The Metal Column - October 2010

The remainder of the year is about to serve up an uncivil barrage of ear-baiting terror, as if to coincide with the impending winter darkness. But rather than piss away the ol' word count on seasonal musings, let’s get directly-the-fuck to it.

The chances are, if you like your time signatures erratic and delivered with a fair share of guttural bowel-churning riffage, you’ll want to see Architects (3 Oct) tear The Garage a new one. Then again, if you're not one for rolling with the children, legendary Sub Pop grunge forerunners and all-out champions of distortion Mudhoney look to play the week out with a suitably fuzzed-out cacophony, knocking on the door of Aberdeen’s Tunnels (8 Oct) followed by The Arches (9 Oct). Mere days later, the original formation of hugely influential post-punk warriors Killing Joke make their much delayed return to Edinburgh at the HMV Picture House (15 Oct), arriving in support of the freshly unleashed Absolute Dissent. See you down the front, lighter aloft, for a teary sing-along to Love Like Blood.

And if the old masters don’t pack enough punch to knock you straight to Hades, Dutch avant-garde punks The Ex are setting up shop for one slippery night in Stereo's basement (21 Oct - with the ever confrontational DeSalvo), while over in Dundee, Dexter’s will be left in thrall to the metal-core stylings of Acoda and Sacred Betrayal the same night. Their whistle-stop tour then continues to take in Edinburgh’s Bannermans (22 Oct) and Drummonds, Aberdeen (23 Oct). Thankfully, the bleak and utterly disturbed end of the metal spectrum is represented in the form of Bannermans' Blood Of Christ all-dayer (24 Oct). Featuring Liverpudlian doom peddlers Lazarus Blackstar, local black metal quintet Haar and Barrow-in-Furness sludgers Volition all head up a day of destruction.

Ever a painful pleasure to our ears – and industrial rock brethren at that – the newly 're-activated' Swans and Justin Broadrick’s resurrected Godflesh descend on The Arches with just a few days between them (25 and 27 Oct respectively). Also of a theme, Avenged Sevenfold and Stone Sour embark on a night of circle pits and eyeliner at SECC (26 Oct); Against Me, Fucked Up and Crazy Arm entertain the new age punk lovers at QMU (27 Oct) whilst the mighty Dillinger Escape Plan make a visit to the Garage to head-fuck us all (29 Oct). And finally, New York hardcore heroes Madball and Sick Of It All make their way to King Tut's (also 29 Oct) to show the posers how it's done.