Mastodon and Soundwave 2012

Although Soundwave was actually a month ago I’ve been meaning to write a little review of the day, just haven’t had the time. The bill for this years’ festival was pretty astonishing, Slipknot, SOAD, Limp Bizkit, Manson, LOG, Machine Head, Trivium, Mastodon and many, many more. I checked out a few bands on the day, but I did sadly miss one of the bands I was looking forward to the most, Steel Panther. Alter Bridge were pretty good and were the first band I saw on the day, but I don’t really know their music that well so I wandered over to the metal stage to see who else was playing. It was Meshugga. No doubt Meshugga is an intense band and genre breaking, but I don’t really get it. Nothing about their music really reaches out and grabs me so I wandered some more, saw some fairly lame emo/punk bands then came back to the metal stage to check out In Flames. They are another band who I have been aware of for some time, but havent really listened to their music that closely. Check out my post about their awesome restaurant over at Swedish Metal Restaurant.

After In Flames came on one of my favourite bands, Trivium. This would be the 4th time I have seen Trivium live and I’ve liked them since the Crusade album.They always put on a great show and kicking their set off with their latest album opener In Waves went down very well with the crowd. The next highlight for me was seeing Mastodon, who are managed by my good friend Rick Sales’ company. Rick being there meant we could watch their set from side of stage which was fantastic, they put on a great show. Also, whilst they were playing I was chatting with Willie and John from the mighty Lamb Of God. We had met previously so it was cool to see them again and have a quick chat.

After Mastodon’s set we went back to the dressing room area to chat with the guys, all really cool although I didn’t meet Brent. I have to say also that they are probably one of the tallest bands in metal, true. Chatting with Brann Dailor, drummer for Mastodon and IMHO one of the best drummers in the world right now was super cool. Brann is a very down to earth guy and we hit it off straight away talking about beer. Turns out he is a massive craft beer fan and by the sounds of it a bit of a beer geek like me. Rick told the guys about what we were doing with the wine project and about what we are talking about in regards to beer, so instantly Brann and I started talking beer. It was funny watching the others look at us like we were talking another language and just walk off and leave us to it. I don’t want to ramble on too much here about this but it was very cool to meet someone who had the same taste in beer as I did, who also happens to play drums in one of the coolest bands in metal.

My final and perhaps biggest highlight for the day was seeing the amazing and quite definitely mental Slipknot from the side of stage. I managed to score a special Slipknot Stage Access pass from *cough* Marilyn Manson’s manager *cough*, because without this you were not allowed on the stage area whilst they played. Standing stage left pretty close to Clown and Sid watching them go mental and put on an amazing show was something to behold. The crowd was sick, the band sounded better than ever and I was standing right next to Randy from LOG who was taking pictures the whole time, who also happened to be next to Dave McClain, drummer for Machine Head. It really doesn’t get much more amazing than that for a metal fan like myself. Truly a brilliant day.
I am hopeful that I’ll be able to pull together a brewing/beer project with Mastodon in the future. I plan to reach out to Brann and try to get some feedback and ideas from him, would be really cool I reckon. If you have any ideas/thoughts/musings about a cool beer style that you think would suit Mastodon then please leave a comment and let us know.

Well, that’s quite an essay I would say. Until next time, may your music be LOUD!!

Luke

KISS ROCK DRINKS – The hottest drinks in the world

It was recently brought to my attention that the almighty KISS, marketers extraordinaire, have their own wine and also a beer. I did a quick google search and found this site KISS ROCK DRINKS.com – The hottest drinks in the world.

The wine is a Zinfandel, which seems to be quite popular in the Swedish market, and is described as:

KISS Zin Fire is a bold and fruity California Zinfandel — the result of a cool, long growing season that promoted fantastic flavor and a rich, jammy aroma. A brazen blend of blackberry and pepper gives the wine a hard-rocking kick and spicy smooth finish.

There is also a beer available in both bottle and can and seems to be a traditional German Pilsner style of lager. Check out this video at about 1:30

 

Members of KISS had the following to say.

“This isn’t just something we put a label on. We wanted wine and beer unique to KISS and we got it, said Paul Stanley of KISS. “This stuff will set your taste buds on fire.”

