Southern California metal titans WINDS OF PLAGUE today have signed a record deal with Entertainment One Music (eOne) / Good Fight Music. The band is also announcing their first headlining tour in two and a half years, with RINGS OF SATURN as direct support. Vocalist Johnny Cooke offers a full statement below.
I’m not a stranger to the “djent” scene, or progressive metalcore, as it may actually be deemed. Periphery and Vildhjarta were two of the bands that introduced me to this style, although both have since gone on to craft their own respective sounds, steering far from the core sound of the scene. This has not alienated me, however, and I’ve managed to find enjoyment in bands like Northlane and In Hearts Wake, as well as Veil of Maya’s, After the Burial, and even Volumes at times. Essentially, bands like the aforementioned have braced more of the “metalcore” aspect of the stylings, but don’t shy away from the progressive aspects,like virtuoso guitar work, time signature changes, and other varying trivialities...
You’d swear the world split apart, but the seemingly impossible happened this week: Axl Rose will be singing for AC/DC and Brian Johnson was out of the band. You’d have sworn a meteor was heading straight for Earth, because everyone reacted that way: someone else fronting AC/DC, even as a touring member, let alone someone as notorious as Axl? Right after the announcement that Guns N Roses was touring with Slash and Duff, it just seemed so overkill for Axl to be doing that. Granted, since Axl isn’t young anymore, he runs the chance of exhaustion since he’ll be going from GNR to AC/DC and probably to GNR right after.
Usually by now we have a general idea as to what bands will be on The Summer Slaughter tour through hints they drop during the year. Being that it’s April, it’s odd to not have any indication as to who we’ll be seeing on the massive extreme metal festival. Finally, the Facebook page for the tour has dropped its first hint at bands we’ll see this year, and it seems to be a bit for everyone.
Not to be confused with the German black metal band Dark Fortress, New Jersey’s Death Fortress are something of a wonder in the 21st century. No Facebook page, no Twitter, but just a Bandcamp page with both their albums, and a tie to Fallen Empire Records adds an air of mystery to this band. You, quite honestly, can’t even find a picture of the band at all.
Deftones have been on a bit of a roller coaster the past decade or so. The band emerged in the nu-metal scene in the mid 90s, but around the turn of the century they began to branch out into more sonically adventurous directions, transforming their already unique sound into something one of a kind, and making every album a stepping stone for their natural progression. 2012’s Koi No Yokan saw the band receive an exorberant amount of attention in the media, and rightly so, as the album was nothing short of an accomplishment in many regards.
Chances are, if you’re into metal, your first love for a band wasn’t Gorgoroth or Suffocation. I’ve met a person or two who went from prog rock into tech death, but in actuality the majority of people in the metal community started with the basics: Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and even hard rock bands that influenced the genre, like Van Halen. It’s almost like Metal 101, and everyone has to go through it at some point or another. And whether you enjoy the music or not, you can’t deny the influence on the genre, let alone how it has impacted the world.
Sometimes, when tours get announced, the lineup is just too good to pass up, even if you aren’t entirely familiar with the bands attached. I could argue that I enjoyed Intronaut and Scale the Summit as bands and that they’re great musicians, but improper timing on my behalf never allowed me to give the respective bands as much time as they deserved. I’m familiar with a good deal of their songs, and given the fact that they were all withstanding the staggering amount of music I’ve digested clearly says something about the quality of the bands as a whole.
