(NCS writer BadWolf provides a report on last night’s Tool/Intronaut concert in Toledo and a video of dueling drummers.)

A little informality for you today.

So last night, my GF, Queen of Noise, some friends, and I saw Tool in my hometown of Toledo, Ohio.

What is Tool doing playing in my bullshit city? I haven’t the foggiest, but Good Morning America informed me a few weeks ago that the venue, the Huntington Center, is the 8th most profitable stadium venue in the USA. Who knew?

So the opening band was some pretty sick The Sword/Kyuss-style super-heavy biker-metal band. Nothing too original, but pretty cool—too bad their name was incomprehensible. I think it was Ram-Knight? Anyway, I expect to hear more about them soon.

Intronaut opened and played a strong set with “The Literal Black Cloud” from Prehistoricisms and then every good song from Valley of Smoke in a row. Sick. The crowd seemed to really dig them, which is strange considering that Tool’s fanbase is notoriously picky (according to anecdote, they nearly boo’ed Meshuggah off the stage multiples times, and Meshuggah is basically Tool with lower guitars and growling…). Good for them, I hope this opens doors for the boys in Intronaut.

Another month has passed. Summer is waning. It’s still as hot as the ninth circle of Hell in most parts of our country, but here in the Pacific Northwest, the air is already beginning to feel like fall. And because fall in Seattle lasts about one week, winter is already what we’re thinking about, because winter means getting soaked with rain. In the dark.

Where were we? Oh yeah, another month is over. And here at NCS, that means it’s time for another installment of METAL IN THE FORGE, a forge being the old name for a place where a blacksmith heats metal and works it into the shape of something useful. We thought it sounded literary.

Another name for “forge” is “smithy.” As in, “the blacksmith works in a smithy.” But “smithy” doesn’t sound literary, and METAL IN THE SMITHY just sounds fucked up. METAL IN THE FORGE is a little fucked up, too, the more we think about it, but not as fucked up as METAL IN THE SMITHY.

Where were we? Oh yeah, at the end of every month, we update the list of forthcoming new albums we first posted on January 1. (All the other updates can be found via the “Forthcoming Albums” category link on the right side of our pages.) Below is a list of still more projected new releases we didn’t know about at the time of our previous updates, or updated info about some of the previously noted releases.

Once again, we’ve cobbled together news blurbs about bands whose past work we’ve liked, or who look interesting for other reasons. Perhaps needless to say, these are bands that mostly fit the profile of music we cover on this site — the kind that would like to tear your head off.

So, after the jump, in alphabetical order, you’ll find our list of cut-and-pasted items from various sources since our last update about forthcoming new releases. Look for the bands you like and, if you’re really obsessive like we are, put reminders on your calendar.