Freya, The Gates of Ivory, Cadaversphere, Foodforcrows

Monday, November 29 2010, Manic Productions presents

Location:
Daniel Street
21 Daniel Street
Milford, CT

7:00pm - 21+ - $10

Buy tickets now or pick them up at Redscroll Records

Bios from Manic's page

Back with a vengeance, Freya returns with the powerful release of All Hail The End. Ferocious sound opens the door to a much darker and complex side of this metal institution which features the charismatic and highly-regarded Earth Crisis frontman, Karl Buechner. Freya is no stranger to the masses. In 2003, the band released As The Last Light Drains, an album blending melody and crushing heaviness. They were interviewed on Headbangers Ball and their video to the title track single was in rotation for months. They also released a split recording with label mates The Hoods in 2004. An inspired Peta2 made a video for the anti vivisection anthem from the release entitled "Struggle To Survive" which was featured on their Save 99 DVD compilation, introducing them to over 100,000 fans. Victory Records




The Gates of Ivory:
In a modern music scene obsessed with trivial heaviness and oversaturated with songs that lack meaning and genuine emotion, The Gates of Ivory, a two-member progressive metal band from Milford, Connecticut, strives to deviate from the norm. Known for their energetic live performances fueled by sporadic bursts of anger and anguish, during which an innocent bystander may get screamed at or hit by a swinging guitar, the band is meant to be experienced rather than simply heard. Guitarist Joe Bebon and drummer A.J. Shufelt, long-time friends, write personal, chaotic, technical metal that is both heavy and melodic, as well as relatable and unusual.



Cadaversphere was formed in New London, CT in 2005. This Connecticut based death metal outfit emphasizes pure unfiltered brutality. Despite a few line-up changes and a 2 year hiatus they are back and better than ever. The current line-up consists of Joe Doto (ex-Excoriate, ex-Blind Hatred, ex-Murderfist) - lead guitar, Jules Junget(ex-Age of Deception) - rhythym guitar, Justin Sansone (Age of Deception) - bass, Rob Sickinger (Age of Deception) - drums, Josh Diekmann (ex-Murderfist) - vocals. Cadaversphere's mission is to combine death metal styles from across the board with a straight forward balls to the wall approach. Amalgamating sounds that vary from 80's and early 90's bands such as Napalm Death, Suffocation and Morbid Angel to more modern European sounds akin to Blood Red Throne, Aborted and Zyklon. Anyway you want to look at it, one thing is for certain, if you have a taste for the extreme, Cadaversphere will more than satisfy.

Blurring the thickening lines that divide categories of music, Foodforcrows is an instrumental 3-piece heavy, melodic metal/rock band from Milford, CT; a new, fresh start for the trio of musicians. They are insistent upon creating space for listeners, and then collapsing the space around them with crushing grooves and triumphant hooks. With influences include Deftones, Meshuggah, Candiria, Opeth, Cave In, Foodforcrows keep the guitars large yet spacey, the bass textural and massive, and drums tight and explosive. Listeners have often been told they've been entranced by the sound, of which can only be heard live, as Foodforcrows is currently recording their debut album.

Championsound presents SOUND HALL featuring Michael Pigott of Masstropicas

Monday, November 29, 2010

Location:
Bru Cafe
141 Orange Street
New Haven CT

Free - 6:30 PM

FB event page: Click

press release:

SOUND HALL is a curated speaker and performance series, presented by Championsound, co-sponsored by the Public Humanities Initiative and the Ethnicity, Race, and Migration Program at Yale University. The SOUND HALL series gathers diverse audiences together in various public spaces throughout New Haven, with the aim of creating meaningful spaces for collective listening. This month’s installment of SOUND HALL will be hosted at BRU—a community oriented cafe that serves as a hub for New Haven's thriving cultural scenes. Guests are encouraged to arrive before SOUND HALL's 6:30 pm start time to enjoy the cafe's selections of premium coffees and baked goods.

