Here are all upcoming dates by A Pale Horse Named Death:

HELL ACROSS EUROPE 2012 HEADLINING TOUR
11.01. A-Vienna – Szene
12.01. D-Munich – Backstage
13.01. CH-Zurich – Werk 21
14.01. I-Novara – Rock N´Roll Arena
15.01. D-Stuttgart – Die Röhre
17.01. D-Wiesbaden – Schlachthof
18.01. D-Cologne – Underground
20.01. IRE-Dublin – The Pint
21.01. GB-Belfast – Spring & Airbrake
22.01. GB-Manchester – Moho Live
24.01. GB-Wrexham – Central Station
25.01. GB-Wolverhampton – Slade Rooms
27.01. GB-London – The Borderline
29.01. B-Antwerp – Trix
31.01. DK-Copenhagen – Pumpehuset
01.02. D-Hamburg – Logo
02.02. NL-Kerkrade – Rock Temple
03.02. NL-Amsterdam – Melkweg
04.02. D-Bielefeld – Forum
05.02. D-Saarbrücken – Garage Club
07.02. D-Berlin – White Trash
08.02. D-Dresden – Groovestation
10.02. PL-Warsaw – Progresja
11.02. PL-Wroclaw – Firlej
12.02. CZ-Prague – Exit US

http://apalehorsenameddeath.com/

If you are interested, please contact their management at northernmetalmanagement@gmail.com and they will get back to you with what they have and prices.

By Sean Palmerston

Early last week NWOBHM legends Saxon made their first stop in Toronto for a show in over twenty-five years. As astonishing as it seems, the last time the venerable British metal unit made it to Canada’s most populated city was way back in 1986. It was a long time coming, but the band played one hell of a show and, the next day, I got the chance to speak to Saxon frontman Biff Byford for a quick phone chat.

This interview was actually originally supposed to happen at the Toronto show the day before, but due to family and work schedules I wasn’t able to make the hour long drive into the city when interview times were happening. Anyway, here is the interview I had with Biff about their brand new album, the North American tour they have now completed and about just how great their Toronto show was the night before our chat.

2011 has been quite a year for me personally and Saxon has been a big part of it. One of the biggest things for me personally was seeing your band play twice on the 70000 Tons of Metal Cruise. That whole week may be one of the most memorable things I will ever do.

Yeah, it was a really great thing. Whoever got the chance to do it will never forget it. It was a great moment.

Do you have any idea just how Saxon got involved? Was it just something you were asked to do and you went ahead with it?

Yes, we were asked to do it and we were unsure at first. We thought it might be a bit too much, being on a boat, but it was great actually. It was really good fun.

It was. It was really neat that you went ahead and did two separate albums, Wheels of Steel and Strong Arm Of the Law,  in their entirety. I am assuming it’s not something you regularly do on your tours.

No, we don’t do a lot of it. We don’t do it too often.

At Toronto’s show you played a lot of your brand new album, Call To Arms. Is that something that you have been doing a lot on the tour so far this year?

Yes, we did. I mean, we are here to promote the album and it is the first time we have been over on the release date in quite some time. I thought the new songs went down great, it is obvious that a lot of the people out in the crowd have the new album already. It was great.

The new album has a real urgency to the songs. I don’t know if you approached recording the album differently than the last few or anything…

Yeah, it’s a bit more organic, if you know what I mean. It’s a lot less of the pro-tools trickery and no samples on there. The drums are quite live sounding, we recorded them in a big room like we did back in the eighties. We went back to that sort of style again and concentrated on the songs really, not huge choirs and fifty-person orchestras. So that is how we did it and it came out really well.

It sounds to me like some of the songs are live off the floor, first or second takes.

Yeah, some of them were. Some of the vocals were as well [laughs]. We were really fired up really for the album and just played them the best we could.

So was it a case of nailing them the first or second time then and just simply saying ‘okay, that’s it’?

Yeah, well we were basically in a big room where we had been rehearsing and just recorded them. We did add some stuff later but it was all mostly done in one take really.

I am thrilled that you guys have come back to North America and are doing so much touring for the record. I guess – as you mentioned on stage – that was the first time Saxon had played Toronto since the eighties.

