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Perth bands in the running for music festival spot
Metal 2 The Masses comes to Perth for the first time
Robbie Chalmers
Perthshire band Immortal Omen, picture by Haley Horner
For the first time Perth is set to be ground zero in the search for some of the best heavy metal bands in the country.
The first heat of Bloodstock Open Air festival's Metal 2 The Masses (M2TM) will be held in the The Twa Tams on Friday, December 6.
Slow Dragon Music, a small business based in Perth, has taken the helm of the Metal 2 The Masses initiative in Scotland for the first time, with four bands from the region hoping to strike a thunderous chord at the popular Perth pub: Immortal Omen, Khogaya, Late Landing and Victorius.
The bands will hope to progress to be in with the chance of rocking out at the Bloodstock Open Air festival on August 2020, which will celebrate its 20th year with heavy metal legends Judas Priest headlining.
Every year the Derbyshire's Bloodstock Open Air, the UK's top metal festival, reaches out to the best, freshest, heavy music talent, via its Metal 2 The Masses initiative.
Two bands from The Twa Tams rock-athon will progress to a semi-final at Beat Generator in Dundee, joining winners from the Aberdeen and Inverness heats.
Those going on from there will play the Scottish final in the capital city, alongside winning bands from two other semi-finals in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
The winner of the grand final will then be selected to play in front of thousands at the Derbyshire Bloodstock festival next August.
Paul Macmillan, owner of Slow Dragon Music, said: "It is certainly a challenge pulling all of this together under a new, untested approach.
"However, I believe it's worth it, as the heavy music scene in Scotland has so much to offer outside of the main hubs, as well as in them.
"Perth, and especially The Twa Tams, has been really important in the development of many of these bands in recent years, so it's great to be kicking things off there.
"The plan is to make the shows as fair as possible for all the bands taking part, as well as, hopefully, provide them with something more than just a gig."
Taking place all across the UK, Ireland, Poland and Norway, M2TM offers bands from each region a chance to play at the four-day event.
Traditionally all of the heats and finals north of the border had taken place in Glasgow, but many will be taking place in Aberdeen, Dunfermline, Glasgow, Stirling, Edinburgh and Inverness after Perth.
The Perth and Kinross bands have welcomed the chance to wow the crowd on home turf.
Hard rock band, Late Landing, said: "Really looking forward to playing the first heat of the Metal 2 The Masses competition alongside some cracking bands.
"It's a great opportunity to be in with a chance to play the mighty Bloodstock festival next year and a great way for us to close the year out before heading to the studio to begin work on our third album.
"Roll on December 6!"
Thrash metal band Victorius said: "Having made it to the final previously, we know the kind of competition we could come up against.
"And the fact that the competition is now open further throughout the country means we'll really have to be on our game."
Heavy metal band Immortal Omen said: "We're so glad to be involved in Metal 2 The Masses, as it's a really great opportunity for metal bands throughout Scotland to play their music, and network with other musicians and fans interested in the genre.
"We think it's great that it has now spread to Perth and other regions, rather than just being in Glasgow now, as this has made it much more inclusive to a wider audience of people that would want to get involved with this event, whether it's to participate or just attend a show locally."
Industrial rock band Khogaya said: "We are really excited to have the opportunity to be a part of M2TM.
"Looking forward to play in Perth, and we will give it our all.
"Being a relatively new band, we are stoked about sharing our music with a larger audience, and also about meeting new people, and hearing the music from other bands."
Heat one at The Twa Tams is free and begins at 8.30pm and members of the audience will have a chance to influence who goes through to the semi-finals.
More can be found on the Slow Dragon Music website http://slowdragonmusic.com/all-metal-2-the-masses-scotland-2020-dates-announced/
Perthshire News


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Josei manga
Josei manga are Japanese comics aimed at young adult and adult female readers. Similarly to manga aimed at girls, it mainly focuses on romance, but does not shy away from other genres, such as fantasy, sci-fi, sport, etc. It is most often published in serialized form in widely circulated weekly or monthly magazines (so called "manga zasshi") such as Kiss, Be Love, You, Office You or Cocohana (originally Chorus). Although josei manga often includes erotic scenes, it should not be mistaken for pornographic comics aimed at women readers; this category is nowadays called ladies' comics (redī komikku, also redīkomi) and features in magazines as Comic Amour.
Josei manga evolved from shōjo manga in cca 1980s, although the very first magazines aimed at slightly older female readership – Papillon and mimi – were published already in the previous decade, respectively in 1972 and 1975. Similarly as in the case of seinen manga, which evolved from shōnen manga as the original post-war readership grew older, the demand for manga magazines aimed at adult women was fuelled by the fact many grown-up women who became avid comics readers as young girls in 1950s and 1960s desired to continue reading it even after entering adulthood. Around the same time many shōjo manga authors embarked on creating stories which did not correspond with the traditionally conservative conventions of comics for girls: starting with Hideko Mizuno's daring story Fire! (Faiyā!, 1969-1971) – unusually featuring a male rock musician as a protagonist – or Machiko Satonaka's sophisticated series To be a Wicked Woman (Akujo shigen, 1977), some highly controversial topics such as sex, adultery and substance abuse started appearing in the so-far relatively tame realm of girls' comics, and these tendencies only intensified when the members of Nijūyonengumi entered the scene and started exploring "adult" themes as sexual identity, mental disease, aging and death. All these factors contributed to the origin of new comics magazines in early 1980s, for example You (1980), Be Love (1980) or Wings (1982), later followed by OFFICE YOU (1985), FEEL YOUNG (1989), Kiss (1992), Zipper (1993), Chorus (1994) or Cookie (1999).
Manga published in josei magazines generally features older heroines (or less usually heroes) – often university students, young working women or even housewives – and focuses chiefly on their love life, careers and fulfilling of their dreams. Among popular authors belong Ai Yazawa (*1967) with her series Paradise Kiss and (Paradaisu kisu, 1999-2003) and Nana (2000-ongoing), Chika Umino with Honey and Clover (Hachimitsu to kurōbā, 2000-2006), Tomoko Ninomiya (*1969) with Nodame Cantabile (Nodame Kantābire, 2001-2009) or Nanae Haruno who authored a long-running story Papa Told Me (1987-ongoing) about a girl and her widowed father. Apart from romance or slice-of-life stories, other genres are frequently explored, for example popular fantasy series such as Loveless (Raburesu, 2002-ongoing) by Yun Kōga (*1965) or Are You Alice? (Anata wa Arisu desu ka, 2009-ongoing) by Ai Ninomiya (*1984), or historical drama Jin Ping Mei (Kinpeibai, 1993-2010) by a veteran author Masako Watanabe (*1929).
See Also: Nijūyonengumi, seinen manga, shōjo manga
Allison, Anne. Permitted and Prohibited Desires Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2000.
Toku, Masami. Shojo Manga! Girl Power!: Girls' Comics from Japan. Chico, [Calif.: Flume Press :, 2005.
[1] note for editors: Umino's year of birth is not publicly known, same as Haruno's.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl