September 2010 Archives

Today's the big day for middle-aged metal fans: Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax at the Civic Coliseum. (For once it's the perfect venue, the place where some of us saw our first heavy metal and hard rock concerts back in the '70s and '80s.)

You can read my story about Anthrax here, but I also got a last-minute interview with Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo that couldn't make it into the print edition. (Lombardo, one of the most influential drummers in metal ever and an undisputed master of the double bass, left the band way back in 1992. Slayer soldiered on through the 1990s with a string of replacements, but their reunion with Lombardo for Christ Illusion (2006) and World Painted Blood (2009) has been considered a significant return to form. So here's a transcription of my conversation with him, after the jump. (Bonus: Read John Sewell's 1999 interview with Slayer's Tom Araya here.)

New Year's Eve in Knoxville used to be Scott Miller Night. Even after the dissolution of the V-Roys in 1999, Miller kept up his annual Dec. 31 gig for several years. It's still going, in fact, but this year he'll be in Maryville, at the Shed, while the Dirty Guv'nahs take the coveted spot at the Bijou that night.

That pretty much cements the Guv'nahs as the most popular local band right now (as if three consecutive Best Band awards in Metro Pulse's Best of Knoxville voting hadn't already done that). It's too late to say you saw them when..., but there's a preview of the New Year's Eve show this Friday at the Bijou, with the band celebrating the official release of its second album, Youth Is in Our Blood. The Black Cadillacs are opening at 8 p.m., and a few tickets are still available.

Tickets for the New Year's Eve show are $20 and go on sale on Friday, Oct. 1.

Despite the downpours, a sizeable crowd turned out to Pilot Light on Saturday night for L.A.'s Best Coast and Brooklyn's Cults. (It was also Pilot Light owner Jason Boardman's birthday). Starting at around 9:30 p.m., a noticeably younger audience that included several out-of-towners (I met a couple from Michigan and a group from Kentucky) filed down Jackson Avenue and
quickly filled the club to capacity an hour before the show even got started. In an
effort to deal with the crowd, Cults took the stage at an uncharacteristically early 10:30 p.m. (for Pilot Light) and overshadow the "permanently chill" Best Coast; Cults lead singer Madeline Follin
energetically danced around the stage as she performed the group's happy-go-lucky pop.
--Carey Hodges

The lineup for the second edition of the Square Room's Sound Off competition has been set, with 25 bands making it through the first round of cuts. The first night of the contest, on Wednesday, Oct. 2, at the Square Room, will feature the Ibiza-style soundscapes of electronic trio Arpetrio, alt-rockers Johnny Astro and the Big Bang and Pegasi 51, and R&B/funk ensembles Soulfinger and Dishwater Blonde. The winner of that set, based on judges' scores and audience response, will move on to the final round in March.
 
The other 20 bands will face off against each other in similar sets on the first Wednesday of each month through February, with the winners playing against each other in March. The remaining bands who made it to the cut-off round are the Big Deuce, the Black Jack of Ballarat, Bone Prophet, Brimstone Treehouse, Elliot Collett, Dave Dykes and the Grateful Heart, Jason Ellis, the Fontinelles, the Gentlemen Conspiracy, the Great Great Pines, the Hotshot Freight Train, Lions, Danielle Madison, Madre, Davis Mitchell, Gene Priest and the Cardinal Sin, Rally, Silver Jubilee, Skytown Riot, and the Theorizt. Oh, and Todd Steed is going to emcee the series.
 
The overall winner gets studio time at Rock Snob Recordings, custom merchandise, an opening spot on an upcoming AC Entertainment concert, and up to $500 in gear. 

If you don't want to drive all the way to Asheville to see Big Boi as part of AC Entertainment's MoogFest, all you have to do is wait. The rapper, one-half of the duo OutKast, who just released his long-long-long-awaited solo album Sir Luscious Left Foot, will perform at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum on Friday, Nov. 12, to close out his current tour. No details on tickets yet.