I would hope that most of my US-based readers would have heard about this already, but I thought I’d call attention to it just in case. The lineup for year’s Rites Of Darkness festival in San Antonio, TX is so utterly ridiculous that I would probably chew off a limb to attend. This year’s bands include Urfaust, Strid, Evoken, Sargeist, Behexen, Funebrarum, Antaeus, Weapon, Mitochondrion, Impetuous Ritual, Mortuary Drape, Nunslaughter, Root, and tons more. The pre-fest lineup also boasts Ondskapt, Wodensthrone and Dispirit. The quality of bands the organizers have managed to pull together is incredible, especially considering that many of these bands will be gracing US soil for the very first time.

The festival organizers have been hyping their lineup for some time new via its Facebook page. Tickets will finally go on sale in a week or so on June 13th. Follow the festival on Facebook to keep up-to-date with the latest developments and ticket information.

Critical Info:
Rites of Darkness Festival
December 9th - 11th (Pre-fest December 8th)
White Rabbit
2410 N. St. Marys, San Antonio, TX 78212

» Rites of Darkness on Facebook
» Rites of Darkness Festival and Pre-Fest Pages on Last.fm

As if I needed another reason to look forward to this month’s Agalloch show, apparently Allerseelen and folks from The Ajna Offensive will be selling copies of the Oak Folk compilation, which sounds like it might be pretty interesting. Oak Folk, compiled by Allerseelen member Gerhard Hallstatt, is a collection of songs from North American and European bands writing songs about the sacred oak. Musical styles on the compilation range from dark ambient and folk to black metal, and all of the tracks featured will be exclusive to this release. Agalloch and Allerseelen both contribute songs, and honestly out of the others the only name I recognize is Waldteufel, but that doesn’t really damper my hopes too much.

You can get some more info on the Oak Folk comp at Steinklang Industries, including a medley featuring clips from all 12 songs that should give you a pretty good idea what it’s about.

I consider it one of my major failures as a metal fan that I’ve not yet managed to see legendary NY death metal band Incantation live. For some reason they seem to like to tour the Eastern U.S. and hit up random places like Mexico or Europe more than they like the West Coast. As if it hasn’t been rubbed in my face enough already, the band is gearing up for a mini-tour during which they’ll be playing their classic album Onward To Golgotha from start to finish!

I was treated to another band playing a classic album in its entirety earlier this year (Cynic’s Focus) and I’ve gotta say that it’s a pretty unbelievably awesome experience. If you’re a fan of old school death metal and you live in one of the cities where Incantation’s going to be playing, check out the tour dates above and go see some death metal!

Portland’s Soriah is currently touring the West Coast, playing shows at various odd venues and also holding a few very exclusive workshops. I managed to catch Soriah this past week in Seattle as part of a Dia de los Muertos ceremony, and his performance was certainly one of the most amazing and mind-altering that I’ve experienced, so needless to say this tour is highly recommended. If you’re at all interested in throat singing and similar vocal techniques, you should definitely inquire about the workshops as well, since you’ll have the chance to learn from one of the art’s masters.

For those who aren’t familiar with him, Soriah is a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist whose music and performances draw influence from many different global musical traditions such as raga, shamanism, butoh, and especially Tuvan throat singing. Soriah has established himself as one of the world’s masters of this style of singing, having received several international awards including “Best Foreigner” in the 2008 Ustuu-Khooree World Music Festival in Tuva. Soriah combines these various influences into a musical experience that is deeply moving and spiritual, while demonstrating his unparalleled vocal abilities. Nothing else out there comes close to sounding like this.

SF Workshop Info:

An Introduction to Khoomei
The Ancient Art of Tuvan Throat Singing with Enrique Ugalde

Friday, November 5th from 2pm - 5pm
at 1543 Mission Street, 3rd Floor,
San Francisco, CA 94103

This workshop will offer:
An introduction to Tuvan Culture.
Instruction in the three main Tuvan throat singing styles Khoomei,
Sygyt and Kargyraa, their history and application to traditional folk songs.
Unconventional but effective ways to utilize and activate your instrument properly.

