Iggy & the Stooges - Escaped Mania DVD coming!

Here's a real barn-burner for ya – on July 8, 2008, Music Video Distributors will be releasing Escaped Maniacs, a double-DVD set featuring a full-length concert performance from Iggy & the Stooges.

The two-disc DVD offers a powerhouse Iggy & the Stooges appearance at the 2005 Lokerse Festival. The band's set includes blistering versions of most of the tracks from the first two landmark Stooges albums as well as two of Iggy's relatively newer songs, "Skull Ring" and "Dead Rock Star." The band features original Stooges, brothers Ron and Scott Asheton on guitar and drums, respectively, along with former Minutemen bassist Mike Watts and, of course, Iggy himself on explosive vox.

Escaped Maniacs runs over five hours in length, with sixteen live Iggy & the Stooges songs, two different versions of the concert ("Original" and "Director's Cut"), an interview with Iggy, DVD Rom content and an Iggy retrospective documentary.

Hanoi Rocks live concert DVD coming!

Hanoi Rocks was one of the great lost bands of the 1980s. The band's mix of glam, metal and punk became known as "sleaze-rock" and proved to be influential on a generation of Aquanetted nerf-metal outfits later in the decade. Chart-toppers like Guns N' Roses and the Manic Street Preachers are direct descendants of the Hanoi Rocks sound. Why Hanoi Rocks never made it to the big time while inferior third-generation carbon copy bands made major bank with their sound is one of the great mysteries of the era....

Formed in 1979 in Helsinki Finland, the Hanoi Rocks sound was a revved-up cross between the Stooges and the New York Dolls, with a hint of Chuck Berry and the Sweet thrown in for good measure. Between 1981 and 1985, the band released five classic sleaze-rock studio albums and a rockin' live set. Outside of other musicians and a few diehard fans, the band was still virtually unknown, and they broke up. After a lengthy hiatus, lead singer Michael Monroe and guitarist Andy McCoy – the heart and soul of the band, reformed Hanoi Rocks in 2002 and recorded the strong comeback album, Twelve Shots On The Rocks, followed by Street Poetry in 2007. Hanoi Rocks continues to tour today.

On June 10, 2008 Music Video Distributors will release The Nottingham Tapes DVD. The disc captures one of Hanoi Rocks' legendary performances, from April 23rd 1984 at the Palais in Nottingham, England. This show has circulated in audio form on bootlegs for years, now all you punters can grab up the full visual Hanoi Rocks experience for less than a twenty. This hour-long disc is the first Hanoi Rocks DVD ever and includes some of the band's coolest songs, high-octane rockers like "Lost In The City" and "Back To Mystery City." In short, buy it!

(Click on the DVD cover to buy The Nottingham Tapes from Amazon.com)

April Wine likes to rock!

When Canadian rockers April Wine struck gold in the United States with their 1981 hit "Just Between You And Me," it seemed as if the band had come out of nowhere. The song would propel the band's Nature of the Beast album to Platinum sales status, and would be the first in a string of Top 30 U.S. chart hits enjoyed by April Wine.

Truth is, April Wine had better than a decade's experience and a reputation as Canada's best live band by the time of their breakthrough below the border. Formed in 1969, April Wine enjoyed their first Canadian hit in '71 with "Fast Train," from their self-titled debut. Subsequent albums increased the band's status as they toured constantly and scored hit after hit. The band's seventh album, 1976's The Whole World's Going Crazy, was their first to go Platinum in Canada, and by the time April Wine hit the big time in the U.S. they had eleven albums under their collective belts, including three live albums.

On June 10, 2008 our friends at Music Video Distributors will release April Wine's I Like To Rock: Live In London 1981 DVD. The disc captures a performance at the legendary Hammersmith Odeon in London during the band's 1981 tour in support of Nature Of The Beast. Caught on tape at their commercial peak, this will showcase April Wine at their very best. The 66-minute video features sixteen songs, including the hits "Just Between You And Me" and "I Like To Rock." This is the first DVD of classic archive material ever released on the band, so April Wine fans are sure to grab this one up, pronto!

(Click on the CD cover to buy Live In London from Amazon.com)

Iron Maiden & the New Wave of British Heavy Metal

Back in the late-70s, British punks rose up in defiance to the status quo, in response to the milktoast corporate rock that the labels were cranking out by the truckload. For a while, it seemed like everybody had a mohawk haircut and a copy of the Sex Pistols' album.

Little did we know at the time that there would be a second front in this war against musical complacency...I'm talking 'bout the "New Wave of British Heavy Metal," gang, a movement spearheaded by bands like Judas Priest and the almighty Iron Maiden. Hindsight is always 20/20, as they say, but the NWOBHM has survived the test of time to be recognized as a special, downright magical time for fans of hard rockin' music.

A new DVD from our friends at Music Video Distributors takes a good, hard look at the NWOBHM. Iron Maiden And The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal is a two-hour retrospective on this historic movement, the documentary focusing on Focusing on Maiden and other pivotal bands of the time, such as Saxon, Samson, Praying Mantis, Diamond Head, Tygers Of Pan Tang and many more. The DVD includes rare video footage of NWOBHM bands as well as rare photographs and other uber-cool memorabilia that would fit on disc.

The DVD also includes exclusive interviews major players on the NWOBHM scene, including Iron Maiden's Paul DiAnno and Dennis Stratton; Diamond Head's Brian Tatler; Tygers Of Pan Tang's Rob Weir; Samson's legendary drummer Thundersticks; Tino and Chris Troy from Praying Mantis; the current line-up of Girlschool and others. There's also commentary from music journalists like Malcolm Dome (Kerrang, Classic Rock), Jerry Ewing (Metal Hammer) and Geoff Barton (staff writer at Sounds during the New Wave), among others.

