The Metal Column – September 2010
As a piss-poor summer gives way to the elemental gloom of the Autumn, you can take some solace in that, riff-wise, a particularly intense couple of months lie ahead – with November in particular already shaping up to be a beast. September itself has just about enough to offer on the heavy front to bridge the gap, giving the festival-weary amongst you a chance for those bruises to heal before the real carnage begins.
Kicking things off in Glasgow, a global cross-section of modern hardcore takes to Capitol, featuring Australian crew 50 Lions and New Zealand's Antagonist AD, joining Glasgow’s own By My Hands who claim to be “too hardcore for the metal kids and too metal for the hardcore kids" (2 Sep). We’ll be down the front with a skinhead wearing an illegible tee-shirt.
The same night sees another packed bill in The 13th Note where Vancouver's Shearing Pinx head up an evening of experimental noise rock, joined by the equally unhinged Ultimate Thrush, Mr Peppermint and our favourite discordant barbarians, Divorce. The latter make their first of three appearances this month here, before returning with disturbed kindred spirits, Japanese/London-based duo Comanechi, for a face-off at both Edinburgh's Sneaky Pete's (23 Sep) and Nice N Sleazy (24 Sep). With capable support from the likes of Jackie Treehorn and Purple Rhinestone Eagle, it's worth a look whichever coast you dwell on.
Balls-out (literally) Japanese trio, Electric Eel Shock hit up Aberdeen's Cafe Drummonds (10 Sep), before returning to King Tut's with perpetual gig machines Bronto Skylift (11 Sep), whereas that same evening sees Ivory Blacks' line-up take an unsurprisingly darker turn, with celebrated 'trad-metal' titans Beholder gripping the reins. Gibraltan metallers Breed 77 make a return to the city too, bringing Malefice with them to the Classic Grand (13 Sep) before Ivory Blacks proves, again, that it's not all avant-noise or hardcore on offer this month, suffering further desecration at the hands of the brutal double team that is Skeletonwitch and Warbringer (14 Sep).
Elsewhere, an otherwise fairly quiet month in Dundee is lifted by the appearance of Ayrshire power trio Sucioperro (Dexter's, 15 Sep) and Sneaky Pete's again plays host to cockney hardcore troupe TRC, alongside the excellent Shields Up (19 Sep) whilst the mighty Oceansize roll out the dense soundscapes from their forthcoming fourth LP to Òran Mór.
As the month draws to a close, Bring Me The Horizon roll up to the Garage with Canadian nihilists, Cancer Bats (24 Sep) providing fodder for the metal-core believers, before Black Sun make sure we enter these darker evenings in a suitably bleak fashion, launching their epic new album, Twilight Of The Gods (Classic Grand, 25 Sep).