Oh yeah, it definitely was.

That must be something that catches you by surprise when you realize it has been so long since you have been in this area.

It does, really. You know, things go by so quick when you are in a band. Everything is day by day, so it is quite surprising that we didn’t visit for so long. It’s sad really. We should have been back much more than that. But, good thing is we’ve been back now and the shows were successful so we’ll try to get back into Canada again next year or something and bring up the level even a bit higher. There are more cities would could be playing in Canada, obviously.

Last night in Toronto you played the song “Dallas 1 PM”. I understand that this is a song you don’t play live all that regularly.

We don’t play it a lot. We do play it, but not very much. I just thought I’d throw it in for the people yesterday.

It was a nice treat. I feel pretty privileged, especially after also seeing you play it on the cruise in January. That’s been one of my favourite Saxon songs since I was a young teenager in the mid-eighties.

Oh, well thank you very much. It’s a great riff that one’s got.

The new album track “Back in 79” seems like it could be the follow up to “Denim And Leather” the way it is written for the fans and in celebration of metal and your fans through the ages.

It is about the fans. We used to write songs about the fans and now we’re doing it again. Yes, it is a bit like “Denim and Leather” Revisited I suppose.

So is 2011 an exceptionally busy year for Saxon?

Well, it is definitely looking that way. The album is doing just fantastic in Europe and it has done well in North America so yeah it looks like this is going to be a big year for us. The album has done so well that they’ve booked us a second European tour this year and another UK one as well. We will have played to a lot of people this year.

Looking back at the early years of the band, there must have been no way you would have imagined that Saxon would have become an ongoing career and that thirty years later you would still be making records.

No, we had just wanted to get a recording contract. That was our main goal there. I mean, for a lot of bands that is still the goal I suppose.

Having released nineteen studio albums and having written over 250 songs must make it difficult to pick your set lists. How hard is it?

Well, it definitely is difficult. We hadn’t been to Canada for so long, so we really had to play the big hits or people would have been disappointed. So especially for something like this it is difficult to pick a set list.

How much harder is to do these tours now some thirty years later? Do you have to do anything special on tour to keep yourself in shape?

I do have to take care of my voice but it is okay right now. I’ve just done eight straight days with shows and it is holding up fine. I just have to make sure to try and get rest when I can and take it easy. Eat well and all that.

So how much longer does this North American tour last?

Well, we are in New York City tomorrow and then we have four more shows. Then we will be heading down to South America. We will be doing shows in Brazil, Chile and Argentina. We tour quite a bit in South America; we’re much bigger down there than in North America actually. But, having said that, it is nice to see the resurgence of metal in Canada and the US, especially for our style of metal.

Well, thanks for answering my questions Biff. You are on tour, so I don’t want to keep you. Best of luck with the rest of the shows.

Thank you, Sean. It’s been my pleasure. Thanks for this and please keep plugging our new album. We are very proud of it.

Call To Arms is out now in North America through UDR/EMI Music.

UFO - bw onstage - George Bodnar - C EMI Music LTD

Here is a cool contest you definitely want to be a part of. EMI Records have been gracious enough to provide Hellbound with one copy of the awesome new UFO boxed set, The Chrysalis Years (1973-1979). This way cool five CD set contains all of the studio albums to feature guitarist Michael Schenker‘s first tour of duty with the band, including their seminal albums Lights Out and Obsession, not to mention the fantastic live release Strangers In the Night, still one of the best live albums to ever be released.

So what do you have to do to win? It’s easy!

Leave a comment at the end of this message telling us (1) your favourite UFO album of all time as well as (2) your favourite UFO song of all time. That’s it!

But, wait, there’s more!

