Melbourne International Arts Festival and VICE films have joined forces to present an exclusive screening of Heavy Metal in Baghdad. But the action doesn’t stop there. To celebrate the widely acclaimed film about Iraq’s only heavy metal band, doom metal duo Black Cobra and local black metal crew Ruins will hit the stage after the screening for a very metal after party that will take place at Beck’s Rumpus Room on the 14th of October.

Heavy Metal in Baghdad is feature film documentary that follows the Iraqi heavy metal band Acrassicauda from the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 to the present day. Playing heavy metal in a Muslim country has always been a difficult (if not impossible) proposition but after Saddam’s regime was toppled, there was a brief moment for the band in which real freedom seemed possible, but that hope was quickly dashed as their country fell into a bloody insurgency. From 2003-2006, Iraq disintegrated around them while Acrassicauda struggled to stay together and stay alive, always refusing to let their heavy metal dreams die. Their story echoes the unspoken hopes of an entire
generation of young Iraqis.

To celebrate this film we will be throwing a party after the screening paying homage to all things METAL, featuring black metal band Ruins and doom metal duo Black Cobra (USA).

Black Cobra (USA) – Southern Lord recording artists Black Cobra who hail from the ‘City of love’ San Francisco, have been delivering the goods since 2002. Renowned for their super low-end sludge riffs and hard edge touring ethic, Black Cobra have created quite a name in the underground doom metal scene. Black Cobra are a duo featuring guitarist Jason Landrian and drummer Rafael Martinez, Raf also plays bass for Acid Kind, another Bay Area sludge metal favourite.

Ruins (AU) are a black metal band from Hobart, Tasmania. They blend an ominous dark-death metal dynamic amidst their powerful, menacing and melancholic, yet eerily seductive black metal style; with a venomous, and summoning vocal presence. The writing/recording nucleus of Ruins consists of guitarist/vocalist Alex Pope, formerly of the post-punk noise-rockers Sea Scouts; and drummer Dave Haley, currently also drumming with Psycroptic and Blood Duster. Both have also recorded and performed with The Amenta, and various other groups and projects over the last decade or so.
+ DJ Manticle.

Check out all the action at Beck’s Rumpus Room on Wednesday Oct 14th.

• Paramore – Brand New Eyes #1
• Pearl Jam – Backspacer #2
• Muse – The Resistance #3
• Alice In Chains – Black Gives Way To Blue #12
• AFI – Crash Love #16
• Grinspoon – Six To Midnight #23
• Philadelphia Grand Jury – Hope Is For Hopers #34
• Brand New – Daisy #40

Special congratulations to Sydney boys the Philly Jays for attaining such a high placing with their debut record!

Photo by Ryan Russell

The first Big Day Out line-up was unveiled today and it looks like we could be heading for another let down. Though, there are a couple of gems (hello, Mastodon) amongst the disappointment. Despite the fact the first announcement is really bland, the festival’s long running history means the potential is there for something spectacular, so here’s hoping for an amazing second announcement.

Just in case you missed it, here’s the bill thus far: Muse, Powderfinger, Lily Allen, Eskimo Joe, Groove Amarda, Grinspoon, The Mars Volta, Ladyhawke, Dizzee Rascal, Karnivool, The Temper Trap, Kasabian, Midnight Juggernaughts, Rise Against, Magic Dirt, Mastodon, Lisa Mitchell, The Horrors, Bluejuice, Calvin Harris, Kisschasy, The Decemberists, Tame Impala, Girl Talk.

We’re pretty stoked to be seeing Mastodon make their way back Down Under. The first and last time our prog heros came to Oz was to support Slayer back in 2007. Since then, they’ve dropped their newie Crack the Skye on us, which is still on high rotation in the Blunt office. Currently hard at work penning the soundtrack to Jonah Hex, the western/horror movie based on the DC comic series, Mastodon are one band you don’t wanna miss. You’ve been warned…

But for the rest of the line-up, well…meh. 2010’s line-up is merely a recycled one that’s lacking excitement. Granted, Muse will be a terrific headliner and put on one of the most amazing shows you will ever witness, but unless you’ve been living under one hectic rock, there’s been plenty of opportunities to see Muse around the traps – hell, they even came out twice in 2007!

But Muse aren’t alone. It seems as though The Mars Volta and Rise Against can’t go a year without trekking around our wide brown land, and didn’t Lily Allen come out earlier this year? Though, she reckons she’s retiring from music, so you might wanna get in before she makes good of her threat.

When I was a young-un, the first Big Day Out announcement is what we lived for. The festival was the undisputed champion when it came to pulling all the bands we were stinging to see. Before it became the bogan fest that it is today, the Big Day Out gave us the likes of Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Rammstein, Metallica, Blink-182, RATM, Smashing Pumpkins and Foo Fighters to name a few. The Big Day Out even found it’s way in the annals of music history when At The Drive-In infamously broke up at the festival in 2001. Yep, the Big Day Out was the staple festival in our music diets, and our annual pilgrimage was the highlight of summer.

