Dazzling Killmen, VAZ, Arctic Universe

Foundational math rock / post-metal / jazz-core band Dazzling Killmen have announced they have re-formed and will be performing live again starting in September of 2025. Founding members, vocalist/guitarist Nick Sakes and drummer Blake Fleming will be playing together for the first time since disbanding 30 years ago. The two will be joined by bassist Evan Jagels and guitarist Ben Greenberg of the band Uniform. Dazzling Killmen formed in the St. Louis area in 1990 and was composed of vocalist/guitarist Nick Sakes and jazz students - drummer Blake Fleming and bassist Darin Gray. The group issued four singles, a live cassette and two full-lengths before officially ending in 1994, with most of it released through the independent label SKiN GRAFT Records. Sakes went on to play in the band Colossamite with future Deerhoof members Ed Rodriguez and John Dieterich. He is currently a member of the Minneapolis post-hardcore trio Upright Forms. Fleming was the founding drummer of Laddio Bolocko and then was an original member of The Mars Volta. Taking influence from hardcore punk and jazz music, Dazzling Killmen has been noted by critics and peers as having influenced the genres that came to be known as math rock and post-metal. The band’s final album “Face of Collapse” was reissued in a deluxe, expanded edition in 2016 and again in 2022 in by SKiN GRAFT Records and later in that year entered Decibel Magazine’s Hall of Fame.

Scum-pop blasters Vaz are a consistently underrated Brooklyn treasure. Vocalist/guitarist Paul Erickson and spasmodic herky-jerk drummer Jeff Moordian have outlived all your favorite scenes - both emerged from the distressed clobber of AmRep stalwarts Hammerhead and released full-length records on practically every cool label in the '00s (Gold Standard Labs, Load, Narnack) \[...\] Their ill-tempered blast and squawk updates AmRep's sinister sizzle for more extreme days, still teasing it with the boldest, brashest, shiniest hooks in the nu-pigfuck underground - think Queens Of The Stone Age getting a Pissed Jeans makeunder. \[Village Voice\]

Arctic Universe - Adam Marx from Seawhores, emotional dark dance
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