Hollywood Metal Episode 86 (audio)

Saturday Jan 30th 2010: After a few weeks off Hollywood Metal Radio is back in the saddle charging forth towards honor and glory! I was at the KORPIKLAANI – TYR – STATIUS – REIGN OF AVARICE show this past Tuesday and there is plenty of footage on the youtube channel Youtube.com/HollywoodMetalRadio. Tracy Hays was back on the show today after taking a leave to start a new job so it was good to have my old pal back rocking on the show. Tracy picked AMORPHIS “Silver Bride” to lead off the show. While they do sound quite a bit different from the early days, I still like their heavy sound and polished production work. AMORPHIS will always be legendary in my book. Next I played a clip of the Howard Stern show that featured an audio byte from me during the Conan O’Brien rally at Universal Studios last week. I’ve been a huge fan of Conan since I was 12 so I’ve been very involved with the whole late night shakeup that’s going on. Upon return to the metal I played a band called TUMULUS which I was recently introduced to via a friend on twitter. This band is everything I’m looking for in a power/folk band and definitely one of the best Russian bands I’ve ever heard. The guitars are so perfect in the songs and the lead singer has a great voice. The synthesizers create a really cool folk melody using an interesting sound, very much like AMORPHIS did on “Black Winter Day” years ago. Very glad to hear that sound again. CRYPTIC WINTERMOON was next with what I would call a black metal ballad. The song features some great piano parts that setup a powerful story of war and hardships sung in a black metal voice. Unique, to say the least. I decided to play two songs in a from from VIGRID next because the one I like the most, “Crown of Thorns” doesn’t feature vocals and was only 3 minutes in length but “Howl for the Absent Moon” does and both are fantastic pagan black viking metal songs. SKELETONWITCH is coming to town in 2 weeks to put on a free show at the Roxy on Sunset Blvd. There is a website where you can RSVP for the show which is hyperlinked off www.moshking.com February 11th. That’s going to kick ass so I played “Released from the Catacombs” from their new cd called 2009 Breathing the Fire. Lastly, I closed the show with a song from a friend of mine named Kevin Curtain who has a band called DAYS OF LAMENT which was featured about a year ago. This song is called “Absent” and it’s a virtuoso melodic groove metal piece that I dig.