How can I say this…this album blows. Seriously. Oh, and by “blows” I mean “Blows all other metal albums into oblivion with the sheer firepower of its awesomeness“. “Gods” is further proof of how Nile continue to out-do themselves. Without a doubt, Nile is seated firmly at the top of the Death Metal genre by virtue of their technical prowess, epic songwriting and utter magnitude with which they put everything together.

Those Whom the Gods Detest is everything you’d expect from a Nile album: Crushingly-Brutal drumming and guitars combined with epic Egyptian themes that would make even the Pharaoh Ramses cower in fear.

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If you haven’t heard of Canada’s Divinity, there’s a good chance that you will soon. After discovering them on Harmony Central’s music forum (check out the email Ray sent out afterwards), we contacted the band and were fortunate enough to obtain an advance copy of the tracks from their upcoming sophomore album The Singularity. We were impressed, to say it plainly.

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The new Megadeth album Endgame came out this week. Overall, I was pretty impressed with the musicianship – especially with new guitar player Chris Broderick. The opening instrumental tune, “Dialectic Chaos” is full of harmonies and classic metal riffs, and totally reminds me of “Transylvania” by Iron Maiden – in a good way. The guitar solos on this album and the harmonies are absolutely shredding. There is no shortage of driving rhythms and there is plenty of double-bass goodness to go around. “Head Crusher”, “This Day we Fight!” and “Bodies” are sure to be the favorites of riff-hungry Megadeth fans.

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In what can only be described as an EPIC metal show, Lamb of God, Suicidal Tendencies, Children of Bodom, Municipal Waste and God Forbid brought the house down at the San Jose State University Event Center. The crowd was fantastic, the sound was killer and no one we know was arrested.

If you’ve never been to the San Jose Event Center for a concert then you’re in for a treat. There basically are no bad seats in the house and even though it’s a big arena, it doesn’t feel like there are any “cheap seats”. The sound people there did a killer job with the mixing. The crowd was totally into it. I retract my previous statement about San Jose metal heads being somewhat lame. You hooligans (and “hooligals”) are an unruly bunch and know how to rock the f*** out when it comes down to it. I’m pretty sure that your energy helped make the show as awesome as it was.

SJSU, how tranquil
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I arrived solo at the Voodoo Lounge last Tuesday night to watch Exodus rock the Bay Area on their last stop of this year’s tour.‚ I had never been to the Voodoo Lounge before, but the place seemed alright.‚ The stage is kind of tucked away in the corner so the space where the band can interact with the crowd is a little smaller, but on the plus side you can see the stage from every spot in the venue, even the bar.‚ I was a little disappointed at the lack of enthusiam in this crowd, maybe it was because the show started so late, but people just seemed f***ing out of it.‚ Even trying to talk to people there, no one said anything.‚ Meh, maybe I just haven’t experienced San Jose enough…

I came to the show a bit late and missed the first band, and most of the second band, but I did catch one of my new favorite bands:‚ &&Mantic Ritual&&.‚ I’m 99% certain that these guys devised some sort of a teleportation machine, something similar to what Jeff Goldblum had in &”The Fly&”, and tried to teleport themselves.‚ Only with these guys, instead of a fly sneaking in to the machine as they were about to teleport, they piled a big ass heap of thrash metal records from 1985 and hit the &&GO&& button. ‚

They may not be old enough to drink, but they’re old enough to kick some serious old school ass.‚ Their live show is pretty awesome, but unfortunately the crowd sucked, so damn you San Jose if this band doesn’t return to the Bay.‚ I was surprised to find out later that these guys are signed to Nuclear Blast!‚ Dude!? ‚

Exodus took stage around 11 and proceeded to rock the house with a lengthy set of newer and older material; they played some songs from Deathamphetamine and Tempo of the Damned, and older songs like Strike of the Beast and Toxic Waltz.‚ The crowd started to wake up about this time, thank god, and the pit was pretty out of control for such a small venue.‚ Sometimes you get security stepping in at these small venues to break up the pit, but they just stayed back and watched the mayhem.

The sound was alright, but the vocals were lost in the mix and my ears are still ringing from the snare drum and the left guitar speaker cabinet.‚ Overall, the show was pretty sweet but the crowd could’ve been better.‚ You can’t win them all I guess…although someone was enjoying the show enough to bootleg it:

Slim’s club in San Francisco played host to the mighty Amon Amarth on their Twilight of the Thundergods tour. 3 other bands, each in the vein of death metal/folk metal accompanied them: Ensiferum, Belphegor and The Absence. Amazingly, we had not seen any of these bands live yet, but we heard plenty of good things. Even though it was raining outside, this show was hot and sweaty – and packed. I watched some young lady pass out next to me and get carried out the front door (this seems to happen near me a lot), probably from too many jager shots. Aside from that mini-drama, the people at the show were cool and most everyone rocked their balls off. I also left the show with a new found appreciation of the light operator, who is completely out of control and must be borderline spastic. Next time I’m going to video it.

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