Happy to report that 23 copies of Clamfight‘s I vs. the Glacier have been pre-ordered as of this post. If you haven’t had the chance to put yours in yet, please head over to the Maple Forum Bigcartel store and get your Paypal grooving. They’re going quick and as we get closer to the January 22, 2013, release date, I don’t think that’s gonna stop anytime soon.

Reviews have started to come in as well and, unsurprisingly because the record kicks ass, they’re awesome. Thanks to Axis of Metal and HeavyHardMetalmania for taking on this beast. I’m stoked to see what everyone else thinks as the official release approaches. I feel like these songs are so densely packed that they’ll catch a lot of people off guard. Clamfight walk a fine balance of a couple different kinds of metal — stoner, thrash, sludge, doom, etc. — and make a lot of really hard shifts sound really easy. Hopefully, whether you’re writing a review or not, you agree once you hear the record.

And as for that — actually hearing it — the kind souls at Stereokiller have put up the track “Sandriders” for streaming, which, thanks to the wonders of embed technology, you can hear on the player below. Check it out:

Thanks again to everyone who’s helped spread the word about Clamfight‘s I vs. the Glacier one way or another, and even more to everyone who’s put an order in so far. Make sure you get yours while the getting’s good by pre-ordering at the Maple Forum store.

Click here to go to The Maple Forum store.

The fifth release on The Obelisk’s in-house label The Maple Forum, New Jersey riff-thrashers Clamfight will draw forth I vs. the Glacier on Jan. 22, 2013. I know we’re still a ways off from that, but I firmly believe that when 2013 is over, Clamfight‘s epic second album will stand not only among the year’s strongest releases, but also perhaps one of the greatest cultural moments Western Civilization has yet produced. Needless to say, if that doesn’t turn out to be the case, I’ll be severely disappointed.

Bill Shakespeare, George Carlin, Black Sabbath, Shatner and Clamfight. I’m dead fucking serious.

I have 95 copies of the album to sell, and they’re up for pre-order now. Each Clamfight pre-order comes with a handwritten thank-you card (not pictured because I haven’t bought them yet, but they’ll be nice) [PLEASE NOTE: Due to the volume of pre-orders, I had to can the thank-you cards. Not that I appreciate your order any less — quite the opposite — but I’ve only got so many hours to fill these things out.] and a couple of the brand new Obelisk stickers with the octobeliskopus design by Skillit, as seen in the site’s header. They are $10 domestic American and $12 international, shipping included, and available to purchase at The Maple Forum Official Store.

All pre-orders will ship out Jan. 10, some 12 days ahead of the release date, to make sure everyone who ordered ahead of time gets the record early, and if I wound up having to write out 95 thank-you notes, well, that would just be awesome as far as I’m concerned. Maybe if they all go that quickly I’ll ship them out before the New Year hits to celebrate or something. Just floating ideas.

In another fit of “let’s try awesome,” I’ve also cut the price on the HeavyPink 7″, the fourth release on The Maple Forum. As you can see in the store, it’s now just $8 domestic/$12 international.

Thank you for your continued support of The Obelisk and of The Maple Forum. It means more than I have words to say.

And in case none of the other links did the job, click the album cover to buy:

First thing’s first: As one of the two presenting parties for the show — the other being BrooklynVegan, whose promotional assistance was massively appreciated for this weekender tour — I probably shouldn’t even be reviewing it at all. On the other hand, however, Black Pyramid, Kings Destroy and Clamfight rule, and after plugging the living crap out of it beforehand (see here, here and here), it seems like I’d be leaving the story unfinished without some kind of wrap-up. I felt a little bit like I was going to my own birthday party.

It was the first night of a three-gig weekender, at Union Pool in Brooklyn. The other two shows, Saturday and Sunday, were in Rochester and Allston, Mass., but this one had the added bonus of being free, so all the better. Yeah, C.O.C. and Royal Thunder were playing down at the St. Vitus bar the same night, but though that provided a bit of pre-show anxiety, the crowd was by no means lacking for any of the bands. Even as Clamfight got going, the room had plenty of people in it, for which I was thankful.

I’d shown up to the venue early to deliver the NJ/Philly-based outfit their I vs. the Glacier CDs, due out for release on The Maple Forum on Jan 22. It wasn’t long before they were out on the merch table, so hopefully a few people got early copies, which is always awesome. They got going circa 9:30PM and delivered a set of their epic riffy thrash. Their set was almost entirely new songs — that would prove to be a theme throughout the night — with “The Eagle” as a highlight alongside the slower, more languid guitars of “River of Ice,” which guitarists Sean McKee and Joel Harris made all the groovier while drummer/vocalist Andy Martin slammed his drums so hard he collapsed his floor tom and broke every stick he brought with him for the three shows, leaving Louis Koble‘s steady bass to the task of holding the songs together.

Martin, who has been occasionally known to throw up the night’s alcohol on stage but was doubtless pacing himself for the weekend ahead on Friday, has emerged as a solid frontman presence in the band, despite being behind the drums. He plays with charisma and the shouts and screams he lets loose feel like cruelties directed at the microphone. The band would do well to push his kit more to the front of the stage — not necessarily with anyone behind, but playing more on a lateral, à la Weedeater — and give their set even more of an unhinged atmosphere. As it was, they more than gave a favorable impression to the crowd, and capped off with “Stealing the Ghost Horse,” which also closes I vs. the Glacier and is arguably the most expansive Clamfight song yet, with a sense of drama to offset some of the brashness found elsewhere and a one-man clean/harsh call and response from Martin that’s as memorable live as it is on the album.

This was the first time I’d seen them since being delivered the master for I vs. the Glacier and knowing the songs better just made their set more fun to watch. McKee is relatively understated on stage — well-headbanged hair often obscuring his face entirely — but standing alone to Martin‘s left, he tears into a slew of killer solos, while Harris and Koble keep the riffs flowing on the other wise. Their live dynamic is beginning to come into its own. There are kinks to be worked out — more shows will help — but the potential remains strong and they did right by their new songs, as did Brooklyn’s own Kings Destroy, who turned the lights low and played cuts off their new record, the title of which I’m pretty sure I’m not at liberty to reveal.

I’m not aware of any album title, nor would I be at liberty to disclose any such title were I aware of its existence. Turn your head and cough. Ha.

As if the lighting at Union Pool needed to be any more challenging to my novice-ass picture-taking, Kings Destroy basically played in the dark but for a projection of what looked like shards of light that cut through. Their new songs — the likes of “The Toe,” “Decrepit” the more upbeat “Casse-Tête” and “Storm Break” — are a distant cry from where their first album, And the Rest Will Surely Perish (also a Maple Forum release, fancy that), once came. Part of that has to be due to the departure of bassist Ed Bocchino as a songwriting factor, but if it’s guitarists Carl Porcaro and Chris Skowronski coming up with the guitar parts around which this current batch of material is based, the results are intricate, complex and more and more atmospheric. I’m not about to decry the first album — I wouldn’t if I could — they’ve just flipped the formula on its head and as a result are less tied to genre stylistically.

They’ve also become a force on stage. Union Pool isn’t a huge room, but neither is it small, and that’s how the five-piece made it look, bassist Aaron Bumpus, drummer Rob Sefcik and vocalist Steve Murphy delivering a pro-grade run through a well-constructed set of their latest, the chaos all the more palpable for the fact that it was basically happening in the dark. The band all around has grown from their time on stage in Europe and the US, Skowronski and Porcaro keeping individual identities in a wash of tone and feedback, Murphy cutting through the morass, Bumpus touching on creative fills that just hint at the mountain of talent on which he seems to stand, while Sefcik‘s propulsive thunder proved no less weighted fast or slow. Their new stuff runs a risk of throwing some people off who perhaps expect a direct port of the straightforward side of the debut, but they’re on the way to mastering their aesthetic, and the direction they’re headed in is rich and progressive in a way that they’ve barely hinted at being to this point.

So yeah, by the time they finished with the creepy awesomeness of “Turul,” the first two bands of the night had me in a full-on nerdout. I can admit it. I wasn’t exactly going for impartiality here to start with, just trying to let you know how it went down. And if I wasn’t a fan of the bands, I probably wouldn’t have signed on to release their stuff on The Maple Forum, so if you have to take the review with a grain of salt, well, fine.

A note about the hazards of no cover charge: As Kings Destroy were wrapping up, Guy Who Clearly Just Wandered In saw me standing by the side of the stage in front of Black Pyramid drummer Clay Neely‘s kit and asked if I was in a band. It’s not an unreasonable suspicion — black t-shirt, jeans, long hair, beard; I’ve got the uniform. Now, I don’t want to go around making unreasonable assumptions about the behavior of others, but with the stickers on his $500 leather jacket, the crazed look in his eyes, dual-blonde accompaniment and “I’m everybody’s best buddy and the life of the party” demeanor, I had no choice but to presume he was on cocaine.

