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Malcura

“Rock Meets Flamenco”

Malcura are an exhilarating acoustic trio from Australia. Honing their craft as buskers in Melbourne’s Bourke Street Mall, Malcura have captivated the Australian public with their distinctive sound, which fuses Flamenco instrumentation with Latin rhythms and a Rock’n’roll mentality. Malcura create music for the soul; it’s a feeling as much as it is a sound.

It has been a busy few years since Malcura made their mark with their debut EP “Flamenco Metal”. Their tireless work has seen them grow their act from the streets to the big stage. The band attracted worldwide attention in 2015 with their original rendition of Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky”, providing the perfect platform to release their exceptional debut album in 2016.

“Malcura”, the band’s independent debut album, was released with a launch show on the Federation Square Main Stage in February 2016, followed by two East-Coast tours and extensive busking performances in support of the release. The album received tremendous support from Fiesta Jazz on PBS 106.7FM and high rotation on community radio nationwide, selling thousands of copies and receiving a nomination for the award of 2016’s “Best Global/Reggae Album” at The Age Music Victoria Awards.

Malcura have been packing out venues and dancefloors across Australia and have also performed at a number of major Australian festivals, including the Illawarra Folk Festival (NSW), Wallaby Creek (QLD), Bendigo Blues and Roots, St. Kilda Festival and Tanglewood NYE Festival. Their performances are alive with spirit, weaving through intricate arrangements with virtuoso musicianship and gusto.

Malcura have performed alongside the likes of Tijuana Cartel, Tash Sultana, The Pierce Brothers, Clowns, Kenta Hayashi (Japan), and Dallas Frasca; and even joined Mexican guitar heroes Rodrigo y Gabriela on stage at the Palais Theatre for an unexpected guest appearance that was met with a standing ovation. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity served as the inspiration behind the trio’s single “Palais” and its stunning cinematic music video, which was filmed inside the Palais Theatre.

The much-anticipated second album from Malcura is currently in production and appears set to attract the attention of music fans across the globe. The band ensures it will be even more textured, daring and infectious than their first.

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metal
Classic Rock
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Vio-lence

Vio-lence is an American thrash metal band formed in 1985 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Throughout its existence, they released demo tapes, one EP and three studio albums. Vio-lence is best-known for their association with the 1980s Bay Area thrash metal scene, and often credited as one of the leading lights of the second wave of the genre, along with Pantera, Sepultura, Sacred Reich, Dark Angel, Annihilator and Flotsam and Jetsam as well as their Bay Area counterparts Testament, Death Angel and Forbidden.[1][2][3][4][5] The band has also been referred to as one of the so-called "Big Six of Bay Area thrash metal", alongside Exodus, Testament, Death Angel, Lååz Rockit and Forbidden.[6][7]

Vio-lence's most stable line-up was Phil Demmel and Robb Flynn on guitars, Deen Dell on bass, Perry Strickland on drums and Sean Killian on vocals; this lineup recorded all three of their studio albums–Eternal Nightmare (1988), Oppressing the Masses (1990) and Nothing to Gain (1993). After breaking up in 1994 and reforming for occasional live performances from 2001 to 2003, the band reunited once again in January 2019,[8] and released the EP Let the World Burn, their first collection of new material in nearly three decades, in March 2022.[9] The current lineup of Vio-lence includes Demmel, Strickland and Killian, in addition to bassist Christian Olde Wolbers as the replacement of Dell.

Vio-lence, then-called Death Penalty, was formed in 1985 with the line-up of Jerry Birr (vocals), Phil Demmel (guitar), Troy Fua (guitar), Eddie Billy (bass – brother of musicians Andy and Chuck Billy) and Perry Strickland (drums).[10] Not long after playing their first gig, which reportedly took place at a house party, Death Penalty changed their name to Violence and eventually then to Vio-lence, as the former was taken by another band. After recording two demos in 1986, they parted ways with Birr, Fua and Billy, who were replaced by Sean Killian, Robb Flynn (formerly of Forbidden Evil) and Deen Dell respectively. Their live success at local clubs in Northern California – opening for bands like D.R.I., Voivod, Kreator, Dark Angel, Suicidal Tendencies and the Mentors, as well as their Bay Area thrash metal peers Testament, Exodus, Death Angel, Lȧȧz Rockit and Heathen – allowed Vio-lence to record another demo, this time for major labels, including MCA Records' sister label Mechanic, who offered them a recording contract.[10][11][12]

