Metal News.

* On Sat 17 Nov, there'll be a licenced all-ages show at the Magill Club (Uren St, Magill) featuring Double Dragon, Truth Corroded, In the Burial, A Red Dawn and Left by the Wake, the last of whom will be giving away copies of their new four-track demo, 'Hard as Fuck.' Doors open at 7 PM.

* On Sun 18 Nov, there'll be an all-ages show at the Crown and Anchor Hotel featuring Murder Hill, Locura, Burial and Sonic Euphoria. Doors open at 5 PM.

* Locals Quasar will play their final shows for 2007 this month, appearing at the Lizard Lounge on Fri 16 Nov with Victoria's Urgrund and locals Juggermath, Intended Victim and Hatred Slave, and at The Crib (a new venue that's part of the Earth Complex) with Altars and Art in Exile on Fri 30 Nov. In addition to their debut full-length, 'Tales of Arcana,' the group also have T-shirts out in both black and, for a limited time only, grey.

* On Sat 1 Dec, Northern Metal Madness will return to Elizabeth's Northern Sound System with a big licenced all-ages show featuring Tidal, Skintilla, Taunt, Absinthe Betrayed, Left by the Wake and new band McGowan Street Murder, as well as a barbecue. Doors open at 6 PM.

* Black Orchid, the new local band formed from the remnants of Chalice, are currently putting the finishing touches on their debut EP, 'Inertia.' The group (whose lineup also includes a Melbourne-based vocalist by the name of Abby Skye) say the EP should be out early next month, and liken the material on it to that of groups like Nightwish and Within Temptation.

* In a tragic piece of news, Witold Kieltyka (aka "Vitek"), the drummer for Polish technical death metal band Decapitated, has died aged 23 as a result of a road accident. Vitek and the rest of the band, along with another Polish outfit called Crionics, were on tour at the time of the accident which occurred in Gomel, a city in the former Soviet republic of Belarus that lies near that country's border with Russia. The accident (thought, though not yet confirmed, to be the fault of the band's driver) occurred when the band's tour bus collided with a truck carrying wood, and resulted in both Vitek and band vocalist Adrian Kowanek (aka "Covan") sustaining serious head injuries. Various members of Crionics were also hurt, suffering broken bones and lacerations. Despite efforts to save him, Vitek passed away in a Moscow hospital; Covan, on the other hand, has since been moved to a hospital in Poland where he's said to be in a stable condition and showing signs of improvement. The future of Decapitated remains uncertain at present.

* That lovable lunatic of heavy metal, King Diamond, is reportedly feeling pretty miserable right now thanks to a herniated disc, an injury he fears may prevent him from doing some tours of the US he had planned for next year. Describing the pain of the injury (which could take up to a year and a half to heal fully) as like a "super-bad toothache or earache" or having his leg "set on fire," he said that on the morning he first experienced it, "had I not lived on the ground floor in a house, I would have jumped out the window."

* Finland's Lordi, the winners of last year's Eurovision Song Contest, got a taste of the less desirable side of touring the US when a bunch of nutters, reported to be drug addicts, took shots at two of their entourage and robbed a couple of fans after a show the group did in Louisville, Kentucky. The teenage felons struck when a group of fans were being escorted to the band's tour bus; rocking up in a stolen van, they robbed the two fans in question at gunpoint, and fired at the group's manager and bodyguard when those individuals fled with the rest of the fans. Fortunately, no one was hit.

* For this column's old band plug (which replaces the obscure band plug for the time being), I've decided to look at Nocturnus, a technical death metal band from Tampa, Florida. Nocturnus existed on and off in various incarnations from 1987 to 2002, their most productive period arguably the first few years of the nineties when they released their now-classic (though sadly hard to find) debut full-length, 'The Key,' and its follow-up 'Thresholds'. Renowned for their use of keyboards (which often gave their music a decidedly trippy quality) and science-fiction-themed lyrics (which were particularly prevalent on 'Thresholds'), the band had a "core" of three members - Mike Davis, Louis Panzer and Sean McNenney - founder Mike Browning having been dumped after some Machiavellian manoeuvring on the part of various other members. Their memory lives on thanks to a Myspace fanpage, www.myspace.com/nocturnus1.

James Brazel (jbr09171@bigpond.net.au)