A few words about Into The Void

Well for a long time now I have been wanting to get into gig promoting. The Into The Void club night started in late 2007 as a doom-only night and as you would expect, attendance was pretty low. Nevertheless I am chuffed to be able to say that I did a fucking pure doom night even if only ten doomheads came and enjoyed it. After getting a small but loyal following I was keen not to let the night die out and so the remit of the music naturally expanded to encompass more death and black metal as well as the original doom and true metal/NWOBHM. Being into BM and DM as well, it seemed false and counterproductive to refuse to play them. After a few more club nights in 2008, Into The Void got known as the only real extreme metal music club night in Bristol and in 2009 we started breaking even on the cost of venue hire and publicity. Thanks go to Rod and Nick at the Crown for endlessly badgering the regulars to come on down and from September Nick has joined behind the decks to blast out the metal.

Once the club night was established my aim was always to put on shows and now that time is very nearly upon us. With the exception of the boys at Denim & Leather (RIP) and a few bigger shows at the Academy, Bristol has fallen by the wayside in terms of decent live metal shows over recent years. I have heard tales of the glory days of the Bristol live metal scene but such halcyon days have long past. Anyway kudos to Denim & Leather, thanks to them I have seen Municipal Waste (several times), Baroness, Kylesa, Isis, Boris, Earth, Jesu, Grand Magus and many more killer shows lost in the mist of time. Since their hat has been hung up I am determined to get more decent gigs on at the Croft, and maybe the Junction as well and we’ll see where we go from there. The goal is to try and put together a one-day festival a la Damnation in Leeds. There is no reason not to aim for being able to put on a show like this in Bristol in a few years so watch this space. The more people come to the early shows the more likely we can work towards a Bristol metal festival in the near future.

Since making enquiries with other promoters and wannabe promoters in Bristol I have had some great advice and enthusiastic comments. Thanks as well to Mr Fin of the mighty Land of Nod for his advice and assistance; for the foreseeable future we will be jointly promoting some shows and seeing how we get on. Watch this space!

Why bother writing a blog?

Well we have the myspace page and the facebook page to promote the club night and the live shows (more on that soon) but I need another forum to try and foist my opinion of albums, bands, music and other scene shit on people. So here I'll be offering some comments on bands, reviews of new releases and shows, discussion of festivals and whatever else. Feel free to susbscribe, you might learn something.