“If you love beer and wine, this one is for you!” said Gene Simmons of KISS.

Please leave a comment if you have actually tried either of these products. I’m very interested to see what your impressions are. Also, if you hear of any rock branded beers, wines or spirits let me know as we often don’t see these here in Australia and I love seeing what others are doing.

Until next time, keep it loud!

Bull & Bush offering tableside whole-hop infusions with any of its beers – Denver Restaurants and Dining – Cafe Society

This is a pretty cool concept I reckon! I’ve had single hop beers and fresh hop beers and beers that have gone through some type of randall hop infuser, but using a french press and being able to determine how much hop punch you get is pretty damned cool.

 

Bull & Bush offering tableside whole-hop infusions with any of its beers – Denver Restaurants and Dining – Cafe Society.

 

Till next time, keep the music turned up loud.

 

Luke

Chief Distortion Officer

Distorted Beverages is now official!!

Well, I haven’t lived up to my promise in my last post to write more often, but it has been a very hectic Christmas & New Year season. Hope you all had a great time spent with family and friends, good music and good booze!

When I started writing this blog my vision for what I would be doing was quite strong and well-formed but as you do, I had small doubts as to whether it would all come together or not. 12 months ago following a phone call from Rick Sales, manager extraordinaire, my brain started racing with ideas and concepts as to what we could create and the potential to really be innovative and creative, whilst just doing something cool. It has taken that full 12 months and little bit more to get to the stage where an actual company and physical presence is being realised. Distorted Beverages is now trademarked, domain names locked in and a registered business name. The company structure has been decided and within the next month we will be an official Australian company. It’s amazing to see what I have dreamed of finally actually happening, amazing and scary at the same time.

There has been many discussions with Rick and Barry over at Global and with the help of some new and fantastic friends here I have been able to make my vision a reality. What this means in actuality is that in the coming Autumn we will be releasing Motorhead Shiraz onto the Australian drinking public closely followed by Motorhead Vodka. We are in negotiations with the largest independent group of liquor stores in the country and so far the response has been good. It is now up to yours truly to get out there and rally stores behind our concept, a hard rock section in every store. In reality that is what I want to achieve, having a selection of beer, wines and spirits with their own shelf area in each of the stores and what better way to start than with the mighty Motorhead!

My vision though doesn’t stop there. I have a lot of big ideas and dreams/visions/goals/whatever for where this company can go and I am very adamant that it will be a great success. That doesn’t mean there aren’t nights where I lay in bed not able to sleep thinking “Can I really do this?”. That happens more than I would like, but the only way I will fail is to give in to those doubts. I have already achieved things I wasn’t sure were possible, met some amazing people and we are only just getting started.

I really do promise to write again very soon. The other angle of this story is my brewing collaboration with Dan Donegan from Disturbed which is really starting to move in the right direction; very, very cool.

Until then, may all your music be loud!

Luke

Chief Distortion Officer

Beer and collaboration brewing

I have to apologise for being so slack and not having posted anything for the past couple of weeks, no excuses but there hasn’t been a lot to update either so i though i would wait until I had some actual news/updates.
So, last week I got an email from a lovely chap from a brew pub in Chicago. i had been putting out the proverbial feelers the past few weeks/months to find a brewing partner for myself and Mr Dan Donegan. I don’t remember if I mentioned this previously but Dan approached me about making a beer together and I of course said yes. What I’ve been trying to do since then is work out how to actually pull it off. I had been looking around for some info or contacts in the US brewing scene and in then end just sent out some cold emails and finally got a response. I was about to give up any hope of getting a lead but finally received one. I called Dan about it on Friday and we spoke for a bit and he was quite keen, so he will check out the brew pub and see what it is like and we’ll then decide if we should go further and create a collaboration brew with these guys. I’m deliberately being rather vague on specifics, such as the name of the brew pub, becaus ei’d rather wait until we have something more concrete before rushing out and making grandious announcements.

In wine news, I had another meeting with the winemakers and I’ve got some sample bottles of Cabernet and Shiraz at the price we are looking at. Labels and cartons are well along now and I just need to finalise some capsules and we are cooking.

I’ll announce more soon however and I promise to post more often in the coming weeks.