Summer Slaughter Tour pt II
In our first feature of Summer Slaughter Tour 2010, we covered headlining acts Decapitated, The Faceless, and All Shall Perish. Today we are focusing on two other participants that should definitely be on your radar; The Red Chord and Cephalic Carnage.
To be honest, most reviews or mentions of the The Red Chord make my skin crawl. The band is often lumped in with the trolls of metal scene. You know the ones; the slew of bands on mainly west-coast metal labels that play host to the over-produced, generic sounding “extreme” bands whose works are riddled with played-out breakdowns and boring song structures that simply follow the path of their contemporaries. Not even the uber-production techniques used in the studio can save these bands from the lame-factor. You just can’t polish a turd. These bands hang out in the scene for an album release or two before dropping off the face of the Earth and are often accredited to the “deathcore” scene.
Unlike these aforementioned trolls, The Red Chord acted as a pioneer for what is now irritatingly referred to as “deathcore.” When Fused Together in Revolving Doors dropped in 2002, metal and hardcore fans had something fresh in hand. Metal critics around the globe hadn’t wiped there asses with the term “deathcore” yet. The hardcore scene was also entering the zenith of its resurgence. Things were looking up. The Red Chord toured with metal, hardcore, and death-metal bands alike for next several years. Melting crowds with their intense blend of death metal, grind, and hardcore, The Red Chord became a household name for most fans of extreme music.
While countless bands have unsuccessfully tried to emulate The Red Chord, the band has upped the ante with each new release. With four full-length albums under their belt, their third full-length album, 2007’s Prey For Eyes still holds it weight some of best metal releases of the past decade. Last October, The Red Chord broke onto the Billboard Top 200 with Fed Through the Teeth Machine. This latest release saw the band shift gears slightly as they picked up the tempos and abandoned some of the odd time changes that riddled their earlier works. Fed Through the Teeth Machine is an unrelenting ride down the speed-metal highway with blast beats and dense guitar work throughout. With hundreds upon hundreds of shows under their belt, expect The Red Chord to be a standout at the 2010 Summer Slaughter Tour.
We also wanted to give a shout-out to Cephalic Carnage in this Summer Slaughter feature. Cephalic Carnage have been going strong now for just shy of two decades. The band formed in the early 90’s in Denver, CO and they have not looked back. Employing old-school DIY ethics to their music, the band self-funded several tours in their early days before being picked up by mega-indie label Relapse Records. Over the Past 15 years, the band has toured with some of the most prominent metal and hardcore bands in the world including, Mastadon, Hatebreed, Dillinger Escape Plan, Brujeria, and Napalm Death, to name a few.
Cephalic Carnage’s musical style is attributed to many extreme genres and can never be pinned down into one simple classification. The band has been called deathgrind, experimental, grindcore, black metal, and even jazz-metal. The group rarely repeat themselves from album to album and has become more and more experimental as the years progress. The band often intertwines humorous tracks on their releases, heckling bands of the metalcore and black metal genres for their apparent self-importance. They even referred to their last run on Summer Slaughter as “The Summer Laughter Tour.” Cephalic Carnage released Xenosapienin in 2007 to widely positive critical reviews and Decibel magazine went on to call Cephalic Carnage, “The most innovative grinders on the planet!.”
The band has recently wrapped up recording their 5th full-length record, Misled By Certainty, which is to be released August 31, 2010 on Relapse Records. A recent press release had this to say about the forthcoming album, “Cephalic Carnage returns with the explosive new album Misled by Certainty, the long-awaited follow-up to their critically-acclaimed Xenosapien. Misled by Certainty heaps spasms of unpredictability onto their signature grinding death metal madness. The 50+ minute journey into metals most extreme realms see these veterans takes it to edge before pulling it back with ‘Repangea,’ perhaps their most sprawling and epic work to date.”
You can pre-order Misled by Certainty at the Relapse Store.
Check out the Official Trailer for The Summer Slaughter Tour 2010.
Related posts:
- Summer Slaughter Tour
- Cephalic Carnage – Misled by Certainty: Review
- All Shall Perish Live in Philly July 29 Exclusive Pictures
- Cephalic Carnage Interview Exclusive
- Maryland Deathfest – THE Summer metal party!
Tags: Cephalic Carnage, Death Metal, deathcore, Metal, metal fest, Summer Slaughter Tour 2010, The Red Chord, thrash
July 20th, 2010 at 3:30 am
[...] Cephalic Carnage are about to embark on the Summer Slaughter Tour 2010. This extreme metal fest is sure to see the band sampling these new tracks on the road with several of their shredding friends. For more on Summer Slaughter check out our Spotlight Feature I and II. [...]