From February to April 1988, Vio-lence recorded their debut album, Eternal Nightmare, at two studios: The Music Grinder in Los Angeles and Alpha & Omega in San Francisco. The album received mostly positive reviews upon its release in the summer of 1988, and peaked at number 154 on the Billboard 200, becoming the band's only album to enter that chart;[13][14] this can be attributed to the album selling over 30,000 copies.[10] Vio-lence toured throughout 1988 and 1989 in support of Eternal Nightmare, with bands such as Testament, Voivod, Death Angel, Sanctuary, Nuclear Assault, D.R.I., M.O.D. and the Cro-Mags.[10][11][12] The underground success of the album also caught the attention of several labels, including Megaforce Records (then-home to bands such as Testament, M.O.D., Anthrax, and Overkill), who eventually signed the band.[10][11]

In December 1989, Vio-lence entered the studio to record what would be their second album and only release on Megaforce (distributed by Atlantic) Oppressing the Masses; however, the album faced multiple delays until its release in the summer of 1990.[10][11][12] Although the album's success did not match that of Eternal Nightmare, it received some positive reviews and a video for the song "World in a World" was released. Oppressing the Masses also generated some controversy, when the original album (which reportedly sold only 20,000 copies) was destroyed because of Atlantic's objection to the lyrical content of "Torture Tactics";[10][11] as a result, the album was reprinted without this track. Vio-lence toured in support of the album for about a year, with bands such as Overkill, Exodus, Forbidden, Flotsam and Jetsam, Prong, Defiance and Rigor Mortis.[12]

In 1991, after being dropped from Atlantic/Megaforce, Vio-lence released an EP Torture Tactics, which included three studio songs (recorded in 1989 during the sessions of Oppressing the Masses) and one "live" track from 1988. Internal conflicts in 1992 resulted in the departure of Robb Flynn who would move on to form groove metal band Machine Head.[10] A year later, Vio-lence released their third and final album, Nothing to Gain, which was actually recorded in 1990. They never toured in support of that album, and Strickland left the band after its release.

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metal
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Heathen Temple

Heathen Temple is an experimental music event and project based in Melbourne (Naarm) that showcases a lineup of avant-garde and immersive performers.

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metal
  • 72 reads

APATE

Underestimate APATE. Go on, I dare you. Beginning like a creature watching from the shadows, the Brisbane based band have developed their craft quietly and unassumingly. Growing into their patchworked sonic skin, APATE are a band who bleed out their experiences, with their songs reflecting a chaos of the mind.

Sharing stages with scene heavyweights like Polaris, Thornhill, Born Of Osiris, She Cries Wolf, and Confession, APATE have already heavily and resolutely delivered the messages their 2017 EP, 'Spit You Out'. APATE's upcoming EP 'Rage' sees the collective advance even further, having honed their songwriting to create six tracks that powerfully (and unsettlingly) express an unraveling mind.

The band will be taking their brand new EP on the Australian highway this December along with their friends Melbourne heavy-hitters Starve and Adelaides Ovtsider.

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metal
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  • 719 reads

Nebulam

Start the new year with an afternoon of raw, nasty, groovy and hardcore metal at The Workers Club. Melbourne’s underground scene comes alive with the high energy and skull crushing sounds of PURE AUSSIE FILTH.

Nebulam brings their black hole sound of intense hardcore featuring brutal riffs, head-pounding drums and powerful screams. Making appearances are Frankston’s very own death/hardcore crossover False Dichotomy, as well as Melbourne nu-metal powerhouse Chazévo.

Tags: 
Hardcore
metal
  • 690 reads

Caligula's Horse

Caligula’s Horse, hailing from Brisbane, Australia, are a leading light in contemporary progressive metal. Their colourful and emotional music, spanning influences as diverse as King Crimson, Steely Dan, Opeth, and Jeff Buckley, has forged a deep and lasting connection with fans across the globe.

Caligula’s Horse have taken ambitious strides with every release, maintaining a course of continual artistic development and reinvention. Formed in 2011, the band garnered critical acclaim for their eclectic and exploratory debut, Moments from Ephemeral City (2011), and its dark, conceptual follow-up, The Tide, the Thief & River’s End (2013). But Caligula’s Horse truly made their mark worldwide with their vibrant and hard-hitting third album, Bloom (2015), the first on prestigious German record label, Inside Out. It was on the back of this record that the group expanded its touring regime beyond Australia, including shows with the likes of Mastodon, Opeth, the Dillinger Escape Plan, Tesseract, and Anathema. Caligula’s Horse’s fourth album, In Contact (2017), with its grand concept and expansive dynamics, was the first to break the Australian ARIA Top 50 Chart. Its critical and commercial success saw the band grow its reach tremendously, packing out venues across Australia, the UK, and Europe, and touring the Americas for the first time.

In 2020, Caligula’s Horse released their most focussed and potent artistic statement yet: Rise Radiant, an uncompromising exploration of the human experience dressed in vivid musical colour and virtuosic performances. It was the culmination of the band’s artistic development, concentrating the expressive stylings which have endeared Caligula’s Horse to legions of fans worldwide. But it is also far more. Rise Radiant is the Caligula’s Horse sound pushed to its extremes: at once its most ferocious and its most touching, its most expansive and its most condensed, its most poetic and its most vicious. Rise Radiant is an anthem for the regeneration of self-belief, an exploration of the themes of legacy, and a rallying cry for survival.

With the release of Rise Radiant, Caligula’s Horse celebrated their highest international chart positions yet, highlighted with #23 on Australia’s ARIA Albums Chart, and #43 on the German Albums Chart, plus #5 UK Rock Albums and #10 USA Current Hard Music Albums. Rise Radiant has registered over 5 million streams on Spotify to date, and has received fantastic reviews worldwide, with Prog Magazine (UK) calling it “the best yet from Caligula’s Horse, a triumph of passion and performance.” Produced by the group’s Sam Vallen and mixed by the esteemed Jens Bogren (Opeth, Devin Townsend Project, Leprous), Rise Radiant features lead single ‘Slow Violence’, plus 2 bonus track covers of the Split Enz song ‘Message To My Girl’ & Peter Gabriel’s ‘Don’t Give Up’, which also features a guest appearance by Lynsey Ward of Exploring Birdsong.

In 2024, the band will release their 6th studio album Charcoal Grace, and it combines raw rockpower with immense emotional depth.Charcoal Grace is borne of the static hopelessness that the pandemic forced upon the band and, indeed, much of the world, these past few years. It is an album reckoning with the experiences and outcomes of this time geared, ultimately, towards catharsis – moving towards a more hopeful future.

Caligula’s Horse proudly endorses Ernie Ball Music Man strings and guitars, Klotz, Mesa/Boogie, and Fractal Audio, Dingwall basses, Pearl Drums, Remo drum heads and VRATIM Drum Shoes.

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progressive
metal
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I Built the Sky

Based in Melbourne, Australia Rohan ‘Ro Han’ Stevenson has been releasing self produced instrumental guitar music under the name ‘I Built The Sky’ since 2012.

Ranging from complex riffs, shredding guitars, catchy melodic lead work through to intricate acoustic pieces, Ro has gained worldwide attention as one to watch among the modern guitar community.

Over the last few years Ro has transformed what was essentially a studio project into a fully fledged live band, the beginnings of which saw live shows supporting international acts including Between The Buried and Me, Chon, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Monuments, Polyphia, Plini, Intervals, Twelve Foot Ninja, Haken and more.

In 2017, Ro was invited to present a songwriting masterclass at Los Angeles based university Cal Poly Pamona.

Later in 2017, I Built The Sky toured Australia in support of album ‘The Sky Is Not The Limit’ followed by national support for Caligula’s Horse.

In 2018 I Built The Sky hit new levels with a sold out show supporting Twelve Foot Ninja, a sold out single launch for track ‘Celestial’ followed by 2 headline shows in New Zealand and a 23 date tour of Europe/UK with Caligula’s Horse and Circles which gained overwhelming reviews all round.

2019 saw the release of album ‘The Zenith Rise’ which charted at number 8 on Bandcamp (Metal) 13 on Australian Independent Albums (AIR) 20 on iTunes Australia (Rock) and 50 overall.

