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Mobina Galore – Groezrock 2017

Mobina Galore, a band name that oozes of James Bond alike namedropping, but there's plenty of Mobina for everyone. Jenna and Marcia combine their talents on guitar and drum together to form a Canadian powerchord punk combo that will send listeners straight into a moshpit from the first note. So when Mobina Galore graced the Watch Out stage at Groezrock 2017, RMP Magazine just had to have a nice chat with them over a glass of wine in the searing sun.

 

Hello,

Welcome to Groezrock, first time here. How was the show?

 

Marcia : Awesome!

 

Jenna : Awesome, probably my favorite show i ever played. I was out there kind of watching people file in prettty much right on top of our first song. I was thinking to myself, allright this one is up there for one of my favorite shows. Great response, so it was cool.

 

But you're also doing a small acoustic set at the American Socks stand, what can we expect from that set?

 

Jenna : Well, who knows. We never do acoustic, it's like very rare for us to do that. We've only done it maybe twice in the past, a couple of months ago back in Canada. Now that we've like got that set over with i'm just excited to get out there, play a couple of songs and i don't know, if i fuck it up, like whatever. It's not a big deal.

 

Marcia : Little more casual, not as much pressure.

 

You've recently released your new album, Feeling Disconnected. And the album title pretty much covers the load. Songs about detachment, feeling disconnected. How did the album come to live?

 

Jenna : It was an unintentional themed album. We've had a collection of songs that we wrote over the last couple of years. With the amount of touring we've done and travelling we've done it kind of made his way into all of our songs. It came all together quite unintentionally. When we finished the album looking for a title we were looking through the lyrics. When you think about it from a different perspective you kind of remove yourself from it and find what the theme is. And it was just like feeling disconnected just kind of clicked right away. There's this theme on every song of the record.

I don't think we could write an intentional album that has a theme to it. I feel like it would be too much pressure. Some people are really good at concept albums. But i don't think that's us. Because we are together so much time, we experience the same things. We write from a different perspective and when they come together it kind of creates the same energy from both ends.

 

Feeling Disconnected was produced by John Paul Peters, who produced bands as Propagandhi and Comeback Kid. Has his touch have an influence on Feeling Disconnected?

 

Marcia :

He's incredible. As soon as you go into the studio it's basically like he's a member of the band. He is so excited about everything. He has so many ideas, but he's also like, hey what do you think about this. Next song he'll come up with something else. He's great at like harmonies and back up vocals.

 

Jenna : Just little tricks in the studio too. How to set things up. He's so miticulious. It will take us just a whole day to set up the microphones on the amp. No, take it back a little… But it works like right.

 

Marcia : He's on board and he just always takes it up to the next level.

 

Mobina Galore hails from Winnipeg, Heart Of The Continent. Home to some of my favorite artists, The Weakerthans, Propagandhi. But you have a song about Vancouver, which city has your preference?

 

Jenna : People are always like, oh, they're from Vancouver because we have a song called Vancouver. When we were writing the album we already had some songs. We've deciced we were going to spend some weeks in Vancouver and just stay there with friends and write for a couple of weeks. So we've decided to go to Vancouver. That song specificially had all the verses to it that i had written but i didn't had a chorus. We wanted to bring the chorus to this uplifting space. So Marcia ended up writing the chorus on the way to Vancouver. About that experience. It was just very relevant to Vancouver at that time. Vancouver was that place for us where we were finalising and getting tracks together for the record.

 

Marcia : People then always think that we're moving to Vancouver. But it is beautiful place that we love to hang out.

 

The European tour has been going a while now, has Europe welcomed you back on this tour?

 

Marcia : Amazing, Europe is our favorite place to tour. It's beautiful and the hospitality. We've got a bottle of wine here. It's really sunny outside, i can barely think right now. People are just like so excited about music here. They'll pass a poster on a bar wall and see Mobina Galore and be like, ok, i'm going to look that up and if i like them i'll might go to a show. Back home that's not really how, people don't pay attention to new bands in Canada and US. It's a lot harder to get your foot in the door. We just love it here. This is our fourth time touring here. We've been averaging twice a year, maybe knock it up to three.

