In today's installment of "Europe Gets All The Really Cool Shows," the first of the scheduled "Big Four" shows featuring '80s thrash icons Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer (and Behemoth) is tonight. For the first time in the history of the human race, these musicians will share a single stage at the Sonisphere festival in Warsaw, Poland.

Here's a picture of all the musicians (except for Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman) hanging out yesterday.



In just under a week, American fans will get a taste of this action, when the June 22 concert in Sofia, Bulgaria is broadcast to movie theaters nationwide.
 

Unlike last week, there aren't a whole lot of new releases out today. However, there are two items very much worth your time and money. Here's the deal:

Grave, Burial Ground (Regain): This is the ninth album by these Swedes, who were among the first wave of death metal bands from that country, alongside Entombed, Unleashed, Dismember et al. If you've never heard them, their downtuned, distorted guitars, loose but driving rhythm work and guttural but still comprehensible vocals are very much in the Entombed mold, but their lyrics aren't as wide-ranging; they tend to stick to gore and horror-related topics. Anyway, this isn't as strong a disc as their comeback album, 2003's Back from the Grave, but it's still a really solid example of old-school Swedish death metal, and well worth your time and money.

This week's real prize, though is...

Various Artists, Fall Into Darkness '09 DVD (Nanotear): The annual Fall Into Darkness festival is a three-day event held in Portland, Oregon showcasing metal and metal-friendly bands. This DVD doesn't offer every song (or even every performer) from last year's show, which was held over Halloween weekend, but it does contain superb performances by Earth, Makoto Kawabata (of legendary Japanese psychedelic rock troupe Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.), Agalloch, Soriah, Amber Asylum, YOB, Ludicra, Witch Mountain and Saviours. This is a limited edition item; only a few hundred have been made, and you can only get it by clicking this link. So you should, you know, do that. Like, now. Here's a bonus clip, not included on the DVD, of Ludicra performing "In Stable":


 

You probably missed this announcement, but over the weekend, New York noise-rock band Unsane announced that they're going to play a series of shows, at which they will be performing their 1995 album Scattered, Smothered & Covered in its entirety. I know what you're saying—Unsane? Who? Well, back in the mid '90s, they had a brief moment where a few people gave a shit, not so much because of their music (which I actually kinda like) but because the video for their song "Scrape," from the aforementioned SS&C, was almost all footage of skateboarders blowing tricks and fucking themselves up in the process.

You know, this video:



Here's the thing, though. This needs to stop. First of all, I don't remember a single other song from Scattered, Smothered & Covered. Unsane are one of those bands that don't have a catalog so much as they have a sound—every song sounds exactly the same. They could play a random set of ten songs, and at the end announce, "That was our whole new album," and people would believe them.

But even if that were not the case, the play-the-whole-album​-live thing needs to stop. It's an exercise in nostalgia that humiliates band and audience alike. Groups from across the metal spectrum have been doing this shit lately. Slayer and Megadeth are taking the gimmick on tour this very minute, playing Seasons in the Abyss and Rust in Peace respectively. Their opening act, Testament, just recently toured playing The Legacy front-to-back. Judas Priestrecorded their 2009 re-creation of British Steel. Nine Inch Nails did it at one of their final gigs, running through The Downward Spiral before breaking up. Back in 2008, Amon Amarth played four German shows where they recorded live versions of their first four albums, which were included in deluxe reissues. (I own those reissues, but I never play the live discs.) Even Eyehategod has gotten into the act, playing their first two albums, In the Name of Suffering and Take as Needed for Pain, at a recent Texas gig.

I don't want to pay exorbitant ticket prices (and ticket prices have gotten fucking exorbitant) to see a band I like play an album I own in its entirety. A good set list is an art form in itself. Bands have to go through their catalog, decide how many new songs they can play without losing the crowd's interest, then figure out a sequence that will get fans headbanging, maybe allow for a short rest break mid-set, then get them amped up again for a big finale and a wild, explosive encore. It requires real thought, and a knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses as a band, as songwriters, and as performers. Simply choosing to play a whole album removes the necessity for thought. It also takes a burden off the audience. Fans don't need to worry about hearing a song they might not already know, or wait in suspense to see what the musicians will offer next. They can listen to the CD on the car ride to the gig, then compare what they just heard with what they hear from the stage. It's lazy, thoughtless, and frankly insulting. It reduces the band to a jukebox, no less than if they'd taken the stage and said "We're gonna play nothing but requests tonight. We haven't planned a set—just tell us what you want to hear." There's no art to it.

