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.
 

(This photo is not from last night's show.)

Swedish death metal legends Entombed are on a short U.S. tour built around their performance at last weekend's Maryland Deathfest, and I'd never seen them before, so I figured I'd catch the New York show. I was kinda hoping to get their late enough to miss the opening acts, because the website said the relatively unimpressive metalcore band Woe of Tyrants and the totally useless hardcore band Merauder would be on the bill. Well, I got there only a few minutes after eight PM, and my information was only 50% accurate. The first band was not Woe of Tyrants, but Gwynnbleidd, a very pleasant surprise.

Gwynnbleidd are a Polish-via-Brooklyn blackened death metal band with some folk tossed into the salad bowl, too. Their 2009 album Nostalgia is terrific; it sounds a lot like Opeth at times, but in what universe is that a bad thing? They were the first band, so they got shafted by the soundman, who didn't give them even half the power or fullness their complicated and aggressive, but beautiful music deserved. Still, they pulled off a good set and had some loyal (and vocal) fans in the crowd. So good for them.

Woe of Tyrants were on the bill, and they were up second. They set up quickly, but took a long time to get their sound together (apparently their drummer had four toms, but only three microphones for them, which baffled the in-house engineer). When they did get rolling, it seemed like they were forced to perform an abbreviated set, 'cause they only bashed through about five of their stamped-out, melodic death metal/metalcore songs before leaving the stage. Instrumentally speaking, they're fine. They sound like At the Gates, they sound like Darkest Hour, they sound like a zillion bands you've heard before. Their vocalist is the problem. He's goofy looking. He looks like Michael McDonald from MAD TV, and it's hard to watch him. But again, it was over soon.

Entombed was up next (no Merauder), and they were one of the loosest bands I've ever seen onstage. They almost reminded me of Eyehategod, but without the deliberately sculpted feedback and at twice the speed. They played a lot of old material ("Demon," "Wolverine Blues," their cover of Roky Erickson's "Night of the Vampire"), but after all, isn't it all old material? They haven't put out an album since 2007, and when I interviewed vocalist Lars-Goran Petrov last week, he told me they have some songs, but no scheduled plans to record or release them.

Anyway, the set was terrific. Petrov is an entertaining frontman, dressed half scruffy-rock 'n' roller and half homeless-guy and kinda shambling back and forth onstage, half hunched over like a cross between a gorilla and Ozzy Osbourne, and his voice is just as leonine and room-filling as it is on record. Even though the band only has one guitarist these days, that guitarist, Alex Hellid, keeps the trademark Entombed ultra-distorted roar going at full strength, and the rhythm section has death metal power but rock 'n' roll swing. They reminded me of Motörhead or one of Scott "Wino" Weinrich's bands—Spirit Caravan, The Hidden Hand—more than a standard "death metal" act. And even though it wasn't a super-packed house, everyone there seemed to be into it, too—they had one of the bigger moshpits I've seen in a while. These days, a lot of audiences, especially in New York, just kind of stand around watching the band like they're at a zoo or something. But Entombed got the people moving. This was a great, loud, aggressive rock show, and I had a blast. 

(Won't you please buy some merch, so these guys can afford to stay off the road for a little while?)

The members of legendary Bay Area thrash band Exodus, whose new album Exhibit B: The Human Condition came out the other week, have apparently decided they've had enough of paying onerous Northern California rents, because they're gonna be on tour AGAIN in August and September. I feel like these guys have hit every U.S. market about five times already—I mean, they just played New York in January, and then in March they criss-crossed the country again with Megadeth! If these guys aren't careful, they're gonna wind up like Jucifer, literally homeless and living out of a van/tour bus.

Anyway, here are the dates, with support from Malevolent Creation, Holy Grail and Bonded By Blood:

08/16/10 Hawthorne Theater – Portland, OR
08/17/10 Rickshaw Theater – Vancouver, BC – CANADA
08/18/10 Studio Seven – Seattle, WA
08/20/10 The Complex – Salt Lake City, UT
08/21/10 Bluebird Theater – Denver, CO
08/23/10 Reggie’s Rock Club – Chicago, IL
08/24/10 The Mod Club – Toronto, ON – CANADA
08/25/10 Foufounes Electriques – Montreal, QC – CANADA
08/27/10 The Palladium – Worcester, MA
08/28/10 The Gramercy Theater – New York, NY
08/29/10 Polaris – Philadelphia, PA
08/31/10 Jaxx – W. Springfield, VA
09/01/10 Peabody’s – Cleveland, OH
09/02/10 Phoenix Hill Tavern – Louisville, KY
09/03/10 The Masquerade – Atlanta, GA
09/04/10 The Social – Orlando, FL
09/05/10 Culture Room – Ft. Lauderdale, FL
09/07/10 The Door – Dallas, TX
09/08/10 Emo’s – Austin, TX
09/12/10 The Avalon – Santa Clara, CA
 

(Grace Perry of Landmine Marathon; photo: Andrew Weiss)

Arizona-based, female-fronted death-grind band Landmine Marathon will be touring the U.S. in June and July, including a few East Coast shows with female-fronted doom band Salome. They're not part of some big package tour, they're not opening for a bigger band, they're just getting in a van and kicking out the jams, and considering how crushing their 2010 album Sovereign Descent is, you should definitely support them in this endeavor. Here are the tour dates:

Jun. 28 - Tucson, AZ - Skrappy's
Jun. 29 - Los Angeles, CA - The Blvd.
Jun. 30 - San Diego, CA - The Yard
Jul. 01 - Sacramento, CA - 16th St. Café
Jul. 02 - San Francisco, CA - Kimo's
Jul. 03 - Reno, NV - Ground Zero
Jul. 05 - Denver, CO - Blastomat
Jul. 06 - Omaha, NE - The Manor
Jul. 09 - Indianapolis, IN - DudeFest
Jul. 10 - Columbus, OH - Carabar
Jul. 11 - Buffalo, NY - Club Diablo
Jul. 13 - Brooklyn, NY - Union Pool (with Salome)
Jul. 15 - New York, NY - The Cake Shop (with Salome)
Jul. 16 - Philadelphia, PA - M Room (with Salome)
Jul. 17 - Baltimore, MD - Talking Head (with Salome)
Jul. 18 - Richmond, VA - The Triple
Jul. 23 - Austin, TX - Red 7
Jul. 24 - Dallas, TX - Ridgelea Theatre

And here's a video of them playing "Rise with the Tide" live in 2009, to give you some idea of what to expect and why this show is worth your money: