An email came through the PR wire about an event at SXSW in Austin called Full Metal Texas. Pretty tough sounding, right? You’d almost expect Vinnie Paul to show up or something. Then I looked at the lineup.

Now, believe me, I’m hardly one to go in for the whole, “You dang kids don’t even know what metal is these days blah blah blah thing.” Not because I think it’s untrue, I just don’t care. But wouldn’t you think with something called Full Metal Texas the bands should at least be from the state in the name of the event? Doesn’t that just make more sense?

Aside from not being a fan of bands like Darkest Hour or Iwrestledabearonce, the whole thing just doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s nice to see Naam on a bill with some bigger acts, but Naam is from Brooklyn and Texas has an extremely fertile metal underground. Why not give some of those bands a chance to shine?

Let’s say we took Howl (Rhode Island), Amarna Reign (Indianapolis), Your Demise (UK), Lions Lions (Boston) and Iwrestledabearonce (Shreveport, Louisiana) off the bill. Here are six bands from Texas who could provide suitable replacement:

1. Solitude Aeturnus (Arlington)
2. Las Cruces (San Antonio)
3. Kin of Ettins (Dallas)
4. The Roller (Austin)
5. Elliott’s Keep (Dallas)
6. Orthodox Fuzz (Fort Worth)

There. You’ve got some bigger bands, a local hipster act who will bring out the cool kids, and plenty of underground fare that deserves to be noticed. And that’s not even getting into the super-stoner stuff like Wo Fat, Superheavygoatass or Blood of the Sun. I guess it’s a good thing there’s the Dallas Doom Daze fest to make sure this stuff gets out there, since no one else seems to want to. Anyone who winds up at Full Metal Texas, I hope you have a great time, but for me, it gets a big “meh.”

Tags: Texas

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 11:50 am and is filed under Whathaveyou. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.