic quality and that’s achieved through playing together and direct contact.

 

So do songs wind up being longer than you originally wrote them?

Always. [laughs]

 

What are the benefits of analog recording for your music?

It’s more of a challenge, and it’s somehow easier in many ways. With Protools or whatever, the possibilities are too endless. I think you can disappear up your own ass in some ways. I like the immediacy of recording analog. That’s pretty much what you’ve got when you record it, you know? To do it better, you’ve gotta get a better performance, get better equipment, but there’s no hiding from it. I like that hands-on feel rather than sitting in front of a screen.

 

On some of the earlier records there were some experimental tracks with dub elements, like "Ivixor B/Phase Inducer" from Come My Fanatics... or “Night of the Shape” from Let Us Prey. Why don’t you do things like that anymore?

There’s no reason, really. It’s all part of how each album feels. I don’t think we try to set any agenda when we start. A lot of our influences come out in our songs—people we’re hanging out with, things that have happened. It’s sort of a document of a few years of the band, the obsessions of the group.

Your album art and the whole visual side of the band is very '70s retro, but the music isn’t at all—there’s really no '70s band that sounded the way you guys do. Why do you think stoner doom has this retro tag attached to it?

Well, for ourselves, we try to sound timeless in many ways. I don’t want to sound of any particular era. I guess aesthetically I’m stuck in an era because of all the stuff we’re into, the comic books and horror movies and shit—it all lends itself to that type of aesthetic. I do prefer real art to modern stuff and photography and shit. It’s all part of that sort of Luddite attitude. I don’t believe in technology, I don’t like it.

 

Do you feel like there’s something uniquely English to the character of the band, and if so, how would you describe that quality?

Well, I think yeah, we sound like where we come from, and I think any good band should have a cultural sort of quality to them. You should hear their background. I know where we come from is quite distant from the city scenes, London and that, so our sound is more introverted and expansive, more obsessed and occult because we don’t really interact with a lot of people. And Englishness, probably just in the Hammer horror aesthetic of graveyards and castles.

 

How do you deal with the legacy of Dopethrone, with the idea that for a lot of critics especially, but even some listeners, that’s where they stop, that’s the album they think you’ll never beat? How do you get people to recognize that you’ve progressed over time?

I don’t know. People can obsess about that if they want, but I think they’re missing out, because we’re always doing something challenging. I don’t think we make anything better or anything worse, but we always offer something. An obsession with the album is an obsession with the era, I suppose, but you can only record your youthful indiscretions once.

 

With that in mind, where do you see the role of artistic maturity in Electric Wizard?

Hopefully in the songwriting. Not the sound, but the songwriting. And being able to get the effect [we’re after] more succinctly. Just get people in the zone immediately. Cut away any fat or flab. You never know. We do change a lot. The next album could be a lot more expansive. It could be only two songs. We are quite reactionary. What we’ve been listening to the last few years have led us this way—tons of '60s bands, and stuff like Alice Cooper, the Runaways, Judas Priest, even early Slayer, tons of song-oriented metal. That shows up in our songwriting, it’s a reflection of the people we are. We don’t try to be contrived, we always end up sounding like Electric Wizard.

 

Do you have any plans to tour the US in support of this album?

There’s always plans. There’s serious talk about coming over in the autumn at some point. It’s just sorting everything, the logistics of it all. It’s a pain in the ass, to be honest. They check everything now. It’s frightful. A few marijuana charges when you’re barely a teenager, and they get pissed off about it now when I’m almost 40.

 

What are your favorite bands from the ’70s, other than the obvious one of Black Sabbath? Can you recommend a couple of obscure bands or albums that people should check out?

What really inspired us was Dust*. They were a big influence on this album. We listened to a lot of that. I’ve been listening to the Pretty Things, especially SF Sorrow and the Electric Banana stuff**, just cause it’s really aggressive fuzz guitar. We’re into a lot of proto-metal at the moment, the birthplace of it all.

*Dust was a New York blues-rock trio that made two albums in the early '70s; they were best known for having Marc Bell, who later became Marky Ramone, as their drummer.

**The Pretty Things were a punky, acid-rock band from the UK, much more aggressive than their '60s peers. They made extra money recording library music under the alias Electric Banana. These tracks were originally used for low-budget movie scores, and later compiled on several albums, often without revealing that it was really the Pretty Things performing.

