Canadian progressive death metal band Augury will be making themselves available for musical clinics and private lessons during their upcoming North American tour. For details about how to reserve a spot, check this post on Augury’s MySpace page.

Augury will be embarking on an extensive tour in support of their new album, “Fragmentary Evidence.” They’ll be joined on tour by God Dethroned, Woe of Tyrants and Abigail Williams.

Legendary death metal band Cannibal Corpse is taking their cartoonish, ultra-violent imagery a step further. The band announced plans to release a limited-edition graphic novel to accompany their latest album, “Evisceration Plague.”

The 96-page graphic novel is illustrated by Vince Locke, who also created all of Cannibal Corpse’s gruesome album covers. Locke has previously done illustration work on several graphic novels including “A History of Violence,” “The Sandman,” “Batman” and “2000 AD”.

The “Evisceration Plague” graphic novel will be sold exclusively on the Rockstar Mayhem Festival tour at the Hot Topic booth, and it will also include a copy of the album. It contains a story for each song on the album, following the same order as the tracks on the album do. Check out a sample page from the comic here.

Since I’m obviously a fan of album artwork and other visual expressions that accompany extreme music, I really like this idea of creating graphic novels or visual supplements to help promote albums. It gives us art fans more to enjoy and it also gives bands another way to express their creative vision. Hopefully more bands and labels will start doing stuff like this.

Record Store Day is this Saturday, April 18th, so independent music stores across the US will be celebrating with sales, in-store events and live performances. Several metal bands are joining in the festivities with in-store performances and signings:

Cannibal Corpse and Obscura in-store signing
The Exclusive Company
Greenfield, WI
» More info

Lamb of God in-store signing
Newbury Comics
Shrewsbury, MA
» More info

Wolves in the Throne Room live performance
Easy Street Records
Seattle, WA
» More info

Lair of the Minotaur live performance
Reckless Records
Chicago, IL
» More info

Killswitch Engage in-store signing
Bullmoose Records
Scarborough, ME
» More info

Disturbed in-store signing
Bullmoose Records
Portland, ME
» More info

According to their MySpace page, experimental metal band Radiation 4 are playing a show in Bakersfield, CA this month. I can’t find any confirmation of the show anywhere else, but the MySpace announcement seems fairly official. The full details are as follows:

Radiation 4
March 21 2009 7:00 PM at The Gate
2010 O Street
Bakersfield, California 93301
FIRST SHOW IN OVER 2 YEARS!! COME OUT!!
Also playing:
Dream For Broken Skies
What We have Become
Bury Your Fears
Cost: $7

Radiation 4 supposedly played their ‘final’ show back in 2007. They announced last year that they planned to release a collection of rare and unreleased tracks titled “Monstro,” but no further information has surfaced since then about the release.

During recent US shows supporting Cradle of Filth, Norway’s Satyricon has announced plans to return to the United States in the fall for a headlining tour. No details have been announced officially yet. The news is probably especially good for fans of Satyricon’s older material, since Satyricon’s setlist on the Cradle of Filth tour consisted primarily of songs from the recently-released “The Age of Nero” and “Now, Diabolical.”