 

You recently toured with Against Me, one of the bands you looked up to. How has it been?

 

Marcia : It was incredible. It was a total dream. They are such lovely people. We were a little bit nervous because people always say you shouldn't meet your heroes. Because they will never live up to what you think. We didn't know what to expect. It was just like from the moment we met. It was probably Laura that we met first. She just walked up into our dressing room. The whole tour we got along so well. Really inspiring to play shows with them everyday. We play before them so we better

like live up to it. It feels like they really did push us to do better.

 

 

Next to Against Me, another influence is The Distillers, is this the main influence to your vocal style or other influences you want to mention?

 

Jenna : I think that's the most difficult question to answer. Like some bands you hear them and you can take three bands that they sound like. I don't feel we have that in anyway. Vocally for sure it is where The Distillers come into place. I just wanted to be able to scream and it ended up working really well for me. Musically, instrumentally and stuff like that, i don't know. It's so hard because we both have different influences. We're powerchord punk, we don't do any fancy shit.

 

Marcia : It's hard to say because you listen to so much different music and you don't know what seeps in where. We can't pinpoint, for us anyway. We can't say that we tried to write like this person.

Or tried to make a song like this person. You just like listen to like these twenty bands on a regular basis and probably they all seep in a bit a little bit into your playing.

 

Mobina Galore is a two piece, guitar and drums and combined vocals. Is this your favorite way of playing or do you feel a certain limitation to it?

 

Marcia : It's kind of the only way. When we first started playing music together we played with a thrird person. She played keyboard, we never had a bass player. She didn't want to play anymore.

We were open to finding new people to play music with but we couldn't. Before we knew it we had written an album, and we recorded an album and it was just the two of us. Now we're like to far in it. We're comfortable with the music that we are producing and the sound we're putting out. At least in the foreseeable future we don't plan to change it. Or grow the band in that way.

 

What's next for Mobina Galore, any plans regarding tours or releases in the nearby future?

 

Jenna : after this tour we'll play Punk Rock Bowling in Las Vegas and we're playing Fest in Florida. It's kind of our first doing this bigger festival stages. We're doing a North American tour in the summer. And already planning on coming back here in like October or November. Anything we come here, we're just right away planning to came back here in the next six months.

We've been here twice a year, people want you to come back. We're giving the next couple of years 100% to touring.

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Metal Mondays, May 22nd, 2017

Once again, Metal Mondays is back! This week we’ve got not three, not four, but six tracks performed by five different artists, including Avelion, Home 276/423, and Lions Among Us.

To kick things off, we’ve got Home 276/423 and their track “Song of Indignity”. The hardcore act from North Carolina has a heavy, in your face sound that fits in well with East Coast hardcore.

Pittsburgh based post-hardcore band Lions Among Us have submitted “Dreamcatcher”, a year old song that still packs a punch.

Now, two songs from the Italian band Avelion. “Burst Inside” and “Fading Out” are both from their album Illusion of Transparency.


If you like funk, metal, and rap, you’ll like The Altobeelays and their song, “Unkle Furious”.

Until the next Metal Mondays!

Live – Periphery London 20/5/2017

Tonight is a special night for Periphery. London’s own O2 Forum plays host to the largest headline date in the history of the band. A two and a half thousand strong sold out crowd are patiently awaiting this evening’s set, which constitutes one of only two UK dates for the prog metallers in 2017.

To start off the night, Italy’s own Destrange warms up the crowd successfully with a myriad of prog riffs combined with a high energy, hardcore punk flair. The atmosphere continues to be built upon by The Contortionist in direct support, who manage to create a slightly more subdued mood in comparison to Destrange, but not without the inclusion of the essential metal flavour that the crowd demands. Vocalist Mike Lessard spends the majority of the band’s set in the shadows of the stage, reminiscent of Tool’s Maynard, allowing the sonic aspects of the show to take center stage, with the sextet remaining mostly backlit throughout. Their varied set runs the gamut between gentle and melodic through to heavy guitar riffs and screams. Overall, both openers have tonight in amalgamation demonstrated some of the aspects of tonight’s headliner that fans hold most dear; a line-up that has clearly been meticulously prepared for tonight’s audience.