This is not an unreasonable assumption to make about anyone on a Friday night in either the Manhattan or Brooklyn boroughs of New York City, but I think that given the evidence — circumstantial though it is — I wasn’t necessarily in the wrong for being on my toes. I told him that, no, I wasn’t in the band, and that Neely, standing next to me, was their drummer. Sweat running down from the well-tended crop of spiky hair on his head, he persisted, as though I was simply obscuring the fact that I was in a band, indeed the band that was playing next, and we were just involved in some kind of playful joshing. No sir, I insisted, I’m not in a band, not in that band. Finally, and in a sterner tone that was not quite a yell but nonetheless definitely the “daddy voice” I’ve put on while scolding my dog for chasing a squirrel toward the road, I told him, “Dude, I’m not in that band. I’m just weird looking. I promise you,” and walked away to watch the end of Kings Destroy‘s set. So to the hazards of no cover: You ne’er know who’s gonna walk in.

It turned out — much to his surprise — that I wasn’t in Black Pyramid. Neely, bassist Dave Gein and guitarist/vocalist Darryl Shepard (who killed it just six days prior performing as Blackwolfgoat at the Small Stone Boston showcase) were in Black Pyramid, and no sooner were they set up and ready to go than were they laying waste to everything in their path, including the room, which by this point was fairly well packed out. Up front were a few headbangers — a rarity for New York anything — and the band’s energy fed off their own as they led off with “Stormbringer” and then went into “Aphelion” from their 2012 split with Odyssey, the first studio cut with Shepard‘s vocals and guitar, its axe-wielding groove making it an immediate highlight.

There were a few new cuts in the set from Black Pyramid‘s next album, which was finished being recorded only hours before the band pulled up to play Day Four of this year’s SHoD, and it’s worth noting how much more at home Shepard seemed on the material he helped compose. He stepped into kind of an awkward situation when he joined the band late last year before the release of their second full-length, II, and though he’s done well to make the prior material his own — as “Stormbringer,” “Visions of Gehenna” and the finale “No Life King” showed — there’s a difference between his performance of the songs he adopted versus the songs he wrote. It’s not an easy thing to make someone else’s work yours — that’s why most covers suck — but what he brings to Black Pyramid is about 20 years of writing killer riffs, plus an ability to toss off embarrass-your-lead-guitarist solos like he was taking off a pair of shoes. He makes some of the older leads look easy to the point of silliness.

His vocals on both new material and old fit the songs excellently, though, and he, Gein and Neely were as tight as I’ve ever seen Black Pyramid, including at Roadburn 2011, which if it wasn’t their prior apex had to be close to it. I’m hardly objective in their case either, even if I haven’t released anything of theirs, but the crispness of their presentation made me look forward all the more to when I might get the chance to hear the studio versions of the new tracks and give them an overly-worded track-by-track review, which no doubt will also carry with it a disclaimer disavowing any and all critical credibility. But it’ll be fun, and that’s what matters.

Ditto that for this gig. It was a great time. All three of these bands are made up of killer dudes, and when I rolled out of Union Pool and headed back to Jersey, I was more than a little wistful at the thought of following the tour up north to Rochester, but it wasn’t to be. Instead, I rolled into my humble river valley at around 1:30AM, found that the internet had finally come back on after Hurricane Sandy, and spent the remainder of the evening — all 25 minutes of it — beginning to chip away at the weeks of neglected emails that I hadn’t had the chance to answer. Some you win, some you lose. I felt lucky to see these three acts on the night I did, and hopefully they get together and do it again.

More pics after the jump.

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Yes, the rumors are true. Those soft rumblings you’ve heard from the ground, the whispers on the wind. Clamfight‘s second album, I vs. the Glacier, has been giving a Jan. 22, 2013, release date via The Maple Forum. The discs are back from the pressing plant, and they’re just sitting in my office waiting to go out. We’ll have preorder info up in the next couple weeks.

And before we get to January, the band are going to be breaking their asses to promote. There’s talks of a video, track streams, late-night talk show appearances, etc., and to help them in their quest for riffy thrash domination, the four-piece have enlisted the ultra-capable Earsplit PR, whose dedication to the cause and work with the likes of Neurosis, C.O.C. and EyeHateGod (among countless others) has rendered their expertise unfuckwithable. Clamfight are in good hands.

Earsplit sent the following announcement down (what else?) the PR wire:

CLAMFIGHT Prep New Album For Deployment

Mini-Tour With Black Pyramid, Kings Destroy Begins This Week

Riffmongering Westmont, New Jersey-based CLAMFIGHT has completed their second album, and are preparing it for deployment in early 2013, unless there is some truth to this Mayan calendar fiasco that is.

As with their impressive 2010 debut Volume I, the new opus, I Versus The Glacier, was recorded by Steve Poponi at Gradwell House Recording in Haddon Heights, New Jersey. The thundering nine-track ruckus that is I Versus The Glacier magnifies the signature CLAMFIGHT blend of sludge, thrash, and doom that, according to Doommantia webzine, “has more than enough groove to break down walls,” yet ventures into even more expansive and torrentially-infectious territory on the nearly fifty-minute album.

I Versus The Glacier will see release on January 22nd, 2013 exclusively through New Jersey-based The Maple Forum, the official label imprint born of admired webzine/music community The Obelisk. In coordination with BrooklynVegan, The Maple Forum is co-sponsoring a weekend warrior tour kicking off in Brooklyn this Friday and plowing through Rochester, New York and Allston, Massachusetts, uniting CLAMFIGHT alongside Kings Destroy (members of Killing Time) and Black Pyramid.

CLAMFIGHT Live Engagements:
11/09/2012 Union Pool – Brooklyn, NY w/ Kings Destroy, Black Pyramid
11/10/2012 Monty’s Krowne – Rochester, NY w/ Kings Destroy, Black Pyramid, Babayaga
11/11/2012 O’Brien’s Pub – Allston, MA w/ Kings Destroy, Black Pyramid
11/20/2012 Kung Fu Necktie – Philadelphia, PA w/ Thee Nosebleeds, Screaming Rattler

Additional live excursions are being devised for the coming weeks and will be announced as the album’s release date nears.

I vs. the Glacier Track Listing:
1. The Eagle
2. Sandriders
3. Shadow Line
4. I vs. the Glacier
5. Age of Reptiles
6. River of Ice
7. Mountain
8. Tower of the Elephant II
9. Stealing the Ghost Horse

http://clamfight.bandcamp.com
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Clamfight/248201303669
http://mapleforum.bigcartel.com

Once again, I doff my hat to the work of Sean “Skillit” McEleny, who just sent over this poster for the Black Pyramid, Kings Destroy and Clamfight “Annihilate All Weekend Long” weekender tour next month. You may know Skillit‘s stuff from, uh, scroll up, he did the header for this site, as well as from kickass shows and artists too numerous to mention in a post that’s just supposed to be about artwork. His site is here.

I wanna be friends with it:

Friday, 11/9 – Union Pool, Brooklyn, NY **FREE SHOW**
Saturday, 11/10 – Monty’s Krown, Rochester, NY
Sunday, 11/11 – O’Brien’s Pub, Somerville, MA

By way of band updates:

Kings Destroy will also be playing Nov. 2 at the St. Vitus bar in Brooklyn with Witch Mountain. Their new album is being mastered next week by Joe Lambert in Brooklyn, and will be out early 2013.

Clamfight are in Delaware this weekend with Wizard Eye and others. The latest on their new album is here. I can’t fucking wait for it to be released.

Black Pyramid kick ass. That’s not really news, but it’s true all the same.

Got home from work last night and found a big ol’ box of Clamfight CDs. It was enough to have made the workday worthwhile.

They’re geeerjus, as you can see in the totally natural, not-at-all-arranged picture above. I’m always stoked on everything The Maple Forum puts out, but Clamfight are friends going back years and years. We played shows together when they were barely a band, and I’ve only become more of a fan as they’ve grown into the unwieldy riff ‘n’ thrash monster they are now. I vs. the Glacier is going to stomp your face.

It’s a four-panel digipak. Here’s the full outside cover, with firehorses and scantily :

Here’s the inside cover with the disc:

And here’s a closer look at the cover:

We’re eying a January release. Stay tuned for pre-order info. Of course, the band might also have some copies with them on the upcoming Clamfight, Kings Destroy and Black Pyramid “We vs. the Weekender” tour, about which you can find more details here or here.