So if the organisers decide to stop playing it safe and take risks like they did back in the good ol’ days, the potential is there to make 2010’s line-up something spectacular. But unless the Big Day Out has something epic up it’s sleeve to trump Soundwave – say Blink-182 for instance – 2010 is going to make for one disappointing year.

Down the corridor from the Blunt office sits a man known only by his real name, Daniel Findlay. By day, he edits children’s magazines. By night, he also edits children’s magazines because deadline is a state of mind mannnnn. To assist him in this process, he listens to a dangerously large amount of gangsta rap. So of course, when we were asked if Blunt would like to talk to Jay Z about his new record, The Blueprint 3, Dan was the man for the job. Here is his story with hip hop’s big cheese .

“Jay,” I say, “what’s up with your new joint?”

My time is up.

Thanks for that Mister Findlay. For the sensitive members of our reading public, read this before getting irate and mailing us letter bombs.

This is the greatest press release the world has ever seen.

SLAYER announces a special ONE TIME ONLY Australian show featuring their metal masterpiece REIGN IN BLOOD played in it’s entirety! Original, inspiring, searing and worshiped, Reign in Blood is the greatest metal album of all time. Be one of the lucky few to witness Slayer’s genre defining classic live in Australia. This is a full Slayer set, with Reign in Blood and more

Thu 15th October Big Top Luna Park Sydney Licensed All Ages
Tickets on sale 9am Wed 16th Sept from ticketek.com.au 132 849, Utopia Records 02 9571 6662, 1300 BIG TOP www.bigtopsydney.com

1. Terminator 2 – It’s the best fucking movie ever and it happens to have Arnie in it, even though Linda Hamilton could be technically buffer than him.
2. True Lies – It’s nice to remember the good old days when Tom Arnold had a career and you could jump from building to building on a horse you just met.
3. Conan The Barbarian – no shit, Arnie calls some chicks “sluts” (well they are prostitutes), laughs at someone raping a llama and then punches a camel in the schnoz. Don’t believe me?!
4. Kindergarten Cop – More bad catchphrases and a really unbalanced comedy that mixes kids with brutal machine gun deaths – total Arnie.
5. Total Recall – I’m pretty sure it has boobs in it and someone’s head explodes.

1. Commando - Arnie punches the shit out of pretty much every one, including the gayest Australian bad guy ever.
2. Last Action Hero - Arnie punches the shit out of the fourth wall
3. Terminator 2 - Arnie punches the shit out of the future
4. Total Recall - Arnie punches the shit out of Phillip K. Dick
5.  Conan the Barbarian - Arnie punches the shit out of a camel.

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1. T2

2. Twins

3. Last Action Hero

4. True Lies

5. Universal Soldier (close enough)

1. Predator – So many future politicians, so many machine guns and the cool bits where the Indian guy goes tribal, Jesse Ventura cuts the tree down with bullets and Predator kills the scorpion
2. Commando – “Let off some steammmm” and assorted cracking one liners
3. Terminator – Killing cops is bad ass. Like that band Millions Of Dead Cops.
4. Terminator 2 – All round awesomeness even though Linda Hamilton sucks.
5. True Lies - Total Recall gave me nightmares. And that movie Eraser was retarded.

With Architects recently tearing up Australian venues supporting the Parkway Drive DVD tour and rocking a brutal headliner at Hermann’s in Sydney, we thought it was about time to take a closer look at the UK metalcore powerhouse.

Rocking this hard hasn’t been easy. Before the Brighton outift settled as Architects a few name changes proceeded a lineup change caused by the rigors of life on the road. This gave them a shaky start building a following and the long shadow cast by the monolithic Bring Me The Horizon meant success has been slow going for the Architects.
With two albums under their belt before settling into a deal with Century Media, Hollow Crown hit in January this year and showed a band maturing into their sound and one that has found their stride on the road.

A three part video blog starting here posted on the band’s Youtube channel gives a half-arsed insight into the process the Architects went through to push ahead of their previous releases while retaining the brutality they have been building their reputation on.

Fans of BMTH will find a lot to like on Hollow Crown, and might even come to enjoy the more skillful musicianship on the new Architects joint. Fans of their previous effort “Ruin” who haven’t checked it out yet might take some time to get used to the cleaner sound on vocals but will enjoy the slicker production.

A US tour with Everytime I Die and Bring Me The Horizon this year, and headlining the Never Say Die tour around Europe make Architects the metalcore band to watch as 2009 draws to an end.
Get into it!

Ladies and gentlemen, midgets and sneaks, we present…. the Blunt magazine website! Sure, it only took us a few years but slow and steady something something.

Anyway, feel free to have a poke around. Have your say on the forum via a lovely discussion or burning the shit out of someone, check out the extra pieces from exclusive Blunt interviews that we couldn’t fit in the mag – this month they include Jona Weinhofen talking at length about Bring Me The Horizon and Brody Dalle discussing her post-Distillers project, Spinnerette. Reviews, giveaways, tour dates… hell, there is heaps!

As always, the real good shit is in the magazine. Issue 83 is on sale tomorrow, Wednesday July 8th, with metalcore funnymen Killswitch Engage and beardy Canucks Alexisonfire gracing the cover.

See you in the pit!

PS. if you are a returning visitor…