–Red Collar and Hammer No More release records, but where?; Arlo, in May; big metal bills
-WTF with Durham bands and the mysterious CD release shows? Red Collar created a Facebook event invitation for the release show behind Pilgrim, its debut LP, over the weekend. The location? “Durham.” Hopefully they’re planning a show over near the Erwin Mills dye pool or something. Meanwhile, Hammer No More the Fingers has a two-day festival called “Viking Storm” listed for Durham April 3 and 4 on its MySpace page, but the band still hasn’t announced a lineup or a specific location (April 3: The Pinhook; April 4: Duke Coffeehouse). They did perform the festival’s theme song with Tooth’s James Guptill in a Durham basement Saturday night. It was awesome, like Amon Amarth (keep reading) yelling at indie rockers past and present.
-If you’d planned to see Arlo Guthrie at the Carolina Theatre for Valentine’s Day, you may have had a bit of heartbreak. “Arlo is ill and has temporarily lost his voice,” Guthrie’s booking agent, Mark Smith, said Friday via a press release. Guthrie will play Durham Tuesday, May 19. Old tickets can be exchanged for the new date, or the ticketholder can receive a full refund.
-While doing a little assigning at Scan world headquarters over the weekend, we discovered that Volume 11 Tavern added five pretty brütal bills to its calendar in the past several days:
March 17: Suffocation
April 23: Nachtmystium & Kylesa with The Haunted headlining
April 24: Napalm Death with Toxic Holocaust and Abigail Williams
April 29: Amon Amarth
June 23: Absu, Glorior Belli
Kylesa’s latest is a big move forward for the Southern heavyweights,and Absu’s made one of the year’s early great metal records. Amon Amarth did that last year (and, for some, Nachtmystium did too). These are all pretty big lands for the red-walled room at the edge of Garner.