For the sake of their own dignity, bands need to stop being jukeboxes and rediscover the art of playing a well-thought-out, balanced set of songs.
 

Iron Maiden kicked off their Final Frontier World Tour last night at the Superpages.com Center in Dallas, Texas. Footage of the first song, "The Wicker Man," is below.



The band's setlist is interesting, because it bypasses most of their classic mid to late '80s albums (which they played on their previous tour) in favor of material from their last three records—2000's Brave New World, 2003's Dance of Death, and 2006's A Matter of Life and Death—as well as "El Dorado," the new song they gave away on Tuesday, one track from 1992's Fear of the Dark, and a few classics as an encore.

Here's the full setlist:

01. The Wicker Man
02. The Ghost Of The Navigator
03. Brighter Than A Thousand Suns
04. El Dorado
05. Paschendale
06. The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg
07. These Colours Don't Run
08. Blood Brothers
09. Wildest Dreams
10. No More Lies
11. Brave New World
12. Fear Of The Dark
13. Iron Maiden
Encore:
14. The Number Of the Beast
15. Hallowed Be Thy Name
16. Running Free
 

Are the Cure secretly a metal band? Obviously, the short answer to that is No. But have the Cure been a major, and possibly not-so-secret influence on much of contemporary metal? It'd be pretty hard to dispute that, I think. Try imagining Deftones without the Cure—they wouldn't exist. Hell, they covered "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep" on their B-Sides & Rarities compilation. (I once tried to set up a conversation between Cure frontman Robert Smith and Deftones vocalist Chino Moreno for a magazine feature, but Smith wouldn't participate.) I can also hear major echoes of the Cure (particularly the bass sound) on Isis's Panopticon album. Other groups, from Linkin Park to Katatonia, plus a zillion Goth-metal and "prom dress metal" acts, may or may not have explicitly nodded to the Cure, but I can definitely hear some of their ideas present.


(Above: Not my actual ticket, though it's from the same show I saw.)

The Cure, for their part, have occasionally gotten heavy. Their 2000 album Bloodflowers was pretty doomy, and their 2004 self-titled album was produced by Ross Robinson, who's most famous for working with Korn, Slipknot and other nü-metal acts. I saw them live in June 2000, touring in support of Bloodflowers, and the show was actually a whole lot heavier than I expected it to be. Many of the songs were morose, roaring dirges that, looking back now, sound not that far from some of what Celtic Frost/Triptykon leader Tom G. Warrior's been up to in recent years, and Robert Smith proved to be a shockingly capable guitarist, tearing into some almost Hendrix-esque solos. It was much more of a rock show than I expected it to be. (To get some idea, check out the Trilogy DVD, on which the band plays three of their albums—1982's Pornography, 1989's Disintegration and Bloodflowers—in their entirety.)

Disintegration was reissued this week as a super-deluxe three-CD set. The first disc is the album, naturally; the second disc is all demos and rehearsal tracks, some featuring only Robert Smith's voice and guitar, some featuring the band working out instrumental tracks. The third disc is an expanded version of a 1991 promo-only live album, Entreat, which featured versions of eight or nine Disintegration tracks in its original incarnation, but has now been expanded into a full 12-track live recreation of the record. The original album is brilliant, a churning, late-evening record full of songs that gradually cohere into a greater whole—it really deserves (and demands) to be heard from beginning to end, and while "Love Song" was pulled out as a single and did fairly well at the time, there aren't any true standout tracks. Each piece is a movement in a suite, and the cumulative effect is psychedelic and disorienting, like spinning in circles in a dark room full of unseen objects that bruise, but don't cut, when you bounce off them. If you like Gothic metal, you're probably already listening to the Cure, and Disintegration in particular, on a semi-regular basis. But if you're not, it's about time you got with the program.
 

There is just an absurd amount of new metal coming out today. Here are the highlights.