After what seems like an eternity of anticipation, the main event is here. Periphery take that stage to a roaring crowd, soaring straight into 2015’s Juggernaut prelude track A Black Minute. What follows is a heavy hitting compilation of songs which afford a high representation of new material from the band’s latest full length effort Periphery III: Select Difficulty. This combined with an incredible blazing light show provides a visual as well as aural spectacle that is definitely not lost on the ravenous, ever moving crowd. The set is peppered with older favorites spanning the entire discography, and major crowd pleasers such as The Bad Thing and Masamune go down as well as ever. Periphery even treated the assembly of Londoners to a cover of Memento, from guitarists Misha Mansoor and Mark Holcombe’s side project Haunted Shores.

Tonight is clearly an emotional evening, not just for those in the horde of metal fans in front of the stage, but for those on the stage too. At many points during the set, frontman Spencer Sotelo thanks the crowd for being part of the “greatest show in the history of Periphery”, and is perceptively overwhelmed by the turn out and participation of the fans singing every lyric, often above the noise of the band’s multiple guitars and heavy drums. It is clear that tonight’s show is perhaps even more significant for bassist Nolly Getgood, who takes the stage with his bandmates tonight for one night only, and for the first time in over a year, having chosen to take a step back from touring. Towards the end of the show, Getgood even takes to center mic to thank everyone for the “best show he has ever played”. This is followed by a powerful rendition of Periphery III’s closing track Lune, which acts as a catharsis for any energy unspent from tonight’s audience, and ends the night with a thunderous chant of the song’s final “whoa…” refrain.

Overall, this is a night that will not soon be forgotten both by fans and the band alike, and I fell that it is only a matter of time before Periphery return to UK shores to even bigger crowds and even bigger venues.

Jeff Rosenstock Groezrock 2017

Jeff Rosenstock must be one of the busiest working men in punk rock. When not destroying stages as Death Rosenstock, Jeff is probably in the studio producing his friends records. So when Jeff finally found his ticket to Groezrock we at RMP decided to invite him and exchange some thoughts on his first Groezrock perfomance.

Hello,

First time playing Groezrock and it happens to be the start of your Euro tour today. Siked?

 

Yeah, really excited. I wanted to play Groezrock for a long time. I'm glad that we finally snuck our way in here. I'm really excited to play, to go on tour. We've been in Europe for like two or three days just kind of getting over jetlag, hanging out, getting to seeing our buddies all play yesterday. Siked to be finally get to it and shred.

 

And you just released a new song this week, Dramamine, what's the story behind it?

 

Dramamine, i might even have it on my right now. It's like a motion sickness pill that you take when you fly. Also it knocks you the fuck out and helps you sleep. I wrote that song during our world tour last year. When we were flying from America to Australia, and then to Europe and then back to America and flying to California to record. I don't know, i don't feel that i usually write songs like that. Whatever song i write i want to try and follow it through and make it a song. We are about to get on a ferry from Leeds to Ireland and i was kind of thinking about how fucking sick it was goint to be to have a glass of wine, smoke some weed, drop a Dramamine, sleep for a few hours.

 

Your latest album Worry, where the tour is revolving around, was released end of last year.

How was it welcomed by fans and listeners?

 

Really good, i don't know. I made a bunch of records at this point. I kind of really never know if some one is going to like it or not. You go in and try to make your best record at that moment and you hope that people like it. This one really seem to hit people. Once Trump got elected it resonated with people in a different way. For some reason a whole lot of other punk bands were not talking about his shit. Like police brutality, gentrification, this kind of targeted advertising view, like life that we basically live in. Something is being marketed to you. You kind of lose control of your own thought. Which if feel is a big thing to the kind of situation we are in the States right now. Not a lot of people were talking about it.

 

Jeff, you're known for being a busy man. Next to your own release you also helped produce a ton of bands. The new The Smith Street Bands' releases, More Scared of You Than Your are of Me, was produced by you. A careerpath you feel like broadening?

