First in Flight. 48th in Education. 203rd in Rock.

Well, at long last I’m back home in NC with no cloud of unfinished business in Los Angeles hanging over my head.  And let me say, with no disrespect to any of my good friends in CA, that it is great to be back.  I’m ready for fall, the leaves, the cold – all of it.  The next two months or so are hard to beat in my neck of the woods.  If you’re not here, you should visit.  We have an air mattress, even.  I’ll make omelets.  It’ll be good.

Now then, on to the music.  You know what Mondays are for by now so today brings three more face-peelers, who in this case all hail from the great state of Jesse Helms.  North Carolina’s not really known as a metal state.  Granted, I’m no expert on this subject but the only NC metal band I can think of to have any sort of national success prior to the year 2000 is Corrosion of Conformity.  Not long after moving to Asheville in 2006 though, I learned that not only was there another young metal band from NC making some small waves nationally but lo and behold they were actually from Asheville, as well.  This is surprising mostly because Asheville’s musical tastes tend to range from hippie jam bands to hippie jam bands.  I haven’t looked at the schedule, but I can pretty well guarantee that someone from Govt. Mule or Rusted Root is probably playing somewhere in town at any given moment of any given day.  So here comes this band Sanctity and they’ve got a deal with metal monsters RoadRunner Records and they’re opening up for the likes of Trivium, Gojira, Dragonforce, Megadeth, and Machine Head.  What???  See, I’m still surprised.  Here’s the vid for their song “Beneath the Machine.”

I’m not the biggest fan of that song, but still – good for Sanctity.  Also, it’s kind of fun hearing a song that seems to be inspired by Asheville’s tattoo fetish.  (I think there are more tattoo parlors in town than there are members of Govt. Mule, Rusted Root, Phish, and the Grateful Dead combined)  Unfortunately, the news on the street is that Sanctity has seen some recent personnel changes which include the replacement of their red-headed frontman.  Replacing a singer is always difficult, especially one who was featured as prominently in a video as this one was.  They’re a young band though with only one album under their arms, so maybe they’ll make the leap.

Next is a band from Chapel Hill called Valient Thorr that reader Rockadeas drew my attention to recently.  Music aside, they seem a little hoky to me – they all have stage names like Lucian Thorr and Voiden Thorr and their fans are apparently called “Thorriors.”  Of course, if you’re in a band that has enough fans that there’s a word created to describe them then I guess you must be doing something right.  Musically, they seem to be a little hit and miss to me.  There’s an obvious Motorhead influence here (not just in the songs but also in the choice of sleeveless attire) which didn’t work for me in the protest-by-numbers song “Exit Strategy” but kind of rocks in this one called “Man Behind the Curtain.”  I like the sense of humor here, too.  Dig the guitar toss:

Last, I thought I’d just give some spotlight to a local band I stumbled upon through MySpace called Kings of Prussia that are more to my tastes than the two bands above.  If you’re familiar with Pelican or Isis or Red Sparrowes or Russian Circles then you’ll recognize similar elements in what Kings of Prussia are going for.  That said, I dig everything I’ve been able to hear from these guys and think there’s enough originality in the mix to help them stand out just a bit from the rest of the instrumental herd.  I haven’t seen them live, but check out Kings of Prussia play this tiny record store in town called Static Age.  I’m pretty amazed they managed to sound this good in such a small space and I like their trippy video skills (just don’t call me a hippie).  Here’s the song “Miami.”

For more info on NC’s finest, hit the links below.  Back tomorrow with something different.

Sanctity

Valient Thorr

Kings of Prussia