The second SOUND HALL features Michael Pigott. Pigott is owner/operator of independent record label Masstropicas, dedicated to collecting and re-issuing little-known Peruvian cumbia records from the 1960s - 1970s, like the recently released Ranil's Jungle Party (2010). From the distributor: “For the uninitiated, Peruvian cumbia was to Peru as Tropicália was to Brazil--a 1960s-1970s popular music style that mixed traditional music with those of African and the West.” Limited vinyl copies of the Ranil's Jungle Party will be available at Detritus at Projects Storefronts, SOUND HALL’s exclusive retail partner. Pigott has been travelling to Peru to work with the original artists to re-master and license their music for re- issue and independent distribution to North American audiences. Pigott believes in the material and cultural value of vinyl and cassettes. The physical object of recorded music holds particular meaning for him. His has been an Americas-spanning effort to call attention to these musics and musicians who have never found, or have long lost, audiences beyond South America.

SOUND HALL proposes that music and sound collectors are also historians and that, to different degrees, we are all archivists. We collect music and sound in the forms of records, tapes, CDs, but also in different forms of personal memory and history. When we listen to a song, or a certain collection of sounds, we build particular stories around what we hear--about our pasts, our presents, and our futures. SOUND HALL is where we gather to listen to and examine some of those stories. Join us as we listen to and discuss the music and the complicated politics of cumbia's contemporary presence in North American markets.

SOUND HALL will be followed by Taco Party III, a multimedia dance party whose soundtrack is rare music through space and time. Pigott will be acting as guest selector for the event, which pairs rare music as chosen by the event's selectors locally-based selectors, Shaki Presents (of the now defunct Sundazed series at BAR), King Panos (Kings), and Stefan Christensen (Estrogen Highs, Iron Hand, Popeye's Garage). Tacos will be provided by Caseus New Haven.

TACO PARTY III with M.Pigott of MASSTROPICAS

Monday, November 29, 2010

Location:
Partners Café
365 Crown Street
New Haven, CT

Free - 21+ to taco

TACO PARTY is a multi-media exhibition whose soundtrack is rare music through space and time.

Music will be curated for TACO PARTY III by Guest Selector M.Pigott of MASSTROPICAS

SOUNDS by
King Panos (Kings)
Stefan Christensen (Estrogen Highs, Popeye’s Garage)

ORIGINAL VIDEO COLLAGES by
Jimi Patterson & Emmy Pickett

MENU: TACOS by Caseus

LINKS: http://www.tacozone.net/
www.twitter.com/tacozone



Tacos are forever.

Skeletonwitch, Withered, Landmine Marathon, Ipsissimus

Sunday, November 28, 2010, Manic Productions presents

Location:
Lilly's Pad (Toad's Place Upstairs)
300 York Street
New Haven, CT

7:00pm - All Ages - $12

Buy tickets now or pick them up at Redscroll Records

North American Skullsplitter Tour 2010 dates

Bios from Manic's page

Skeletonwitch:
The drought is over. After years in the wilderness, homegrown heavy metal has finally returned. No longer the domain solely of our European forefathers, metal pure in both delivery and creativity is gaining momentum at breakneck speed in the Western Hemisphere. Leading the charge domestically are Ohio’s sons of Midwestern darkness SKELETONWITCH, who have emerged as forerunners of this new American sound. The ‘WITCH’s mighty sonic fortress is an amalgamation of classic Bay Area thrash, Scandinavian death/black metal and NWOBHM. Upping the ante from their Prosthetic debut, Beyond the Permafrost, these five gnarly longhairs show no mercy and take no prisoners on their new long-player, Breathing the Fire. Prosthetic Records



Withered, formed in 2003, exists to explore the darker aspects of human existence and deliver it to the masses while exemplifying unbridled truths about human nature. From the exploration of coping with tragedy to theoretical philosophical approaches, WITHERED continues to push their boundaries of perception into a realm of solitude and raw introspective discovery. They have released two full length albums, Memento Mori (2005 - Lifeforce) and Folie Circulaire (2008 - Prosthetic), which have both been critically acclaimed and topped numerous year end and decade end lists. WITHERED mixes a blackened atmosphere with the weight of doom metal & old school Scandinavian death metal to culminate a unique blend of extreme styles and expression. Their third full length is due late 2010 for another testament to their ever growing edification of what truly lies within the human animal and how culture & society have greatly compromised humanity’s potential to an extent of irreversible demise. Prosthetic Records