 

I feel like i'm in it right now. It's cool, last year especially, when i was not on tour i was producing a record. It was wild. I like doing it. I hope i get to do it more.

If it's up to me i like doing live in a room, like the Smith Street Band, records that's the four them in a room. There are all playing live in a room to tape. I like to do it analog but i also record in my appartment. I don't have a tape recorder in my appartment. Just play with energy. Live always has that energy, i don't autotune shit, i don't pitch correct shit. I don't go through that constant gridding

of anything. I feel like i'm often trying to convince people that i'm with, no, your band is good, you don't need that shit. Don't do that just because other bands are doing that. Let's keep your voice, your voice. It would be stupid to take that away. That live energy that makes it special.

 

With Worry, you released a 20 min docu on youtube where we get in inside look into the recording of the new album. Quit the movie it turned out to be. Scary dreams and people getting run over by cars. Was that the plan to shoot?

 

My friend who made that movie, his name is JD Brown. We've been friends for a really long time, he's an actor in horror movies, and he's a writer. I saw the documentary that Modern Baseball did before their record came out. I just thought it was really cool. They got the movie announcer voice to narrate it. I was smoking weed one night and was talking to Side One and was like what if our movie was like a horror movie. It wasn't scripted. We would shoot stuff during after hours and we did a lot of voice overs afterwards. A lot of people who saw it on Youtube and commented just saw half of it, so sick to see you guys in the studio…

 

You're quite political, or at least not afraid to voice your choice. Given the fact that last year Donald Trump came to power, what would you like to share about the current state of the world?

 

Personally, i'm not very big on talking about it on social media. I think it's really important to talk to people. I think the voice and platform that Twitter and Facebook is giving everybody is good but also is reducing our actual human communication. Like every one on the left thinks that every one who voted for Trump is a racist and every body on the right thinks that every one who voted for Hillary is like a socialist. We probably all agree on a lot of stuff. But we don't talk any more. Because of that we have like this totalitarian facscist fucking asshole in charge. I think the people who voted for Trump didn't see that coming. Whatever. I'm waiting for us to kind of unite and do something to make it better. I think it's important to talk to people. Especially when i fell like kind of ass backwards into this platform that i have. To like talk about it occasionally. About how sexual assault happens at show all the fucking times. Women go to shows and get groped. We are conditioned to think that shit is ok.

I'm glad that a lot of people on our side are talking about it, we have to take action and get together and agree on this shit that we find real and that we have to fix.

 

And to end the interview, what's in store for Jeff Rosenstock for the nearby future?

 

Got an Antartico Vespuggi record coming out, i think in 2018. Some more touring, i'm writing music for a cartoon that is going to be on Cartoon Network. Hopefully at some point i'll just be able to smoke weed and chill out. Watch some basketball, play some synthesizers, some guitar and chill ou

AJJ Groezrock 2017

AJJ, or as their full name used to be, Andrew Jackson Jihad, have been a full on band since 2004 with a vast number of releases to show it. 2017 has led them to the Groezrock festival where they will be performing for the first time on the Watch Out Stage. RMP sat down with vocalist Sean Bonnette to catch up on their latest release The Bible 2 and future endeavours for the revamped AJJ.

Welcome to Groezrock, your first, any thoughts?

 

From the little that i walked around so far, there's a killer vibe. Everyone is so friendly.

I'm really excited to see The Deftones, that's my main band here.

 

Your latest album The Bible 2 has been released a few months ago, how has the response been to the new songs?

 

It's been really good. It's funny, because everytime we make a new album we always seek to achieve something a little bit different. In doing that we always end up pissing up a few of our hardcore fans. But then also those same fans seem to like our previous album more than they did. It's just wonderfull progress.

 

So basically you're always one album behind?

 

Yeah, that's how i feel it's supposed to be. Along with that it has two of my favorite songs that i have ever written. Two songs that i'm most proud of in the bands history.

 

Which are those songs?

 

My Brain Is A Human Body and Small Red Boy.

 

You've made a nicely choreographed video for one of the songs, Goodbye oh Goodbye, that caught some attention on the internet. Did the viral sensation atract a new crowd at shows?

