Metal News.

A last-minute reminder of a couple of shows. Firstly, there'll be an 18+ show at the Lizard Lounge on Fri 19 Oct featuring Order Of The Buzzard, Art In Exile, a new band called Altars, and Obdurate Seduction, the last of whom will be showcasing new material on the night. Doors open at 8:30 PM. The following night, there'll be an all-ages show at the Underground starting at 7 PM, and featuring Skintilla, Taunt, Burial, Sonic Euphoria and Hybrid Illusion.

On Fri 2 Nov Raven Black Night will be doing a show at the Enigma Bar, their first gig here since their return from a (successful) visit to Europe a few months ago. Supporting the band, who have undergone some more lineup changes, will be fellow locals Valhull and Synovee, and maybe a few others.

Iraq's Acrassicauda may take the stage at next year's Ozzfest if Vice Magazine co-founder Suroosh Alvi has his way. Alvi, who's been helping give the band a lot of publicity of late, also wants to secure them residence in a safe country, and get them into a "state-of-the-art" recording studio. If Acrassicauda do indeed get to play at Ozzfest, it'll be the second year in a row a band from an "exotic" country has performed at the prestigious festival, a Taiwanese black metal group called Chthonic appearing at it this year. On the subject of Chthonic, who also did a headlining tour of the US while they were there, it turns out their travel expenses were actually paid by their government (is this a first?), due to their outspokenness on the issue of independence for their island nation. So strongly did their message resonate with members of America's Taiwanese community that at least one of their shows attracted people in their seventies and eighties.

Sam Dunn, co-director and presenter of last year's documentary film 'Metal: A Headbanger's Journey', has made a follow-up movie entitled 'Global Metal', which will premiere in Bergen, Norway, on Thurs 18 Oct. The film will look at metal from some of the more unlikely parts of the world, examining, among other things, Indonesian death metal, Chinese black metal, and Iranian thrash metal; Israel's Orphaned Land and Melechesh are expected to feature in it. Dunn is already working on a third movie, a documentary on Canada's Rush.

Online television station Rockworld.TV is now showing a documentary entitled 'Murder Music', which looks at the history and evolution of black metal. While naturally devoting some time to the usual sensationalist stuff about various Norwegian artists' criminal activities, the documentary, which runs for about an hour, concentrates for the most part on the music itself. Many artists are interviewed, among them Dani Filth, Satyricon's Frost, and a couple of members of a truly bizarre seventies outfit called Black Widow. To view the doco, go to www.rockworld.tv.

The ever-changing entity that is Malevolent Creation has undergone yet another lineup change, with on-again, off-again drummer Dave Culross having departed to work on a whole range of other musical projects. In addition to contributing his talents to upcoming works by a variety of bands (among them James Murphy's Disincarnate), Culross will be playing in an as-yet-unnamed new group, all but one of whose other members have been involved with Malevolent Creation too (hmm, I wonder what they'll sound like?). Replacing Culross in Malevolent Creation will be Fabian Aguirre, an individual who, judging from some of the other bands he's played with, would appear to hail originally from Colombia.

A band from Florida called A Dank Season have complained that members of the local police force have been attempting to intimidate them after the release of their debut EP this year. Entitled 'Battery on a LEO [Law Enforcement Officer]', the EP has a cover depicting a police officer with a bloody head wound, while its title track condemns police corruption and brutality. Band members complain they were threatened by police officers after a recent show, and claim venues where they've played have also been harassed. For more information, and to hear some of the group's material (including the song that seems to have started all the trouble), go to www.myspace.com/adankseason.

To end this column with something a little different, I've decided to give a plug for a group who unfortunately seem to have become forgotten since their heyday. The group is Demolition Hammer, a thrash/death outfit from New York who enjoyed some success as a four-piece during the early nineties with a couple of albums entitled 'Tortured Existence' and 'Epidemic of Violence' - albums whose songs could be quite educational at times. The band underwent a radical lineup change for their next and final album, 'Time Bomb', dropping a couple of members and recruiting a new drummer. Unfortunately, 'Time Bomb' wasn't well-received, and what remained of the group dissolved soon after; to compound this tragic turn of events, their original drummer, Vinny Daze (a tattooist by trade), died in 1996 of globefish poisoning(!). A Myspace page has been set up in their memory; to check it out, go to www.myspace.com/skullfracturingnecrology.

James Brazel (jbr09171@bigpond.net.au)