SSD (or SS Decontrol), the classic ’80s hardcore band, has a mini-documentary, Get it Away – A Short Film About SSD, to coincide with the reissue of their Get it Away album. This follows an SSD photobook and a reissue of another SSD album, The Kids Will Have Their Say. Watch the documentary below:
Metal Blade has a museum in Las Vegas for which one can purchase tickets. Label head Brian Slagel filmed a couple of tours of the museum and they’re up on YouTube. They’re titled “Metal Blade Museum Tour.” (The Punk Rock Museum is also in Las Vegas, but that’s another story.)
Voivod posted an entertraining video news update back in 2011. The “Voivod’s Optical Vortex” video was titled “Episode One” and there doesn’t seem to be an episode two. In the video, drummer Away talked about his signature series snare, which came and then went. Watch below:
Free samples are something that producers and musicians would be interested in, and The BBC has 33K of them in its archive, Meena Sears writes for Mixmag.
Heavy Metal in the GDR is an exhibit I was lucky enough to visit in Berlin earlier this year. It explores the paraphernalia of and life of metal fans in the ’80s and beyond. It’s a reminder that metal fans had it easy in the States compared to some other places in the world, and it’s worth checking out if you have the chance. And you can have a look by visiting the exhibition website.
Lo Sound Desert is a documentary about the California desert music scene from 2016 that I just found out about recently. I wonder if it pairs well with Desolation Center. Here’s the trailer:
John McEntee of Incantation is selling most of his CD collection on Facebook and eBay. He’s posting updates on what’s available on his Facebook page.
Death Reigns is an upcoming documentary about the Metal Devastation Festival in Tennessee. The trailer is below:
Pestilence has a sometimes-antagonistic relationship with its fans, and has very recently stirred the pot again with a social media post about metal album covers created with AI. The band was forced to change the album cover for one of its recent records, Levels of Perception, after the massive blowback the band received when the original AI art was revealed. (Pestilence is also receiving criticism from fans about the quality of the recording on this album, but that’s a separate issue.) The band has apparently received so much negative feedback from this social media post that the group has “limited who can comment on this post” on Facebook.
John Longstreth of the band Origin released an instructional drumming video called Drumming of a Madman: Experiments in Modern Metal Drumming. Drum nerds, check out the trailer:
Kristian Wåhlin is an artist that has created album covers for a bunch of metal bands, some of which are big ones. He exhibited at the December Darkness metal festival in Sweden in December 2024 and posted some photos of his event. Some of the covers will be instantly recognizable to metalheads that are into European death and black metal.
Rest In Peace
Darrell Creel, the guitarist for the Virginia band Abominog (and a few others), died this month. The band announced the news on Facebook.
Casey Chaos of the band Amen and other groups died in December. Laury Molloy has a few details at NME. He was a skateboarder before he turned to music.
Hades of the Chilean band Lucifer’s Hammer passed away this month. The band posted on Instagram that his life was taken “by a criminal.”
Lady Galore of Lords Of Acid died in December. She also was in My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult and worked on solo music as Cherrie Blue. The Express Tribune has more details.
Lucien Francoeur of Aut’Chose passed on in November at 76. He was considered the father of Quebec’s underground rock scene and was a poet as well. Eric Parazelli has the story at SOCAN.
Further reading:
There’s more posts about archives, both online and in museums, here at the blog.
And catch up on more music news roundups.