Want more chances to win? Do any of the following for extra entries:

1. Blog about the giveaway and link back to this page on your blog. Comment below with the link. (1 extra entry)

2. Sign up for Hellbound’s email updates or RSS feed (upper right hand corner of this page). Leave a comment below telling me that you signed up. You will also get an entry if you already subscribe — make sure to comment! (1 extra entry)

3. Follow Hellbound on Twitter and tweet about the giveaway. Please be sure to include the URL to this page in your tweet. Comment telling me that you followed & include the link to your tweet. (1 extra entry)

4. Post about the giveaway on your Facebook status. Please be sure to include the URL to this page in your status update. Comment below with the link to your status. (1 extra entry)

Each method of entry should be a separate comment. Hellbound will use the Random Number Generator to choose 1 (one) grand prize winner.

The contest is open until Sunday, November 6th at 11:59 PM Eastern Time. This contest is open to anyone in Canada and the United States.

Good luck!

One of the more interesting albums to come out this year by a relatively new American band is the new album by The Living Fields, entitled Running out of Daylight. An excellent death/doom metal album that also has strong viking/folk metal influences intertwined within their songwriting, this also features stringed classical instrumentation next to heavy guitars. It’s a fine line between brilliance and mediocrity when trying to do something like this, but The Living Fields manage to do what they do exceptionally well.

For the next few weeks Hellbound.ca will be hosting a stream to the entire Running out of Daylight album, found below. Please give it a listen and check them out if you are not already familiar with their majestic, orchestrated doom.

The Living Fields’ Running out of Daylight is available now through Candlelight USA. Thank you to Earsplit PR and Candlelight USA for letting us host this great album.

Well, earlier this week Greyhaze Records released the new CDEP / 10″ vinyl release by Brazilian grind unit Desalmado and this is some good stuff. Hellbound is delighted to be able to present their new sixteen minute slab of sheer brutality in its entirety for your listening pleasure. Please take a listen below!

Desalmado – Hereditas by Hellbound.ca

Like what you hear? Go here to find out more – http://greyhazerecords.com/

Presented with the cooperation of both Earsplit PR and Greyhaze Records!

After having two successful editions of HEAVY MTL in 2008 and 2010, the powers that be have also added another festival, HEAVY T.O., to the schedule. It happens this weekend at Downsview Park in Toronto, featuring two days worth of metal and hard rock bands such as Anthrax, Children Of Bodom, Megadeth, Motorhead, Slayer and more. Here are ten reasons why you shouldn’t miss this inaugural version of this metal fest:

DIAMOND HEAD Will Play Some Of Your Favourite METALLICA Songs

Yes, you read that right, Diamond Head! The band that spawned “Am I Evil” and “Helpless”, two of the five (!!!) DH songs that Metallica has covered over the years, is making a few rare appearances in North America this summer and one of them is here in Toronto. They might only be playing thirty minutes, but you know they’ll be playing those songs and more from their excellent album Lightning For The Nations. Plus, if we’re lucky, maybe they’ll be brought back out later to jam with Anthrax, Motorhead and Megadeth. How epic would that be?

MOTORHEAD’s Lemmy Never Disappoints

He may be old enough to be your grandfather, but Lemmy is the coolest sixty-five year old rocker out there playing as loud as fucking possible each and every show. Age does now slow him or Motorhead down at all. The band is always a joy to see and will definitely make the most out of their sixty minute set on Saturday night.

OPETH May Debut Some New Material

Now don’t get me wrong here, I am not claiming that Opeth is going to play anything off of their upcoming new album for certain, but it definitely could happen. After all, the band does have the upcoming ten-track Heritage album finished, promos are already out at long lead press in the USA and the UK and the band must be at least a little twitchy about getting their new songs out there and into the public eye. Wouldn’t you be if you were about to release a new album that you were really excited about?

Joey Belladonna Is Singing For ANTHRAX

Although they have had some tumultuous times over the past half-dozen years, the singer debacle that seemed to be a merry-go-round in the Anthrax camp seems to have come to a halt. Joey Belladonna was welcomed back into the band last summer, just in time for the Big Four Sonisphere shows that happened in Europe and, if you saw it in a movie theater or on the DVD/blu-ray that followed you know that the Belladonna fronted ‘thrax STOLE THE SHOW. Add to that the fact they have a brand new album upcoming in September, their first with Joey in over twenty years, and that makes this a must see set.

