Exclusive Interview - Cold Blue Mountain

Last Thursday night, Mick and I ventured out into the cold Chicago night to see a concert (as we are wont to do).  Neither of us had been to the venue (Live Wire, in Old Irving Park) before, so there was additional excitement in the air.  Live Wire is a solid if unspectacular dive bar/venue, with a stage at the far end of the main room, movies playing on mute on the tvs, and ice cold Lagunitas IPAs ready to be drank.  Not a terrible place to see a show, so we settled in.  Cold Blue Mountain was the attraction, as the Chico, CA band is in the midst of their first-ever headlining tour supporting their sophomore album Old Blood.  I was lucky enough to get to talk to four of the guys in the band about their roles and responsibilities, the musical talents of water heaters, and Billy Joel's promising career in metal, all of which you can see in the video below after the break.

Cold Blue Mountain - Old Blood

The metal blogosphere is much like the American political media, in the sense that buzz words are used to carry much of the weight and attract the most attention.  Where a Senatorial Candidate may tell the people that he's for "lower taxes" or "anti-gun control" to try and quickly give you a sense of his beliefs, metal bands rely on the increasingly hyper-specific sub-genres like "doom" or "sleepcore" (something I really read the other day).  While these words usually mean nothing when applied vapidly, when chosen carefully they can indeed give the voter/listener a pretty good idea of whether or not they want to proceed in checking out this politician/band.  For me, those words typically include "sludge," "post-rock," "doom," or "blackened," so when I saw three of the four attached to California's Cold Blue Mountain and their second album Old Blood, I decided that yes, this would potentially be someone I'd like to learn more about before voting.  Er... a band I would like to listen to.