The Metal Column – May 2012
As festival season gets underway, we find that many of our favourite bands are preoccupied in distant lands, leaving us here in the dirt, so to speak, and with only a handful of worthwhile opportunities to get into the pit and raise our doom claw. So this month, more than most, you'll be needing us to provide you with viable ways to spend leisure time that don't involve playing Dungeons & Dragons in yer pants, but we'll get through May together people.
First up is a devastating triple blow of death metal with a horrible moniker at Studio 24: Prostitute Disfigurement, Desecration and Cancerous Womb (3 May) are likely to give your lugs a pummelling, with a faithfully gore-obsessed dedication to the genre. Leave mother at Asda. If you demand your pop-punk with a touch of the gothic and macabre, Illinois veterans Alkaline Trio seek to deliver. With last year's primarily acoustic LP Damnesia under their arm, Matt Skiba and co make good on their postponed UK tour, taking to Auld Reekie's HMV Picture House (7 May).
Cited by Trent Reznor as an influential force on Nine Inch Nails, NYC's Prong have been bringing us metal in a multitude of forms since the late eighties: thrash, groove, industrial and hardcore punk are all represented in the rock club classic Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck. Expect their date at the Cathouse (11 May) – part of their Beg to Differ tour – to offer an early taste of their schizophrenic new LP Carved Into Stone.
Known for their relentless live energy and work ethic, American punkers This is Hell promote their latest shredder Black Mass with a show at Stereo (13 May) alongside Feed the Rhino. Not that we in any way advocate the coaxing of rhinoceri with edible matter in enclosed gig venues.
Maryland/Pennsylvania powerviolence outfit Full of Hell are probably going to grind anyone present to ash at the Banshee Labyrinth (16 May) if their recorded sludgefest Roots of Earth Are Consuming My Home is a fair warning. They're flanked by a healthily brutal lineup featuring Grieved, Run Off With Gypsies, No Island and Drug Couple. Over in Glasgow, “post-modern ambient metal” (yes, that's a thing) champs Analogue of the Sun take the floor alongside rising instrumental riffologists What the Blood Revealed in Bar Bloc on the same night.
What's this? Recently resurrected stoner Gods, Sleep, take The Arches (22 May), supported by their pals: the sublime, Neurosis-worshipping A Storm of Light. Unmissable. Oh, and if you're fussed for seeing Rock & Roll Hall of Fame party pooper Axl Rose give slick treatment to his catalogue without the dream team of Slash, Duff and Izzy, Guns N' Roses take to the SECC (25 May). Remember, punctuality's a laugh in Axl's book, so don't count on making that Nightrain home. Elsewhere, hardcore beardies Cancer Bats make a cheeky appearance at O2 Academy's Slam Dunk Scotland 2012 (29 May) in amongst a bunch of emo bands that rock a lot less hard. Taking Back Sunday? Lambs to the slaughter.