MEGADETH Two Hour Headlining Set On Saturday Night

I don’t think that needs much more explanation, does it? Two hours of Megadeth? If you saw them last summer you know that having Dave Ellefson back in the band has brought it full circle, and you don’t need to do to much searching around on Hellbound to find out just what I think of guitarist Chris Broderick. (He rules.) They make a perfect headliner on Saturday night and I can’t wait to see them again. Here’s hoping they pull out a pile of Peace Sells… songs to coincide with the recent re-release (review coming soon on this site).

An Unholy Trio of Bay Area Thrash Invades Sunday

Three good reasons to make sure you come out on Sunday too all originate from the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area of California. Death Angel, Exodus and Testament will all be playing sets during the second day of HEAVY T.O. and all three bands are excellent live acts. I had the pleasure to see them all twice earlier this year on the 70000 Tons of Metal cruise and cannot wait to see them all again. Death Angel in particular should be a real, treat even if they are the second band of the day. Mark Osegueda is one of the best front men out there and will make sure that people do not forget their set.

VOLBEAT, The Secret Weapon of Sunday

Another band that needs to be seen on Sunday is Volbeat. The Danish hard rockers have come a long way in the past few years thanks to extensive SiriusXM radio support and an opening slot on Metallica’s North American tour a few years back, turning that into a pretty decent following and a surprising number of albums sold. Their last two releases have both outsold the newest offerings of many of the other bands playing on Sunday, with sales of almost 8000 copies each in Canada No stranger to the European festival circuit, expect the Danes to win over even more fans on Sunday too.

ANVIL Will Play A Massive Festival In Their Hometown

While many people have seen the Anvil movie, a lot of those people still have never seen the band live. Well here is Toronto’s chance and it’s in a location that’s not even very far from Moe Pancer’s Deli. Downsview Park is just off Dufferin and Sheppard, a little bit north of where the band first started as a high school group all those years ago and now they’ll be playing the heavy Canadian national anthem, “Metal On Metal” of course, for all to enjoy.

Gary Holt Is Playing Guitar For SLAYER

In an ideal world the twin guitar tandem of Slayer is and always should be Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman. But with Jeff still sidelined due to the necrotizing fasciitis caused by a crazy spider bite earlier this year, he won’t be playing guitar for them in Toronto. Gary Holt will. Now, if you can’t have Jeff Hanneman playing guitar in SLAYER then who else could do the job as well as Gary Holt? Honestly, the dude is a great guitar player, has boundless amounts of energy and, it now means I can claim to have played basketball with a member of SLAYER (he shot hoops with us on the first day of the 70000 Tons Of Metal cruise – he’s good).

It’s a Major Metal Festival in Toronto

That pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? For the first time ever we are getting a major two-day metal festival full of headline bands within the Metropolitan Toronto area. The best way to make sure it continues past this year is to support it this year by making it out on either one or both days this weekend. See you there!

http://www.heavyto.com

What motivated you to create Hellbound?

I had been writing for two different metal magazines, Metal Maniacs and Unrestrained!, and in early 2009 both of them ceased to exist. The publisher of Unrestrained, Adrian Bromley, passed away very suddenly in December 2008 and in the first quarter of 2009 the publishers of Metal Maniacs pulled the plug with little advance notice.

I really enjoyed writing for both magazines immensely but was left without a solid writing outlet. Before joining the staff of both magazines I had written about metal for Canada’s Exclaim! but as I got busier with other magazines my level of involvement declined and I didn’t think it would be fair to their current metal writers to try and step back and take work from others, so I just decided to step forward and start something myself.

I took my last earnings from Metal Maniacs and registered hellbound.ca, an offshoot of our weekly radio program, Hellbound Radio.

Who did you reach out to, in those first few months, to make the project work?

Originally I only reached out to Canadian based writers that I enjoyed, most of which also wrote for Unrestrained!, Metal Maniacs or its sister mag Metal Edge, which also was cancelled.

When a few of my favourite writers agreed that they would be willing to participate then I asked some of my friends to also contribute. Having been into metal music for over twenty years, I have made a number of friends that have good taste and strong opinions who had never written before. I wanted their opinions to be known.

