thePULSEBy Steve Henricksen
introducing Trespass America, a newly-minted music festival set on revitalizing the metal scene with some of the most current and credible bands in hard rock/metal. A co-production with Trespass America and Metal Hammer, the biggest metal magazine in the U.K., the tour kicks off July 13 at the 1st BankCenter in Broomfield, Colorado, and will cover 31 cities in two months between July and August with stops across the United States. The shows lands in Worcester at the DCU Center on August 17. Tickets are on sale now; log onto www.trespassamerica.com for complete details.
Opening the show will be newcomers Battlecross, the most-played new band on the SiriusXM channel “Liquid Metal.” New Jersey monsters God Forbid, who just released the brand new album Equilibrium, will stir up the circle pits with new songs and hits spanning their long career. Deathcore masters Emmure are coming out swinging in support of their new album, Slave to the Game. Michigan’s Pop Evil will carry the torch of grassroots hard rock to the crowd, while the melodic guitar thrash of Trivium and the reunited lineup of metalcore legends and local favorites Killswitch Engage (welcome back, Jesse!) will bring a crushing intensity to Trespass America.
Headlining the power-packed Trespass America Festival is Five Finger Death Punch, the new heavy weight champs of the metal scene, with nine consecutive top ten radio hits, four Golden God awards, two certified Gold records (and a third in the making). Monstrous light shows and sold-out arenas have marked the path of 5FDP’s meteoric rise. In a few short years, the band knocked down the tightly shut gates of mainstream media and turned the non-believers into believers as they marched to bring a message from the underground.
As Five Finger Death Punch’s Zoltan Bathory, who helped spearhead the festival concept put it, “We will carry the flag into mainstream territory; we will trespass on their turf all across America. The combined power of Metal Hammer and all these bands enable us to make a statement, a really loud one. Heavy music wants its place back in the limelight, so get ready, because we are coming, and we are coming in numbers.”
“By bringing the Trespass Festival to North America,” said Metal Hammer‘s editor Alexander Milas, “we’re not only promoting the music we believe in, we’re investing in it. We’re now doing in America what we’ve done for years in Europe and the UK.” Indeed, Metal Hammer has a long history of flying the flag for the bands it believes in, and over the course of 25 years, has been involved with a number of events, most recently the Defenders Of The Faith tour that covered the spectrum of metal and helped support the music U.K. scene. Metal Hammer is partners with Bloodstock Open Air and Download Festival and has its very own Hammerfest festivals in the U.K. “It has become increasingly apparent to us that supporters of Metal Hammer stretch well beyond the U.K. Thanks to the iPad, American metal fans can now get the magazine at the same time U.K. fans do, but by taking on this tour, we’re moving beyond our physical borders.”
The idea for Trespass America came about as a way to bring heavy music to big venues across the country. Bathory explained, “When you walk through the Trespass America gate, you will be in a different territory, a new environment. You’re not just coming to see a band. It’s going to be a traveling circus that has all the attraction and excitement that creates an experience. We wanted to build the biggest stage we could and make this festival as visually unforgettable as possible, really give fans their money’s worth, give them an experience where they will want to say, ‘I was there.’ We also wanted to play as many indoor venues as possible so all bands on the bill, no matter how early they play, would have a full light show with full production. We want to make Trespass America a theme-park-thrill-ride for metalheads.”
With Five Finger Death Punch leading the charge, up-and-comers Battlecross, Pop Evil, and Emmure, metal vets God Forbid, and heavyweights like Trivium and Massachusetts sons Killswitch Engage all united under the Metal Hammer banner, the Trespass America Festival is definitely bound to set foot on the forbidden lawn of mainstream Rock-Culture.
Trespass America comes to the DCU Center on August 17.
www.trespassamerica.com
News about KSE!
For their upcoming sixth album, Massachusetts metal pioneers Killswitch Engage reunited with original singer Jesse Leach. Leach’s vocals and lyrics on 2002’s landmark Alive or Just Breathing are fan-favorite qualities and part of what helped put KsE on the map as one of the most important bands of the ’00s metal revival. Leach’s return to the fold is welcomed and anticipated by all involved, from the band members themselves to the fans. KsE burst onto the scene with the genre-defining Alive or Just Breathing, notching a Grammy nomination in 2005 for the title track from 2004’s Gold-certified The End of Heartache and following up that landmark album with the Gold-selling As Daylight Dies and an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” along with gracing the covers of countless metal and rock magazines around the world. Through the ’00s, KsE adopted a versatile, non-stop touring schedule. The band’s road history includes two treks on Ozzfest, stints on Warped Tour and Taste of Chaos, as they have that rare ability to straddle the line between the metal and alternative scenes by touring with Slayer and Mastodon as easily as My Chemical Romance and Underoath. The band’s DVD Set This World Ablaze also enjoyed Gold status, proving that KsE have the metallic Midas touch. They established themselves as one of the most successful bands to emerge from the so-called New Wave of American metal.
THIS JUST IN!!!
POP EVIL TO SUPPORT KORN, FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH ON THE SHIPROCKED TOUR 2012
POP EVIL has announced their participation in the recently announced SHIPROCKED TOUR 2012. GODSMACK & KORN are slated to headline, along with FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH, P.O.D., SEVENDUST, IN THIS MOMENT plus many more supporting. “We are very excited to be a part of this heavy weight line up of bands this year on Shiprocked. It’s going to be the Mother of all Cruises. Pop Evil is ready to set sail,“ says frontman Leigh Kakaty.
SHIPROCKED sets sail November 27th through December 1st 2012, For full details and to purchase tickets, go to their official website.
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