 

I don't know if we seen a new crowd coming to the shows. A lot of people definitely heard of our band for the first time from that video. Time will have to tell whether that video brought more people to our shows or just drilled a bunch of OK Go fans. I love that video so much.

 

It was really great, especially the after takes.

 

A funny thing about that, it kind of mirrors reality. We are actually just as pleased about how that video turned out as we are in that little part afterwards. If you get us a few drinks we just start of getting bloating about how well it turned out. It becomes a third layer to the video.

 

The band has evolved quite a bit over the years, recently the name change from Andrew Jackson Jihad to the abbreviation AJJ. How do you feel about the current course of the band?

 

The current album has been my favorite one so far i believe. I think for the next one we are probably are going to make something more spacious. If that makes sense. I feel like that with The Bible 2 we reached a point of maximalism. I feel kind of a like turning to the other direction, something more minimal. Something like quiter, more space, less instruments.

 

Next to AJJ you and Ben have your respective solo projects, . Ben released music as Wiccan Babysitter recently.

 

I actually got to play bass on some of those Wiccan Babysitter songs, which was cool returning a favor.

 

You recorded some amazing covers ranging from Slayer to Bowie. Any plans on pursuing the solo path more?

 

I have been recording a lot of electronic music, just on my own with no real plans yet to release it.

I wouldn't be surprised if that ended up seeing the light of day at some point. I'm not sure if i would make it a solo project or if i would just call it an AJJ song.. That's kind of the cool thing about our band, we don't have any rules dictating what are band is supposed to sound like. We will always be doing covers. These covers are really fun. It's cool to learn new chords and new devices on how to write a song.

 

AJJ has been placed in the folkpunk box so many times, although the new album shows some new aspects to the band?

 

It used to really bother me, i feel like now i kind of don't care. It makes sense for people to have a genre to relate to other people with. There's no real bad stigma that is see in folkpunk these days that i care to avoid. I do find it kind of silly when we have some many songs in so many genres.

 

You've covered songs from Neutral Milk Hotel to Stone Temple Pilots and of course your AV Club performance with underground hits. Any songs you haven't covered you wanted to do or even ones you wouldn't play?

 

Nothing that i currently that i have like ambitions toward. Although i downloaded a tablature tab, you can set the chords and it will start scrolling. You can just read and play, it's just like karaoke with guitar. When i get home after this tour i'm going to start learning a bunch of Beatles song. There are some evident tricks worth stealing.

 

What would be your favorite Beatles song?

 

Oh, the other Beatles won't like it very much but Maxwells Silver Hammer, the Paul McCartney song of Abbey Road. I've played through it a few times and it's really fun to play, it has a really cool chord in it.

 

Your merchgame has been strong since the beginning. From sweatpants to snugglie blankets and now glow in the dark shirts and coozies.

 

We have a coozie design that is designed as a parody on the Monster energy drink logo. We have a member of the band, he plays cello and he also helps oversee a lot of the merch. Mark Glick is a huge fan of Monster Energy Drink. He has a video blog were he reviews different Monster drinks. So he's pretty excited to be at this festival.

 

My favorite piece is still the salad glove, could you explain this wonderfull state of the art novelty to those we haven't heard of it yet?

 

Ben and i worked at a coffeeshop and we had gloves when we used to prepare the food. One day we just starting eating salad with our hands and it turned out to be a really good invention. For a long time it was just an inside joke that we had. It mades it way into that song, like a reference, that like no one understood untill we made the infomercial. Then we released the album. And then we released them for mass consumption. Lately we made download codes out of the Salad Gloves.

 

How are they selling?

 

We are millionaires now!

 

Sean, you once said that a constant them in your work is the act of striving and trying to do better. You even said the Jihad in the band name was a representation of that. Could you elaborate on that?

 

Sure, the purpose of that name, in it's very infancy, was that it was something could be interpreted in a bunch of different ways We wanted people to draw their own conclusion of that name. We weren't super attached it to it, one way or another. We decided to change it with like current political climate and realising that Muslims in America and in Western society at large have a really bad reputation and we were like capitalising on that very complicated word that they use. It didn't make me feel very good knowing that. Kind of in the spirit of that word, strive to be better, we decide to leave that word alone. At the same time i'm not going to be an asshole to anyone wearing an old shirt of ours. I don't really care to engage in any huge debates with anyone over it. It's just kind of a personal preference.