2020 saw Ro head to USA for the NAMM convention in which he performed across 3 days representing Bare Knuckle Pickups, leaving shortly after to tour Europe and Uk across 23 dates with Progressive Metal heavyweights Monuments.

Later in 2020 Ro released ‘The Fire Inside’ which featured friends Andy Cizek on Vocals, Andrew Scott on Drums and Sam Tan on Bass.

2021 saw a collaboration with long time friend Jake Howsam Lowe for an EP titled ‘Coalesce’. The EP features members of Intervals and The Omnific as well as world renowned guitarist Andre Nieri. Reaching #1 on Bandcamp across multiple categories, #3 on Australian AIR charts and number #39 on Itunes Australia the EP has been incredibly well received.

2022 has Ro heading back to UK to perform at Radar Festival and plans to release new album early in the year.

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metal
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Archspire

Archspire is a Canadian technical death metal band from Vancouver. They have released four studio albums and are currently signed to Season of Mist.
The band was formed in 2007 as Defenestrated, but changed their name to Archspire in 2009.[3] Members were singer Oli Peters (Oliver Aleron), guitarists Tobi Morelli and Dean Lamb, Bassist Jaron Evil (Jaron Good) and drummer Spencer Prewett. Singer Shawn Haché was with the band briefly but left to join Mitochondrion.

The band was signed to Trendkill Recordings and, in April 2011, released their first album, All Shall Align. It was recorded between May and December 2010 working with producer Stuart McKillop at The Hive Studio in Calgary.

In early 2013, Jaron Evil suffered a stroke at age 31.He recovered and briefly returned to the band, but left permanently in late 2013. He was replaced by Clayton Harder.

Also in 2013, Archspire signed with Season of Mist,and recorded a second album with Stuart McKillop, at Vancouver's Rain City Recorders. On February 2, 2014, the band released a single from their upcoming album, "Lucid Collective Somnambulation", and in April released The Lucid Collective.

In January 2015 the band announced they were seeking a permanent bass player as a replacement for bassist Clayton Harder, who left to study jazz guitar at York University. They asked interested parties to record a video of themselves playing an Archspire song (they suggested "Deathless Ringing"). On January 12, 2016, the band announced that they had selected Jared Smith to become their full-time bassist, and posted Smith's playthrough video of "Lucid Collective Somnambulation".

The band announced their third album Relentless Mutation and a single, "Involuntary Doppelgänger", on July 5, 2017. The album was released on September 22, 2017. At the Juno Awards of 2018, the album received a nomination for Metal/Hard Music Album of the Year.

In 2019, the band made tech news headlines when a duo of programmers called Dadabots created a neural network trained on Archspire's music to produce a non-stop stream of technical death metal based on the band's music; Dadabots also noted that Archspire's music produced the most consistent AI results, presumably because of the high tempo and technical machine-like nature of the songs. Archspire themselves also commented on the phenomenon, jokingly referring to themselves as robots.

Later that year, Peters and Prewett appeared in a cameo in the first episode of See; actor Jason Momoa is a fan of the band and asked Peters to coach him for a war cry technique.

On October 29, 2021, Archspire released their fourth studio album Bleed the Future. Three singles were released: "Golden Mouth of Ruin", "Bleed the Future", and "Drone Corpse Aviator". "Golden Mouth of Ruin" and "Drone Corpse Aviator" were accompanied by videos, with the latter being the first fully-produced video the band had made.The album was elected by Loudwire as the 16th best rock/metal album of 2021 and won the Juno Awards of 2022

Archspire has toured Canada, the US and Europe, played festivals such as Hellfest, and toured with Revocation, Obscura, Fallujah and Beneath the Massacre, among others.

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metal
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Supersuckers

The Supersuckers are an American rock band, formed in 1988, whose music ranges from alternative rock to country rock to cowpunk.[1] AllMusic describes the band as "the bastard sons of Foghat, AC/DC, and ZZ Top after being weaned on punk rock, unafraid of massive guitar riffs, outsized personalities, or pledging allegiance to sex, weed, and Satan with a wink and a nudge."[2]

Bassist/singer Eddie Spaghetti (real name Edward Daly) leads the band and is its only constant member. Their current lineup also includes guitarist Marty Chandler and drummer Christopher von Streicher. Their most recent album, Play That Rock N' Roll, was released in February 2020.

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metal
Classic Rock
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