• Circle of Dead Children, Psalm of the Grand Destroyer (Willowtip): Death-grind from Pittsburgh.
• Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire, Songs of Ill Hope and Desperation (Prosthetic): Blackened death metal, I think.
• Fleshgod Apocalypse, Mafia (Willowtip): Technical death metal from France.
• The Haunted, Road Kill (Century Media): Live CD/DVD set.
• Heaven Shall Burn, Invictus (Century Media): Metalcore.
• Keep of Kalessin, Reptilian (Nuclear Blast): Black metal.
• Kingdom of Sorrow, Behind the Blackest Tears (Relapse): Sludgy doom w/Jamey Jasta of Hatebreed and Kirk Windstein of Crowbar and Down.
• Leng T'Che, Hypomanic (Season of Mist): Arty noise-grind.
• Masakari, The Profit Feeds (Southern Lord): Ugly, noisy hardcore.
• Nachtmystium, Addicts: Black Meddle Part II (Century Media): Black metal meets Goth/industrial. See yesterday's interview for more details.
• Nevermore, The Obsidian Conspiracy (Century Media): Power thrash/mainstream art-metal.
• Sabaton, Coat of Arms (Nuclear Blast): Power metal.
• Watain, Lawless Darkness (Season of Mist): Black metal.
• Whitechapel, A New Era of Corruption (Metal Blade): Deathcore from an underrated band. Don't hate 'em just 'cause people half your age like 'em.
• Wormrot, Abuse (Earache): Grindcore from Indonesia.
 

Iron Maiden revealed the cover art, track listing and release date for their upcoming 15th studio album, The Final Frontier, today. The disc will be out on August 16, and this is what the cover will look like:



This is the track listing:

01. Satellite 15....The Final Frontier (8:40)
02. El Dorado (6:49)
03. Mother Of Mercy (5:20)
04. Coming Home (5:52)
05. The Alchemist (4:29)
06. Isle Of Avalon (9:06)
07. Starblind (7:48)
08. The Talisman (9:03)
09. The Man Who Would Be King (8:28)
10. When The Wild Wind Blows (10:59)

And this is the first single, "El Dorado," which you can download for free, if you can get through to IronMaiden.com...



Sounds pretty good to me. It's got the same roughness and live feel as A Matter of Life and Death, and the album's got the same mix of short tracks and epics, adding up to a massive 76-minute running time. I can't wait to see them on tour next month.
 

Steppenwolf earned immortality with one crushing track: 1968's "Born to Be Wild," from their self-titled debut album. The song, with its images of open highways and roaring engines, inserted the very phrase "heavy metal" into the global cultural lexicon, in the lines "I like smoke and lightning/Heavy metal thunder." The reference was to motorcycles, but it could just as easily signify the blaring guitars that underpinned the song, and everyone involved knew it. Hordes of hard rock and metal bands have covered the song in the decades since, including The Cult, Slayer, Hinder and Raven (with guest vocals by Accept's Udo Dirkschneider).

Steppenwolf formed as the blues-rock band Sparrow, but changed their name before releasing the aforementioned debut. The focal point and spiritual center of the group was frontman John Kay, whose gravelly voice perfectly embodied a mix of hippie hedonism and righteous anger—he liked to party, but was clear-eyed about the society around him, and Steppenwolf had many songs offering much more pungent political critique than they got credit for. Their music was heavy garage rock, driven by bluesy guitar and surging, distorted organ, but they took quite a few side trips into softer, even country-inflected sounds, and added horns and background vocals as necessary. I can hear a lot of Steppenwolf in Alice Cooper's sound on his first four or five Warner Bros. albums.

Steppenwolf had several early hits, including "Born to Be Wild," "Magic Carpet Ride," and the doomy "The Pusher," and quickly followed the album up with The Second, released the same year. They put out two more albums in 1969—At Your Birthday Party and the political concept album Monster—and Steppenwolf 7 in 1970. But after another concept album, 1971's For Ladies Only, things started to fall apart. The group disbanded, and weren't heard from again until 1974's Slow Flux, probably their strongest album since Monster. Slow Flux, Hour of the Wolf and Skullduggery were prime examples of head-crushing '70s biker rock, though by that time few people were paying attention anymore.

Steppenwolf went through many, many membership changes in the late '70s and early '80s—in fact, there were multiple lineups touring at one point, none of which featured John Kay. When he stepped back in, laying claim to the name, the band became a popular touring act at county fairs and festivals, though the albums they released from time to time barely made an impact. Several weren't even released in the U.S. Kay finally retired the band in 2007, but still plays the occasional show here and there.

Steppenwolf deserves to be known for much more than their one or two Sixties hits. Their discography is full of hard-rocking, intelligent songs that cast a jaundiced eye on American society and go far beyond mere empty-headed biker-rebel clichés. Indeed, as a lyricist, I'd put John Kay right up there with Alice Cooper and Lemmy as one of the great social critics of hard rock. But just as importantly, the music kicks ass...and echoes of it can be heard in metal to this day. Any record collection that doesn't include Steppenwolf, Monster and Slow Flux is incomplete.