I also did an open call for writers through the Bravewords.com message board and that brought some interested writers out too, most notably Ola Mazzuca, who was just going into her last year of high school then.

Did you ever have doubts about whether Hellbound would catch on?

I didn’t have a doubt that it could catch on, but I did worry that being an online only publication might make it hard to curate and build an audience. There are so many only webzines and blogs, I’d even experimented with a few myself previously, but very few have longevity. We’ve managed to pass the two-year mark, which means we’ve basically posted new reviews and interviews for more than 500 business days. I think we’re starting to catch on.

Where do you hope Hellbound will be five years from now?

I hope that it will still be going with a staff that as it least as talented as the wonderful bunch that contribute to it now, and that its daily audience will have at least doubled from the five hundred that visit the site on average every day right now.

Do you have any aspirations to bring Hellbound to Canadian newsstands?

I would really like to see that happen, but I think it may be a little bit too cost prohibitive to do so. A few writers have asked about doing a special edition print version of Hellbound and I would love to, believe you me. We’ll see.

What is your favourite Hellbound memory?

I have a lot of memories and a lot of them are sentimental. Winning a Hamilton Music Award in our hometown was pretty amazing, as was having my son there with me to accept it. But my personal favourite memory is being in Cozumel, Mexico with Adrien Begrand, Albert Mansour and Kevin Stewart-Panko, sitting on a bar patio enjoying some Mexican beer and Cokes at the mid-point of the 70000 Tons Of Metal cruise. That was a truly incredible week in more ways than one. Special thanks goes to Adrien for inviting us along!

Any hints on what you have in store for Hellbound readers in the latter half of 2011?

I’m not that organized! I tend to do this site week to week, sometimes looking ahead to the next month but very rarely more than that. I did know that  Adam Wills was going to France to cover Hellfest for us, and I am sure that at least one Hellbound contributor will be at HEAVY TO Fest this July, but apart from that I don’t really know what the future holds. We will definitely be doing our year end lists though, including our Top Canadian Metal albums of 2011.

What five metal albums could you not live without?

Iron Maiden – Piece of Mind
Black Sabbath – Volume IV
Voivod – Dimension Hatross
Mercyful Fate – Melissa
Hawkwind – Doremi Fasol Latido

-Sean Palmerston

Name and Location:
Bill Adams – Waterloo, Ontario

How did you start writing for Hellbound?
Sean Palmerston and I met ages ago (probably about seven years) through work (me for an ill-fated mag called Spark, and him because of his day job) and began intermittent contact for various articles and press endeavors. A few years later, we ended up on the same masthead at three other publications (one of which no longer exists), so of course contact continued. Eventually, both Sean and I got sick of being taken advantage of by the publisher of those three mags (well, that was the reason for my departure anyway, Sean may have left for other reasons that I’m not aware of) and elected to part ways with the company, but we remained in contact. When Sean told me he was starting Hellbound, I offered my services as a writer in spite of not being much of a metalhead, but liking older hard rock and loving both punk and hardcore. He agreed so, when I’ve got something sort of aggressive to talk about, I write about it for Hellbound – if Sean’s interested.

What’s your favorite piece published during Hellbound’s two years?
Of my own? It’s Time To Go OFF! with Keith Morris. Of someone else’s? Sean Palmerston’s review of Motorhead at Elements in Kitchener.

What are some of your best concert memories?
Most recently, getting to see The Stooges FILL and close off four streets around Dundas Square, Phil Campbell asking the crowd at Elements if they wanted Motorhead to turn up the already ear-bleeding volume at Elements.

Black metal, death metal or grind?
Grind.

Person you’d like to interview but it hasn’t happened…
Lemmy Kilmister, Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins, Ozzy Osbourne

The most underrated metal album is:
The one Pat Boone made.

You are suspended in limbo for eternity and can only listen to five metal albums on repeat. What are they?
Uhm, the closest to metal, I’d say, are
Raw Power by The Stooges,
No More Tears by Ozzy Osbourne,
Highway To Hell by AC/DC,
Ace Of Spades by Motorhead
Independent Worm Saloon by Butthole Surfers.