• Scott "Wino" Weinrich has an acoustic solo album, Adrift, coming out in March on Exile On Mainstream Records. It's excellent. On Saturday, he'll be doing a free show at the Volcom store in Los Angeles, performing some of the new material; the show is free, but you have to go to scottweinrich.com to RSVP.

In February, he'll be embarking on a short US tour with his Shrinebuilder bandmate, Neurosis's Scott Kelly, both playing acoustic sets. Here are the dates:

• Soundgarden will release its first-ever live album, Live On I5, on March 22. The recordings are all from the West Coast leg of a 1996 US tour, and break down as follows:

01. Spoonman
02. Searching With My Good Eye Closed
03. Let Me Drown
Crosby Hall, Del Mar Fairgrounds, Del Mar, CA - 11/30/96
04. Head Down
Mercer Arena, Seattle, WA - 12/18/96
05. Outshined
Crosby Hall - 11/30/96
06. Rusty Cage
Pacific National Exhibition Forum, Vancouver, BC, Canada - 12/7/96
07. Burden In My Hand
Salem Armory, Salem, OR - 12/8/96
08. Helter Skelter
09. Boot Camp
Crosby Hall - 11/30/96
10. Nothing To Say
Mercer Arena - 12/18/96
11. Slaves And Bulldozers
12. Dusty
13. Fell On Black Days
Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, Oakland, CA - 12/5/96
14. Search And Destroy
Mercer Arena - 12/18/96
15. Ty Cobb
Crosby Hall - 11/30/96
16. Black Hole Sun
Mercer Arena - 12/17/96
17. Jesus Christ Pose
Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center - 12/5/96

• Vader will begin recording their new album, Welcome to the Morbid Reich, on March 15. The disc is expected to be released in late 2011.

• Contrary to rumors I addressed on this site not long ago, Marco Minnemann is officially not the new drummer for Dream Theater.

• And finally, Napalm Death's Mitch Harris is selling a white guitar he says was used on the band's Harmony Corruption and Utopia Banished albums, as well as Live Corruption, Defecation's Purity Dilution and Righteous Pigs' Stress Related. He's taking offers via his Facebook page, and says, "I had a few offers from people, so I decided to sell it to someone who is definitely interested. I'll probably let the offers run for about one week. It needs a little work (nothing major) but is being sold in its present condition. It's no longer being used [and it is] taking up space. From a fan's perspective, I'd imagine it's worth quite a lot to someone...I'd prefer a fan to have it rather than some random dude or dudette..."

That's all I got. See you Monday!

See what I mean? Total sellouts.

Seriously, Wormrot is awesome, the album will be out in May with the following track listing:

1. NO ONE GIVES A SH*T
2. COMPULSIVE DISPOSITION
3. ALL GO NO EMO
4. PUBLIC DISPLAY OF INFECTION
5. OVERPOWERED VIOLENCE
6. SEMICONCIOUS GODSIZE DUMBASS
7. SPOT A PATHETIC
8. EVOLVED INTO NOTHING
9. BUTT KRIEG IS SHOWING
10. F***ING FIERCE SO WHAT
11. FEROCIOUS BOMBARDMENT
12. PRINCIPLE OF THE PUPPET WARFARE
13. DECEASED OCCUPATION
14. WASTE OF TIME
15. STENCH OF IGNORANCE
16. METEOR TO THE FACE
17. ADDICTS OF MISERY
18. YOU SUFFER BUT WHY IS IT MY PROBLEM
19. ERASED EXISTENCE
20. BACK STABBER MISSION ABORTED
21. DESTRUCT THE BASTARDS
22. PLUNGED INTO ILLUSIONS
23. MANIPULATION
24. A DEAD ISSUE
25. THE FINAL INSULT 

(I really hope the songs are in all caps on the album itself.)

They'll be touring the US in March and April. Look for them in a scuzzy bar near you.

Here's the track listing:

1. E5150 (Intro)

2. Neon Knights

3. N.I.B.

4. Children of the Sea

5. Country Girl

6. Black Sabbath

7. War Pigs

8. Slipping Away

9. Iron Man

10. The Mob Rules

11. Heaven and Hell

12. Paranoid

13. Voodoo

14. Children of the Grave

And here's a list of stores participating in the Metal Club program nationwide.

(By the way, there's a deluxe edition of Mob Rules that offers this same show as its second disc, but that's UK-only, so you'll be paying import prices if you try to get it.)