Landmine Marathon was founded in 2004 by bassist Matt Martinez, drummer Mike Pohlmeier and vocalist Grace Perry, the latter of whom periodically blogs for the website of Revolver magazine. Butler joined in 2006, soon after the release of the band’s debut album Wounded. The following year, the group released a praised split CD/LP with Scarecrow; in its review, All Music Guide wrote that “LANDMINE MARATHON’s three tracks have more good ideas than most bands’ albums.” In 2008, the group welcomed guitarist Dylan Thomas and returned to the studio to record Rusted Eyes Awake.Revolver called the album “a gnarling and gnashing blood-caked throwback to 1990, when Napalm Death couldn’t decide if they were going to be grindcore or death metal,” while Lambgoat praises the band’s “pure urgency and grit,” calling the release a blend of “the ferociously thick riffs of Bolt Thrower’s death metal (and) Napalm Death’s blistering grind mentality.” Prosthetic Records



Ipsissimus was founded when His Emissary (guitars) and Haimatokharmes (drums) met by providence on 6/6/06 in New Haven, CT, and found in one another worthy vessels of channeling the occult philosophies into ritual Black Metal.
In November of that year, Tichondrius (bass/vocals) completed the trinity. Within a month they were playing concerts and released the demo “Trampling the Host,” a potent exercise in raw, blasting Black Metal. Over the following years, they established a reputation across New England for technical yet raw live performances, sharing the stage with both local and established Black Metal groups, such as Nachtmystium, Enslaved, Dark Funeral, Krallice, and Watain. In February 2008, Ipsissimus independently released the “Three Secrets of Fatima” EP, Matching their music to orations of black piety that draw from esoteric traditions antique and modern, often composed in the dead tongues of the ancients themselves, Ipsissimus initiates the listener to a Left-Hand Gnosis with a unique and irrefutable statement of American Black Metal. Metal Blade Records

Ultrabunny Volume Merchants / Unsafe At Any Age

Too lazy to read this? Click here to listen to a robo-reading with clips from the LP underneath.

Volume Merchants / Unsafe At Any Age from Ultrabunny:

Volume Merchants sets this LP in motion. Four songs starting with Small War, a gurgle-drone of brooding robot frog talk with eerie alien sounds of flying saucers scanning for life. I swear I hear a sooty factory toiling way down in there, like the kind Henry walked home from in Eraserhead. It's too low to be sure. I might've imagined it. Medium War moves away into Confusion Is Sex tribalism. Which is fine, even though I could have melted into Small War for hours. Large War and My War finish off the last half, sometimes getting a tad tedious from some pedestrian rock patterns, but still wailing and pounding at a destructive pace. Once My War dives into a finale of feedback and wide flange, the mood comes close to returning to the shadowy Small War beginnings. The side is for sure at its best when building up to what's about to get torn down.

When I put this LP on for the first time, I started backwards with Unsafe At Any Age. I was folding laundry while thinking about the consumerist crank of black Friday. But I snapped out of this mundane bullshit pretty quick thanks to this record. This is my third listen now, and it's this side that I dig the most. The demented furor of the second song, Fight War, introduces helium high bellows which carry over into the manic march of Not Wars, with vocals at an equally perverse octave. All the guitar and bass no-wave clangor is a lovely boiling of urgent ideas and immediate impulses. But the absolute brilliance of Hot War takes the cake. It is almost five minutes of laughter on the brink of tears, the maddening cackle of people that have lost their minds. The loop carrying this bedlam is like the inner groove of a shattered 45 spun in slo-mo. A ghost of a siren signals, but is unheard, engulfed by endless cracking-up. Not War pulls you out of this with tones modulated into what feels like an exit sign blinking into being in the middle of a black hole.

A great record all around. The moodier parts reminded me of Religious Knives, but I admit I wanted something a little more from a few sections of Volume Merchants. Nothing as savage as say Sword Heaven, even though the thought crossed my mind. All of the LP was recorded live on location by Malcolm Tent on various dates throughout January of 2010 at a slew of spots, from NY, NJ, to here at home. This is all improv that was then "stitched" together at Salon TPOS, and based on the dates of the performances listed, I think the assemblage is completely anachronistic. "Each side of this LP is a suite, meant to be enjoyed as a whole" reads the back, along with a recommendation to take a break between sides. Because these guys are on the older side, they have way more living and listening under their collective belts. So the experience this LP offers is focused and intense but with plenty of room for your own twisted sense of what they're getting at.

