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Headline, Reviews, Reviews - Live October 23, 2009

Sonata Arctica/Borealis @ The Music Hall, London ON, Oct 15, 2009

Having recently played a shortened set in Toronto under Dragonforce, Sonata Arctica returned to play an exclusive headlining show – the only one on their current North American tour. With their recent release of The Days of Grays, new songs were the main focus of the evening. TDoG continues in the direction that Unia started – gone are the galloping riffs, and the sing-along choruses, but if anyone was expecting those, they’ve been out of touch with the band for awhile now.

Adam Wills reviews and photo archives the recent London ON live performance by Finnish power metallers Sonata Arctica.

Headline, Reviews, Reviews - Visual October 21, 2009

Anvil: The Story of Anvil

Anvil: The Story of Anvil is such a compelling, amazing film that you don’t need to know anything about these dudes going into it to absolutely get sucked into it. Big time. And now that it is available on DVD as well, I really think that everyone that reads Hellbound.ca needs to get the fuck off their ass and go out and at least rent this for a night and watch it.

Sean Palmerston reviews the new DVD issue of the best rock and roll documentary of 2009.

Articles, Headline October 19, 2009

3 Inches Of Blood: True Canuck Metal Warriors

With the recent release of their fourth studio album Here Waits Thy Doom early last month on Century Media, Vancouver’s true metal combo 3 Inches Of Blood have finally made the album many of us have been waiting for with baited breath. With the departure of second vocalist Jamie Hooper after the release of their previous album(2007’s Fire Up The Blades), a lot of the modern metal-core sentiments found in their music were dropped. The results of having Cam Pipes as the group’s main singer has brought his King Diamond-like vocals to the forefront – and pushed the band much more into a traditional metal sound that feels even more eighties inspired than anything they had ever done before.

Articles, Headline October 9, 2009

Meeting of the Metal Minded: The Noctis III Metal Festival and Conference

In terms of metal fests, you’ve got your Milwaukees, your Maryland Deathfests, your Wackens, your Holes in the Sky, Dudefests, Hellfests, and so on—all of them well out of range of western Canadians. Thankfully, a new metallic mecca has sprung up in Alberta, at Calgary’s Noctis Festival. The third gathering (full title: Noctis III: Tritagonist) featured two days’ worth of gigs and a full-blown conference peppered with esteemed guests and international acts brought in exclusively for the event. The concert lineup, which included Slough Feg, Novembers Doom, Aura Noir, Destroyer 666, Suffocation and Cynic, was more than impressive enough to get me onto a WestJet flight from Vancouver to witness the carnage in Cowtown.

Rob Hughes gives a fascinating overview of last weekend’s Noctis III Metal Music Conference in Calgary, Alberta.

Headline, Reviews, Reviews - Live October 7, 2009

Living Colour @ Lee’s Palace, Toronto ON, October 3, 2009

I was tempted to start this review by simply saying, “This show was fucking awesome,” but it was much more than that. You had four top-notch musicians on that stage, including singer and leather aproned-wearing Corey Glover (whom if you haven’t heard this man sing, and sing so passionately yet so effortlessly, you are sorely missing out on a genius) and I wonder, why aren’t these dudes being recognized? If not in record sales, for their sheer genius? For actually knowing how to put a song together? But in some ways, it is the same sentiment when I heard the new albums from Suffocation, Lord Mantis and Kylesa this year.

Laina Dawes reviews the recent Toronto live performance by NYC outfit Living Colour.

Headline, Reviews, Reviews - Live October 5, 2009

Children of Bodom/The Black Dahlia Murder/Skeletonwitch @ Odeon, Saskatoon, SK, October 1, 2009

If there’s one band that fully deserves a “victory lap” tour, it’s Children of Bodom, who after a good dozen years plying their distinct brand of melodic extreme metal, is finally experiencing some significant success in North America. For most fans who live in the smaller centres, they best they could manage before was to catch Alexi Laiho and his booze-fueled band of flashy Finns as part of a package tour, be it the Unholy Alliance or Gigantour, which usually meant a measly eight or nine songs, maximum, and when a band has six studio albums under their belts, it’s tough to get some variety. So the venue was packed with fans hoping to get a huge dose of the old stuff, and that’s exactly what Bodom gave them.

Adrien Begrand reviews the recent Saskatoon stop on the CoB/BDM/Skeletonwitch tour.

Articles, Features, Headline October 2, 2009

Interview with Metal Film and Music Video Director, Handshake Inc.’s David Hall

The decision to create film and music videos for extreme underground metal bands was not exactly a conscious decision, but something that came to Hall organically. A fascination with the music, artistic innovativeness and raw talent (and the balls to contact and eventually build a professional and personal relationship with Today is the Day’s notoriously difficult frontman, Steve Austin) led Hall and Handshake Inc. co-founder, filmmaker/ photographer David Cardoso, to create a company that in a relatively short time, has made some of the most innovative metal music videos and films the metal industry has seen in years.

Laina Dawes interviews London, ON based filmmaker David Hall about his work with Today is The Day, making metal music videos and their work-in-progress documentary on the Maryland Death Fest.

Articles, Headline September 30, 2009

Hatebreed: Interview With Jamey Jasta

He was the host of Headbangers Ball, he owns a few businesses, and he’s in two successful touring bands. On face value, one might think Jamey Jasta would have little to complain about, and even less angst to vent through hardcore music. But such criticism loses grounding when taking into consideration that he’s “turning negatives into positives,” as he puts it, by attempting to transfer difficult childhood experience, as well as recent tragedy, into song. Calling from Pittsburgh on the second-to-last night of the Decimation of the Nation tour (featuring Chimaira, Winds of Plague, Dying Fetus and Toxic Holocaust), Jamey shoots the shit with Hellbound’s Jay H. Gorania about Hatebreed’s new, self-titled release—easily the most diverse and dynamic output of the band’s career.