Iron Maiden And The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal is scheduled for release on June 10, 2008.

Dark Funeral to release second DVD

Swedish black metal titans Dark Funeral are planning the release of their second live performance DVD. Titled Attera Orbis Terrarum - Part 2, this dangerous disc will be released in Europe on May 22, 2008 and in North America on June 8th by Regain Records.

Dark Funeral's first DVD, 2007's Attera Orbis Terrarum - Part 1, was released with some acclaim in the metal community, and climbed as high as #5 on the Swedish DVD charts. That volume featured live performances from the band's recent European shows. The upcoming second DVD will include performances from the band's Attera Totus Sanctus album tour in South America, a metal-loving community with a fanatical Dark Funeral following.

Dark Funeral has also announced two new festival dates:

• 05/30/08 @ Legacy Festival, Belgrade, Serbia [details]
• 06/28/08 @ Peace & Love Festival, Borlänge, Sweden [details]
  

"Earache My Eye" DVD

Earache Records has long enjoyed a reputation for offering some of the most brutal, uncompromising music that the heavy metal world has ever heard. Hardcore, grindcore, deathcore, metalcore, rotten-to-the-core – Earache has unleashed it all on an unsuspecting world over the past two decades.

Originally released on VHS videotape back in 1989, Earache My Eye offers a visual bludgeoning for metal fans that haven't found the aural assault of the label's regular album releases sufficient enough to provoke a long-term coma. Earache My Eye has been out-of-print for a long time and has since become a coveted collector's item among extreme metal afficionados. Thanks to the headbanging fools at Music Video Distributors, this fine collection of musical mayhem will be available on DVD for the first time on April 15, 2008.

Earache My Eye offers up a full hour of musical torture, 60-minutes of full-blown, blow-out-the-speakers, blowin' yer mind metal chaos with videos from some of the hardest core of extreme music. Among the thrill-a-minute vids here are Entombed's "Wolverine Blues," "Crush My Soul" from Godflesh, Napalm Death's "Greed Killing," and "No Love Lost" from Carcass. Also among the strong baker's dozen offered by Earache My Eye are videos from Dub War, At The Gates, Cathedral, Pitchshifter, Sleep, Brutal Truth and others. At a ridiculously righteous list price of $14.95, you won't find a better way of entertaining yourself short of taking a jackhammer to a pile of rubble. Be there or be square....

(Click on the DVD cover to buy Earache My Eye from Amazon.com)

Metalmania 2007 DVD

The annual Metalmania festival may well be the biggest, baddest shindig on the European continent, and our friends at Music Video Distributors will be bringing the best of the fest to your home on May 13, 2008. Last year's festival will be released as Metalmania 2007, a two-disc, DVD/CD set with an explosive line-up of talent.

The Metalmania 2007 DVD features performances by metal legends Testament and Sepultura; doom-metal giants Paradise Lost and Entombed; cult bands Vital Remains and Destruction; and up-n-coming bands like Zyklon, Darzamat and Korpiklaani. Shot with an amazing seven cameras, the performances caught on tape are the next best thing to being there. The DVD also includes band biographies and discographies, web links, a photo gallery, festival history, desktop images, and short interviews with all the main stage bands.

The bonus CD focuses on the developing young Polish metal scene, featuring electric performances from bands like Tyr, Carnal, Horrorscope, Witchking, Benediction and others. This incredible two-disc set runs over four hours altogether, and will sport an affordable $19.95 list price – crazy-cheap, really, for a boppin' metal set of this magnitude!

Man - Live At The Roundhouse DVD

Music Video Distributors has announced a March 18, 2008 release date for Live At The Roundhouse, the long-lost final concert film featuring Welsh prog-pop cult band Man. Recorded live at The Roundhouse in London – the scene of possibly the band's greatest moment, their appearance at the Greasy Truckers Party in 1972 with Brinsley Schwarz and Hawkwind – this 1976 concert film has rarely been viewed and should prove as somewhat of a revelation to prog-rock fans who have heard the name but remain unfamiliar with this criminally-underrated band.

Man was formed in late-1968 in the Wales region of the U.K. as the Bystanders, a vocal harmony group. The band evolved into a more prog-oriented outfit with extended on-stage jams and a sound that was a mix of pop melodies, prog overtones, psychedelic shading and space-rock jams, and changed its name to Man somewhere along the line. Described as a cross between Nektar and Quicksilver Messenger Service, Man's sound was fueled by the scorched-earth leads of guitarist Deke Leonard. Clive John, an early member of the band, would leave to pursue a solo career, his 1975 album You Always Know Where You Stand With A Buzzard a cult favorite among period record collectors. Leonard has also released a number of solo albums through the years.

After releasing nine studio and a live album to mixed commercial success (Man was HUGE in Germany and virtually unknown in the United States), Man decided to call it a day in 1976, filming the band's final performances at The Roundhouse, a former railway shed turned London cultural center. The band's line-up at the time included founding member and vocalist Mickey Jones, guitarist Deke Leonard, bassist John McKenzie, Phil Ryan on keyboards and drummer Terry Williams. Live At The Roundhouse offers up six songs, half from the band's 1976 album Maximum Darkness along with Man's earlier U.K. hits "C'mon" and "Let The Good Times Roll." The band would later re-unite in the '80s, performing and recording sporadically, with various line-ups, up to the present day.

RIYL: Caravan, Camel, Barclay-James Harvest, Gentle Giant

(Click on the DVD cover to buy Live At The Roundhouse from Amazon.com)