Dec 6th 2011
The Flapper Presents; A Very Metal Christmas on Sunday 18 Dec
The breakdown, it's Christmas, it's the Sunday before, it's £3 adv... Christmas never sounded sooo good.
Entry: £3 advance tickets, £4 on the door
Doors: 6pm, first band kicks off at 6:30pm
UNDER BLACKENED SKIES return to the live scene after a break to rip you a new one before the year is out!
...support from THE HUNDRED HANDED, LEFT FOR RED and RISE OF MY EMPIRE
it will be a fancy dress event with a theme of evil christmas so get thinking! There will be a prize for the best costume on the night.
There will be a Christmas raffle on the night to win yourselves some free booze and some great merch from the bands (tickets for sale on the night)
Sept 15th 2011
THE HUNDRED HANDED will play second gig at the ASYLUM 2 in Hockley on Monday 19 September with WIZARD'S BEARD. See our Gigs page for details.
Aug 17th 2011
THE HUNDRED HANDED's first gig will be at the Flapper and Firkin in Birmingham on Friday 26 August. Also playing that night will be our good friends SLAB so there's good chance your ears will be ringing by the time you leave and for several days afterwards. See you there!
May 21st 2011 (Judgement Day)
Out of mutual love of extreme and progressive bands such as Isis, Mastodon, Neurosis, Baroness, Pelican et al, guitarists Mark and John decided to get together and jam, with Mark bringing along his Forest of Rust compadre, Dan, to play drums. The initial sessions went well, although it was immediately evident that some more bottom end was going to be required for maximum heaviness, so John switched to bass.
From there, writing progressed very quickly, with John and Mark equally feeding off each other's creativity, and almost trying to 'one-up' each other with each new riff. "Either Mark or me would come up with an idea, then the other would try to outdo that by coming up with something more complex, messing about with time signatures and so on" Says John. "Then Dan would have to try and work out what we were doing and play drums to it." Fortunately, Dan is more than up to the task, and brings a different sensibility to the musical direction through his love of metalcore, mathcore and screamo-type bands such as August Burns Red, Between the Buried and Me and Sikth. Ultra-tight, ultra-complicated.
Once the music started flowing, it was time to start refining the ideas and particularly start looking at what the music would be about. It was Mark's idea to approach the ever growing body of work as a whole album with a concept and a story, rather than individual songs, an idea embraced wholeheartedly by the other band members. "I loved the fact that Mark was already thinking in terms of an album as a whole," says John "and having a central storyline made it more focused, especially when it came to putting down lyrics. You always had that idea in mind when writing from that point onwards."
It is these ideas of death, madness and war that reveal the band's non-musical influences. The writings of Dante Alighieri, (particularly his Divine Comedy,) military history, and Greek mythology (which provided the band with their name,) all combine to inform the music and lyrics. But when asked to define the band's sound, "Maximum filth-ness" was the phrase that first came to mind.
The next step is to start gigging and the band are also hoping to add another member, preferably a bass player, but possibly a second guitarist. Anyone interested should contact the band using the form on our contact page.