3 hours of group and one on one instruction

$60 sliding scale donation for 3 hours of instruction. Limit of 13 people.
To register, contact oshan anand: info@omshantea.com

Remaining Tour Dates:

Friday November 5th
San Francisco, CA
OHM SHAN TEA

Saturday November 6th
SHADOW DANCE FESTIVAL
Oakland, CA
The Metro

Tuesday November 9th
Santa Fe
TBA

Wednesday November 10th
Sedona, AZ
THE CHOCOLATREE

Thursday November 11th
Tucson, AZ
Solar Culture Gallery

Friday November 12th
San Diego
Tin Can Alehouse

Saturday November 13th
Hollywood, CA
Bar Sinister

Head over to Soriah.net for more details.

The lineup for this fall’s Weltenbrand Tour arguably features at least as much firepower as any in 2010. Whether or not you like Norwegian black metallers 1349, you have to admit that they put on a pretty brutal live show, and the addition of progressive sludge act Yakuza to the bill only adds a little bit of unpredictability. Of course, very little needs to be said about Triptykon and frontman Tom G. Warrior, as pretty much every metal fan should be at least somewhat familiar with his work in Celtic Frost. None of the bands are what I’d personally call favorites, but all three of the main acts played the hell out of their sets and ended up making the Weltenbrand Tour’s Seattle stop a very memorable one.

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Tuesday’s Katatonia performance was one that I’d been looking forward to for quite a while, and judging by the unusually high weeknight turnout I wasn’t the only one. Even local black metal act Book of Black Earth (I missed Terra Morta’s set unfortunately) had a pretty good turnout.

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The first sign of what was to come happened after the second of two mildly engaging opening bands finished their set. As The Body moved their gear over towards the stage, and instead of trying to haul their massive amplifiers up onto the actual stage, the band decided to throw everything together right in front of it, despite the venue’s space being only slightly bigger than a two-car garage. The Body’s sparse setup included a bright red drum set, three or four towering amps, and a small digital device on a stand next to the drums. The unusual yet very basic drum kit Lee uses features toms with bottoms that flare open towards the audience, presumably for maximum audibility (it’s a North drum set - more info here). A quick sound check of the bass drum mic revealed that The Body’s electronics setup is capable of adding such a thunderous distortion to the bass drum sound that each kick sounds like it heralds the apocalypse. Interesting. After very little tweaking and minimal sound checking while curious fans crowded around, the guys were good to go.

The band began with the sparse three-note opening motif of ‘Ruiner,’ milking each note for what seemed like several minutes as Lee gradually worked in a basic drum beat. Finally the band kicked into full distortion mode, and you could see the complete shock on people’s faces. The room became so completely overloaded with The Body’s tremendous sound that each note was not only way-past-deafeningly loud, but actually palpable as a vibration in every hair on my body. Lee’s drum work, while perhaps overlooked on the album, was both stick-snappingly brutal and suprisingly impressive from a technical standpoint, and Chip’s utterly maniacal, un-mic’ed vocal screaming was something to behold. The band worked through a couple more tracks from All The Waters of the Earth Turned To Blood before somehow managing to not only pull off an encore despite not being the headliners, but actually make it seem completely genuine and unexpected. Whether they planned it or not, definitely classy. The monstrous opening progression of ‘Song of Sarin, The Brave’ sounded ten times more brutal live, and was the perfect way to close out a pretty amazing set.

Definitely see The Body live if you can. People aren’t kidding when they say that these guys are one of the loudest and heaviest bands you’ll ever see. From what I can tell they pretty much use their own gear wherever they go too, so you’re going to get a great show no matter how shitty the venue is (and believe me, The Morgue is not one of Seattle’s best). Sometimes sludge and doom bands can be pretty boring live, especially if you don’t know the songs, but The Body is definitely not one of them!

Legendary stoner doom band Sleep will be embarking on a short US tour later this year. Bassist Al Cisneros (now with Om and Shrinebuilder) and guitarist Matt Pike (now with High on Fire) will be joined by Neurosis drummer Jason Roeder for a small selection of shows across the US. The band will be performing the Holy Mountain album in its entirety, as well as selections from Dopesmoker and other songs.

The band will be joined on some of the dates by Lichens, Scott Kelly, and YOB. Check the Sleep MySpace page for tour dates.

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.