GIFT GUIDE: Black Friday and Holiday Gifts for Rockers and Metalheads 2023


 

We are back for another year of our list of what to get the music lover that already has everything? Find out with our handy 2023 Black Friday and Holiday Gift guide For Rockers and Metalheads. Check out all the links below to support bands, labels, festivals, record stores, and other small and local businesses this year for Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. And don’t forget to donate to some worthwhile charities on Giving Tuesday!

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GIFT GUIDE: 2021 Black Friday and Holiday Gift Guide For Rockers and Metalheads


What to get the music fan that has everything? Find out with our handy 2021 Black Friday and Holiday Gift guide For Rockers and Metalheads. Check out all the links below to support bands, labels, festivals, record stores, and other small businesses this year.

Continue reading


Zakk Wylde’s Black Label Society Shares New Video Teaser


“Black Label Society is up to something,” says the ominous message across BLS’s social media. The band has shared a new trailer teasing something in the works from Zakk Wylde’s primary gig outside of Zakk Sabbath, future live gigs with Ozzy, and his solo work, with the reveal on April 21st, 2021. The teaser features the song “Suicide Messiah” from 2005’s Mafia album. The last BLS album released has Grimmest Hits and Zakk released a solo album Book of Shadows II (eOne Music) and a Black Sabbath tribute record with Zakk Sabbath, the Billboard-charting Vertigo via Magnetic Eye Records.

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Zakk Sabbath’s Black Sabbath Tribute Album Enters the Global Charts Without Streaming



Zakk Sabbath, led by Black Label Society and Ozzy Osbourne shredder Zakk Wylde, has an unlikely hit on their hands. Released by the great label Magnetic Eye, known for sick bands, tons of stoner doom original releases, and tribute albums, Vertigo, is a tribute to Black Sabbath’s historic debut album which invented heavy metal and doom metal and turned 50 in 2019. The album, released only in physical versions and without online streams still ranked worldwide on the charts, due to physical sales (Deluxe CD vinyl). The label issued a statement on the release in light of charting., which you can see below. Zakk Sabbath also includes legends of rock and metal such as bassist Blasko (Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Zombie), and drummer Joey Castillo (Danzig, Queen Of The Stone Age, Bloodclot),

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Magnetic Eye Founder Reflects on Nine Years As a Label


Magnetic Eye Records (MER Records) founder Mike Viteli has sent out a message reflecting on nice years as a label and thanking the fans for their support. The label recently held a Day of Doom Showcase at Saint Vitus Bar in Brooklyn, celebrating the label. Coverage is coming soon for event by Ghost Cult. Check out this message from Mike and all the cool things co,ming up next for the label for the rest of 2019, 2020 and beyond. Continue reading


The Nopes – Nectar of the Dogs EP


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If your vision of California rock n roll begins and ends with lap dancers on the Sunset Strip, riding your steel motorcycle into the romantic sunset or worrying about dockside industrial relations, then California punk upstarts The Nopes are about to light a bomb under your preconceptions.

Nectar of the Dogs (admittedly, a decent play on words), out now via Magnetic Eye, is five songs of sonic terrorism it’s acidic, acerbic, scabrous punk rock which, if he is listening, Bob Mould should be getting on the phone to his lawyer about as it sounds like his old band, Husker Du. Wait: check that. It sounds exactly like Husker Du – from the layer upon layer of guitar distortion, some of it amp-led, some of it studio twiddling, this is college rock à la 1985 writ large. Or, as Bob might have it, large writ.

I hope he’s not that grumpy though. He needn’t be. This is an EP full of piss and vinegar, in the nicest possible way. Nectar of the Dogs is eight minutes (yes, you did read that correctly) of furious, life-affirming noise. From the opening bars of ‘Matinee at Market’ to the closer, ‘Jingle Berries’, this is the aural equivalent of falling downstairs drunk- bangs, crashes, wallops and a big shit-eating grin whilst it’s all happening.

If you care about this sort of thing, you might be interested to know that production comes from those guys who twiddled knobs for Deafheaven and their début album Sunbather (Deathwish, Inc.). Whether this matters or not, I couldn’t tell you. What I can tell you though is Nectar of the Dogs is a punk record that genuinely sounds punk. Amen to that.

 

7.0/10

The Nopes on Facebook

MAT DAVIES