Clamfight know there’s nothing quite like a roadtrip, and that’s why — even as they prepare to hit the studio and put the finishing touches on their second album, Volume III (out this fall on The Maple Forum) — they’re headed down south with fellow mayhem-purveyors, Rukut, for a weekend of high-watermark bastardry. If you’ve yet to do so, be sure to see these charming rapscallions in the flesh.

Killer that I get news about Maple Forum bands on the PR wire now. Here’s the update that came in:

Philadelphia-area sludge thugs Clamfight are in the thick of recording their second full-length album, Volume III. After a long several days of laying down track after track of their groove-laden thunder at New Jersey‘s infamous Gradwell House Studios, the band have completed all of the rhythm tracks for the upcoming album and will return in August to hammer out the leads and vocals for the record, which will see release via The Maple Forum in the Autumn months.

In the meantime, the crew have confirmed several new local live attacks taking place this week, as well as a quick run of the Carolinas with New Jersey-based cohorts Rukut late this month.

Clamfight Live:
07/16 JR’s Bar Philadelphia, PA w/ Rukut, Blue Aside, Bitchslicer
07/17 Mojo 13 Wilmington, DE w/ Blue Aside, Lor, The Walking Ghost
07/29 DIVEbar Raleigh, NC w/ Rukut, The Black Tie Operation (free show!)
07/30 The House Simpsonville, SC w/ Rukut, Black Hand Throne

It was Saturday night, and after a quick stopoff at Vintage Vinyl, I made my way even further south on the Parkway to Long Branch‘s famed Brighton Bar. Once the centerpiece of the vibrant NJ stoner scene (on the wall are scrawled names like Monster Magnet, Lord Sterling, Halfway to Gone, among many others), I haven’t been there in a while that it wasn’t more or less empty. Clamfight, recently come aboard the good ship Maple Forum, were playing with some rapcore — there’s a word you don’t see every day — band and opening, so I figured it was well worth the drive to see them. And it was. A decent crowd, too.

Clamfight guitarist Sean McKee had promised me a demo tape of new material, and my favorite DIY duo in the world, Rukut, also handed me a CDR of new mixes (they weren’t playing but came out to support), so that was a bonus, but Brighton shows have a long history of starting late, and with a total three bands on the bill, Clamfight got going at about 10PM. It’s just one of the many ways in which the venue holds fast to rock traditions the rest of the world either forgot about or decided there was more money in ignoring. Don’t ask me which. Good fun, in any case.

This is probably the last time (or one of the last times, if not the last) I’ll feel comfortable writing about Clamfight in an editorial sense. They haven’t started recording their new album yet, and I listened to that tape and it rules, but in terms of reviews and stuff, it’s not something I can really do for a band I’m going to put out and claim — at least in my mind — any credibility. I don’t know. I was just glad to go to the show and hang out with friends.

Icing on the proverbial cake was that Clamfight killed. They played three songs from Vol. 1 and the rest was new material. Their mixture of stoner riffs and thrash aggression has only gotten more potent, it seems, and on the more recent cuts, “I vs. the Glacier” “The Eagle” and “Sandriders” (video below), they showed hints of a newfound diversity that wasn’t there on the first record. Frontdrummer Andy Martin even threw some clean vocals into “Stealing the Ghost Horse,” contrasting them with bastardly growls that cut in and out on a bad mic cable. The point got across anyway: the band is growing.

Both McKee and fellow guitarist Joel Harris played through Dual Rectifiers and Mesa cabs, and I don’t know if it was just the Brighton mix or what, but the thought occurred to me that I wanted more disparity of tone between them. There was plenty enough crunch to their sound — underscored by the well-pocketed bass work of Louis Koble — but their material has developed to the point where McKee‘s leads need to be able to separate themselves from Harris‘ rhythm tracks more, and when the two lock in on a huge riff, as they do with great regularity, it could hit even harder meshing different tones.

One man’s opinion. I know that equipment is a huge investment and establishing “a tone” takes years, but Clamfight are getting to where it’s time for them to do so. They’re more of a “real band” than they know.

And I guess that’s why I’m so excited to be working with them on The Maple Forum for their next record. Their songs still have that demo-band intensity to them, but they’re clearly past that stage in their growth. They’re more than capable songwriters — the cassette I got bears that out, as did the first album — and after seeing them integrate new songs into their live set, and be genuinely willing to try new things on those songs, I’m all the more stoked for what’s to come. It’s going to be a monster.

You can check out Clamfight here and see the video of “Sandriders” below. Apologies for the audio. I need to see if I can adjust the rec volume on that camera. Still figuring that whole thing out.