Anberlin and Scary Kids Scaring Kids
In today’s instantly downloadable and quickly consumed culture, bands like Anberlin are a dying breed. Over the course of six years and four full-lengths (including last year’s B-side compilation Lost Songs), the band have established themselves as one of alternative rock’s most exciting acts and as a band who refuse to limit themselves to one specific scene or sound... and it’s paid off. If the band reinvented themselves with last year’s sprawling album Cities—which debuted in the Billboard Top 20 and sold 34,000 copies its first week of release—they’ve transcended that sound with New Surrender. In fact, their latest album that shows the band reconciling all of their seemingly disparate moods into a cohesive blend of music that will lull you to sleep with gentle harmonies one minute and shake you to the core via raw, distortion-drenched rock riffage the next.
Chiodos And Silverstein
Alt-rockers Chiodos [ tickets ] and Silverstein [ tickets ] will join forces this fall for an extensive co-headlining run, with fellow post-hardcore outfit Escape the Fate also joining the trek.
The tour kicks off Oct. 10 in Detroit and runs through mid-November, with 30 cities lined up for the outing, which visits most major US metropolitan areas during its five-week run.
Chiodos continue to support last year's "Bone Palace Ballet," the group's sophomore offering on Equal Vision Records, which followed 2005's "All's Well That Ends Well." A couple of songs from the set are streaming at the band's MySpace page.
Canadian rockers Silverstein continue to tour behind their third studio album, "Arrivals & Departures," which hit stores last summer. The set, produced by Mark Trombino (Jimmy Eat World, Blink 182), shot to the top of Billboard's Top Independent Albums chart and reach No. 25 on The Billboard 200. Streaming samples can be found at the band's MySpace page.
Jagermeister Music Tour featuring HINDER
Hinder will be releasing their sophomore album, Take It to the Limit, on November 4, and it’s sure to be another celebration of women, boozing and general debauchery. So it makes sense that the band will be headlining a fall concert tour sponsored by Jagermeister. The potent German liquor has been hosting a spring and fall concert series for the last few years now, and this fall’s edition offers three groups that specialize in aggressive, man-sized rock: Hinder, Trapt and Rev Theory.
Rise Against
Chicago's Rise Against began in 1999 when ex-88 Fingers Louie bassist Joe Principe tapped area vocalist Tim McIlrath for a new project rooted in the sound and social vision of traditionalist hardcore. Joined by fellow 88 Fingers vet Dan Precision on guitar and, eventually, drummer Brandon Barnes, Rise Against signed to Fat Wreck and issued The Unraveling in 2001. Precision left the band that same year to be replaced by Todd Mohney. Extensive touring followed, leading to their sophomore outing, 2002's Revolutions Per Minute. After solid response from fans and critics alike, as well as a stint on the Warped Tour, Rise Against left the Fat Wreck fold for DreamWorks/Geffen. By this point, guitar duties were being handled by Chris Chasse (Reach the Sky). Rise Against made their major-label debut in August 2004 with Siren Song of the Counter Culture. They toured steadily after the album's release, received plenty of solid press, and even saw Counter Culture crack the Billboard Top 200. In 2005, Rise Against appeared in the skateboarding film Lords of Dogtown, playing an old-school Cali punk band. (They performed a rousing version of Black Flag's "Nervous Breakdown" for the film's soundtrack.) Rise Against continued to tour throughout that summer, including a spot at the U.K.'s Reading and Leeds festivals in August. Their fourth album, The Sufferer & the Witness, appeared in July 2006 and its debut at number ten on the Billboard Top 200 was their highest yet. The band spent the summer tearing up Warped's main stage before hooking up with Thursday and Billy Talent that fall. Rise Against continued playing shows into 2007, but their extensive tour schedule eventually proved to be too much for Chasse, who bowed out that February. The band solidered on, enlisting Only Crime's Zach Blair to temporarily take his place.
Dragonforce
Every year there are albums eagerly anticipated, be it from hot young names, established legends or – and this is usually the most exciting of all the categories – those bands you know are on the verge of greatness. As DragonForce, the multi-national talent based in London – prepare to release their fourth album, nobody who understands the world of metal can have any doubt that ‘Ultra Beatdown’ (as the record is to be called) is most certainly being awaited with a real sense that we are about to witness a band going from being ‘potential international stars’ to becoming a ‘major global phenomenon’.
‘Ultra Beatdown’ is the album to take DragonForce to a new height. It’s not merely the culmination of a decade crafting and finessing a sound that has made them instantly recognizable across the world. It’s not even state-of-the-art for metal, nor just a gantlet being thrown down for everyone else. This is more than that. It’s DragonForce beating a difficult, yet ultimately satisfying, path. Experimenting, taking risks, being bold – precisely what you’d expect any masters of their art.
GWAR
The Legend of GWAR began millions of years ago when the aliens rampaged across the galaxy with a gang of space pirates called the Scumdogs of the Universe. Falling out of favor with their Master, GWAR was imprisoned on the most remote mudball planet in the galaxy...Earth. After killing off the dinosaurs and inadvertently creating the human species by raping prehistoric apes, GWAR began to significantly influence the development of the planet, until that wild gig in Atlantis, when it was decided that GWAR should be entombed in Antarctica. Thus, preventing them from screwing up Earth any further.
Several thousand years later GWAR were stumbled upon and awakened by, Sleazy P. Martini, a known pimp, pusher, pornographer, and record executive for Capitalist Records, accidentally stumbled into GWAR's Antarctic tomb and woke them. He took them to New York, gave them electric guitars, and began to market them as his latest Rock-n-Roll sensation. Some of GWAR's adventures are chronicled in their albums, comics, and videos, but there are still plenty of GWAR stories waiting to be told.
Now the only way to truly validate your life before death is to join the masses of "lowly zit-ridden scum of outcast prepubescence" when GWAR comes to ravish and bloody your mutant town.
Secondhand Serenade at Saltair
Much like Five for Fighting or Dashboard Confessional both musically and in theory, Secondhand Serenade is a project name for a solo artist, singer/songwriter John Vesely. Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area in a musical family that included his professional jazz musician father, Vesely spent a number of dues-paying years in a variety of local bands before switching from bass to acoustic guitar and beginning to write his own songs. (In his official artist bio, Vesely claims that the inspiration for the band name Secondhand Serenade is the fact that all of his autobiographical songs are directed first and foremost to his wife, thereby making the audience mere bystanders to their pas de deux; he seems not to notice that some potential listeners might find this attitude a bit condescending.) Vesely recorded his debut album, Awake, in 2005, originally self-releasing the disc and selling it through his MySpace page and iTunes. Online buzz led to a deal with Glassnote Records, a pseudo-indie funded and distributed by the Warner Bros. offshoot The Independent Label Group. Glassnote released an expanded version of Awake in February 2007.
Five Finger Death Punch
Five Finger Death Punch has been pummeling audiences since the release of their critically acclaimed debut album, The Way of the Fist. With their hit single “The Bleeding” pulverizing the Active rock charts and MTV2’s Headbanger’s Ball, the album has been called a “Cowboys from Hell for this millennium (Outburn Magazine).”
This summer audiences will see why Metal Edge calls Five Finger Death Punch “the sound of violent exhilaration, giving contemporary metal a belligerent shove in an exciting direction.”