Volume Merchants / Unsafe At Any Age is on limited edition black vinyl, 300 copies $8, or 14 copies with individual cover art $10 from TPOS Records.

Cruel Hand, Backtrack, Hate Your Guts

Saturday, November 27, 2010, Manic Productions presents

Location
Lilly's Pad (Toad's Place Upstairs)
300 York Street
New Haven, CT

6:00pm - All Ages - $8

Buy tickets now or pick them up at Redscroll Records

Bios from Manic's page:

Cruel Hand is a hardcore band from Portland, Maine drawing influences from the Cro-Mags, early Metallica and Madball. Their debut album, Without a Pulse, was released in 2007 on 6131 Records. They played shows around the U.S. with Trash Talk, The Mongoloids and more, hitting the United States three times and undertaking a full European tour. Next they signed to Bridge 9 Records and in 2008 released the Prying Eyes CD/LP, described on the Bridge 9 web site as “one of the hardest records of 2008, just as full of catchy metallic riffage as it is mosh parts.” Bridge 9



Backtrack is a LI hardcore band. Reaper Records



Hate Your Guts:
Reigning from New Haven, Connecticut, HATE YOUR GUTS do as promised. No warning, pure relentless good old fashion hardcore nihilism. Mass energy building-pissed off all-out attack. TOTAL WAR. Put on The Cro-Mags “Age Of Quarrel” record, a little Ringworm and some vintage Hatebreed in a trash bag alongside two baby wolf cubs, shake it up and there you have it. Pure East Coast HATE.
Eulogy Recordings

Linfinity, The End Of America, Eurisko

Friday, November 26, 2010, Manic Productions presents

Location
Cafe Nine
250 State Street
New Haven, CT

9:00pm - 21+ - $8

Buy tickets now or pick them up at Redscroll Records

Bios from Manic's page

Linfinity are a New York City based group of musicians who helped form a band around enigmatic front man Dylan Von Wagner, tackling everything from Southern Gothic tropes and rockabilly to beautiful, string-laden Moorish stomps and bombastic chamber pop. For fans of The Builders and Butchers, Murder By Death, Langhorne Slim, etc.



The End of America is a 3 piece folk band from New York City feat. James Downes of Call It Arson and Brendon Thomas of Foreverinmotion. In the past James Downes, Brendon Thomas, and Trevor Leonard discussed recording music in remote locations, where they could separate themselves from the buzz of computers and modern life. From these discussions came the concept of The End of America: to travel to the ends of the continent in search of musical inspiration and to write and record their songs there.



Eurisko is a 5-piece rock band from the greater New Haven/Waterbury area that recently formed in early 2010. Since their inception they have developed a sound soaked in whiskey, multi-layered guitar riffs, and creatively grim lyrics. Influenced primarily by folk and indie rock, Eurisko’s music spans from quickly paced melodic ballads to deep, creeping songs carrying shipments of woe; and has drawn comparisons to the music of Tom Waits, The Decemberists, Murder By Death, and Bright Eyes. The combination of three guitars, bass, and drums gives Eurisko the flexibility to take a wide-ranging and detailed approach to their song-writing, which are then given more dimension through the use of poetic lyrics and storytelling.




Linfinity dates:

Nov 27 The Monkey House Winooski, Vermont
Nov 28 Club Hell Providence, Rhode Isla
Nov 30 Maxwell’s Hoboken, New Jersey
Dec 1 BogiesAlbany, NY
Dec 2 Iron Horse Northampton, MA
Dec 3 The Chance Complex Poughkeepsie, New York
Dec 4 KUNG FU NECKTIE PHILADELPHIA, PA
Dec 5 The Main Event/main street cafe Toledo, Ohio
Dec 6 The Intersection Grand Rapids, MI
Dec 7 Beachland Ballroom Cleveland, Ohio
Dec 8 Schubas Chicago, Illinois
Dec 9 Brillobox Pittsburgh, PA
Dec 10 Empty Glass Charleston, West Virginia
Dec 11 Golden West Cafe Baltimore, MD
Dec 12 Red Palace Washington DC, Washington
Dec 13 Mercury Lounge New York, NY