Show Review: Mastodon with The Dillinger Escape Plan and Red Fang at The Warfield, 11/3/2011

The hunters
The hunters

With a musical movement like metal, being significant, staying relevant, and still having room to experiment while perfecting your craft is always a difficult combination of skills to possess. The genre calls for solid commitment to unyielding volume, viciously downtuned notes and hellish distortion, with vocals that span from the powerful to the deranged, and lyrics that cross a general spectrum of darkness, mayhem, and more-than-mild discontent. To introduce any additional elements into this equation makes a solution extremely difficult to arrive at, but for the Atlanta metal masterminds of Mastodon, experimentation is simply the bolt of lightning that breathes life into their compositions, which have not at all dwindled in their ferocity from album to album.

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Show Review: Metalliance Tour featuring Helmet, Saint Vitus, Crowbar, Kylesa, Red Fang, Howl, and Atlas Moth at The Mezzanine, 4/3/2011

Page Hamilton, frontman of Helmet, the headliners of the Metalliance Tour
Page Hamilton, frontman of Helmet, the headliners of the Metalliance Tour

October 22nd, 2006. That was the final day for a San Francisco club known as The Pound, a smallish, low building stranded out in the middle of the dreary reaches of Pier 96 near Heron’s Head Park. For true metalheads of the Bay Area, it was a dark day in history, for no venue besides the Pound was better known for providing a consistent schedule of hardcore punk, furious grindcore, and every genre of metal under the sun (which, considering metal, is quite a lot). While larger clubs like Slim’s and the Regency Ballroom have stepped up to the plate to try and appease the hundreds of roaring voices that bellow out for the return of a good metal venue, they have been hard pressed to draw the same underground caliber that the Pound was able to pull in night after night. If the Mezzanine continues to host shows like Sunday night’s Metalliance Tour, however, then we may once again have a contender that fares well in the ring.

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Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 3/31/11 – 4/6/11

Yeah, so normally I put a funny pic that makes fun of the name of some band playing this week. But, instead, we are giving away a pair of tickets to see the Metalliance Tour at Mezzanine on Sunday, April 3rd. It will be an amazing night of  non-stop metal madness, capped off by the great HELMET! Simply email promo@spinningplatters.com by Friday at 3 PM, and one lucky winner will be picked at random. Just give me your name, email, and phone number and in the subject, put METALLIANCE CONTEST. Winner will be informed by email. And if you don’t win, tickets are for sale here!

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