 

In the songs and artwork religion seems to be an influence, from Catholism to the Devil, the duality in life seems to be a recurring theme in your songs?

 

It's just such a rich theme to create art from. I'm fascinated by the nature of believe, by the idea of spiritual beings. I'll say that my favorite kind of movie is a horror movie where the devil impregnates a woman and an evil baby is born. I like the idea of a spiritual war being fought that humans aren't aware of. I feel like i kind of derailed and not making much sense any more.

 

Like in the song Small Red Boy?

 

Totally, i guess that's kind of what i'm getting at. Angels and devils are very fascinating to me.

I love angels, i think i got that from my grandmother. My grandmother believes stronghearted in

guardian angels and instilled that idea in me ever since i was a very small boy.

 

So what's next for AJJ?

 

We are hoping to go to Australia in September. I've been writing songs and making small recordings on my own and with friends. I think we will try to release a mini album at some point this year. Maybe work on even smaller releases, put out more singles and trying to become a more profilic band again. That's something i would like to do.

 

Deftones and AFI Rock the UK

This summer has played host to the return of two of the world’s most prolific bands to UK shores. Between them, Deftones and AFI have a combined career span of over 50 years, and the union of the two groups sharing the stage together for the first time certainly did not disappoint. The two bands undertook a three day residency in the UK with consecutive nights in London, Manchester and Glasgow, and I was lucky enough to be present at all three dates.

The last time AFI played in the UK was seven years ago, during the cycle for their eighth record, Crash Love. Despite this lengthy absence, the excitement since that 2010 run has not diminished; if anything the band’s absenteeism has only increased the anticipation and enthusiasm of the sizable crowd that have arrived early to catch A Fire Inside take the stage tonight. The band open with an energetic and vibrant rendition of Girl’s Not Grey, a lead single from 2003’s Sing The Sorrow. Fourteen years later, this track has lost none of the live flavour it had when the hit album first dropped, and the same can be said for the Sing The Sorrow tracks that followed later in the set, from The Leaving Song Part 2 to live rarities This Celluloid Dream and Paper Airplanes. Mid-way through the set, frontman Davey Havok thanks the crowd for “not forgetting” in their absence from the stage.  The set is rounded off by multiple contemporary anthems from the band’s most recent efforts; 2013’s Burials as well as the quartet’s 10th studio release nicknamed The Blood Album, all of which were met with the same ravenous reaction from the adrenaline infused audience.

As a long-time fan of both bands, I found myself wondering how the combination of bands would go down. Whilst I was aware of a certain level of fan-crossover, there seemed to be a divide in the crowd between those here for AFI and those arriving for Deftones. However, over the course of AFI’s set, it seemed many who where in conflict were now converted; I even overheard one crowd member, sporting Deftones merchandise comment: “I came here for Deftones, but I am now an AFI fan”. By the end of each 45-minute set, AFI managed to synthesise equilibrium in the loyalties of the once divisive sea of fans. Of the three nights, the reception towards AFI was most positive in Glasgow, something possibly built up over the two previous shows, or a unique enthusiasm form the Scottish audience; either way, the incredible energy of this crowd was a astand out, and the band themselves clearly fed off this in a fashion unlike that in London and in Manchester.

After an impressively quick changeover, it was time for Deftones to take the stage, the first time in the UK since last year’s sold out performance at Wembley Arena. The setlists for this run have been carefully curated and are wonderfully eclectic, something not to be scoffed at for a band with eight studio albums along with a strong arsenal of b-sides and rarities. In classic ‘Tones style, the band tear through an assembly of songs beginning with Feicitera from 2000’s fan favourite White Pony, and seamlessly transitioning to gems taken from every studio release. Frontman Chino Moreno is as spirited and dynamic on stage as ever, throwing his all into the energy of songs like My Own Summer and Knife Party, and creating a hypnotic, magnetic vibe during those songs in which he takes on guitar duties such as with Entomed and Rosemary.

To close, for those in the crowd, whether a follower of AFI, of Deftones, or allied to both camps, one thing in common is clear: this tour will be one for the history books, and I for one hope that the stars may align again in the future to bring these two bands together on tour for another round.

Photo by Jodie Cunningham/Jodiphotography for AFI News HQ.

Super Saturdays, April 29th, 2017

Well folks, it's been a while. Super Saturdays is finally back! This week, we've got Sleeping Seasons, Drop Legs, and Downhaul.

Hailing from Memphis, TN, Sleeping Seasons is a really great example of solid indie punk. Encompassing various elements from bands in the scene. A poppy, upbeat yet sad song, "Better Than I Should Be" is sure to please the ears.

Australian reggae act Drop Legs have dropped their newest video, "Lizzy". The band mixes guitar, vocals, and brass well, leading to a nice blend that's easy on the ears and makes me want to go hang out at a beach.

Last but not least, Downhaul from Greensboro, NC, and their cut "How Things Worked Out". Though I'm not usually a fan of bands in this vein of indie/punk, this one stuck out to me. The country-esque vocals seem to fit the music quite well and resulted in a combination I like.

That's all for this week. Until the next Super Saturdays!

Metal Mondays, April 17th, 2017

Finally, we've got another batch of metal for the masses! This week sees the return of X-Vivo, as well as some bands new to Metal Mondays, The Heretic Confederacy and The Narrator.

German industrial band and Metal Monday favorites X-Vivo have dropped a new track, "Written in Stains". Since we've written about the band before, no other introduction is needed. Just get ready to bang your heads!

Political multi-genre band The Heretic Confederacy recently released their single "We Won't Stop". Check it out.

Another German band, The Narrator, is a hardcore group based in Essen. Their song F.A.I.R. is out now!

That's all for now, folks.

Live: Killswitch Engage

At 8:30pm, Killswitch Engage walked out into the Fillmore in Detroit to an Adam D’d version of Beastie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right” (and anybody who’s seen KSE before knows what I mean by that), and immediately jumped into “Hate by Design” from their newest record, Incarnate.

This was the fourth time I’d seen Killswitch Engage, and by god, they get better every show. Vocalist Jesse Leach powered through each song with little to no visible effort- clearly comfortable and in his element.

As the set progressed, the band had a little bit of something for everybody. Whether it was their singles such as “My Curse” and “End of Heartache”, or songs that more devoted fans would recognize such as “Alone I Stand” and “Numbered Days”, there was a part in the set for everybody in the room. Lead guitarist Adam D. made sure to hit us with his banter and constant demands for more circle pits, and the crowd gleefully obliged.

Towards the end of their set, the band made a nod to metal legend Ronnie James Dio with their cover of “Holy Diver”, with an extended outro featuring some mad shredding from both guitarists Adam D. and Joel Stroetzel.

To top it all off, the band closed with their song “In Due Time” from 2013’s Disarm the Descent, with the crowd screaming and singing louder than the band themselves.

Killswitch Engage have an entirely unique show. While many bands have planned gimmicks and scheduled movements, it’s clear that KSE just do what they feel is right- visibly noted when bass guitarist Mike D’Antonio fell off the stage after fistbumping a fan, and continued to play from inside the pit, even letting fans pluck a string or two. Through a discussion with him after the show, I learned that he had injured his foot in the fall, but watching him for the rest of the set, you’d never know it. A trooper through and through.

Jesse Leach made every song his own, including songs that were recorded during his absence from the band. His vocals were on point throughout the entire show, and his screams sounded better than ever.

I should let you know that drummer Justin Foley is a cyborg. There’s no way any human being could be as precise and on fire as he was through the entire show. Throughout the entire set, I caught myself watching what he was doing and feeling my mind explode a little because of how effortlessly he was nailing it.

If you haven’t seen this band before, you need to. Mark my words, Killswitch will go down in history as a legendary band in the same ways as Metallica or Judas Priest. Buy a ticket, go to a show, and get ready to rock the fuck out.

BEARTOOTH @ Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles

Mia Conte photographed Beartooth at their show in Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles