A “left-handed Aquarius, master of the fine arts, wordsmith, survivor,” as it says on his Facebook page, Valient Thorr frontman Valient Himself is now also a RevolverMag.com blogger. He’ll be offering us regularly updates from his mind, starting with the piece below. His band’s new album,

May 14 marked the FIVE year anniversary of me donating a kidney to my Earth father. Valient Thorr makes rock ‘n’ roll with a message. Everyone always asks what is at the core of that message?  The basic point of a lot of it has been to get past all the greed and bullshit and think about what matters. The people of the Earth. It always has been a humanitarian message. If we don’t take care of the people then what do we have left here? Without the people, Earth is just another rock floating in space. So in order to highlight that point, whenever possible, we try to do what we can to help others. In the past, we’ve done benefits for many causes including MS, breast cancer, bells palsy, and my personal crusade has been flying the flag for the National Kidney Foundation.

I wanted to use this blog today to report that after five years, my kidney is still going strong inside of my old man, and I too am as strong as I ever have been. If you ever have wondered if you should donate to someone you know or even had the desire to help out a stranger but was unsure if the long term effects would slow you down in the least, come out to one of our tour dates beginning in June and see for yourself. We are still going strong and you, too, could be the key to saving someone’s life. My old man was in rough shape back in ’08, but he looks better today than he did for the few years leading up to the surgery.

There are thousands of people waiting on the national list for kidneys that they may never get (my Earth cousin included). If you know someone who needs one, get yourself checked to see if you’re a possible candidate for donation. If you have any questions, you can send them to me via my personal Facebook page or just check out Kidney.org.

Thanks for all the support over the years, check out our new album, Our Own Masters, on June 18, and please donate!

Kidney Donation Diary Video:

A “left-handed Aquarius, master of the fine arts, wordsmith, survivor,” as it says on his Facebook page, Valient Thorr frontman Valient Himself is now also a RevolverMag.com blogger. He’ll be offering us regularly updates from his mind, starting with the piece below. His band’s new album,

ALAHOYUS Thorriors, Revolverers, Rocknowledgists, party-ers, humanitarians, bangers, punks, skunks, drunks, hombres, and hombrettes!!

Thanks to Revolver for giving me a platform to holler at y’all, rambling on about our new album or whatever pops into my head. I’ll use this little forum to give you sneak peeks and background info on the new album, and hopefully grab the other dudes to get some words in, too. I get the chance to do interviews all the time, but sometimes they don’t ask the right questions, or sometimes they ask the right questions, but then the interview ends up being in Italian and I don’t know how to read Italian so I never know if it came out clever or what. This dude Mario the other day asked all the right questions. It made me feel great that someone actually took the time to see what we were all about rather than asking the same old-same old questions that I’ve either been asked a million times, or no one cares about anyway. You guys have either heard we are from Venus or not. Doesn’t seem to really matter all that much now does it? If you like or dislike someone, it shouldn’t have anything to do with where they are from. We’ve always said that it’s about where you’re going that matters. And you can follow us straight to the top.

We took a big break to write this record. We have been going hard for eight years. Basically doing nothing but playing and writing and never taking any time for ourselves since the end of 2004.  And if you don’t ever take a break, well, then you’ll burn out.  We don’t want to do that anytime soon.  Also, whatever kind of artist you are, visual, audible, you have to take time to write, draw, paint, compose, whatever it is that you do–so that you have something new and relevant and different to give to the masses so they don’t get tired of your same old shit. Over the last year, we’ve had births, deaths, and every other kind of wild family incident in between happen to us. So we took time to write, and paint, and compose, and create. And deal with family things. And then we got together and brought our little pieces of this puzzle together.

A lot of times over the years when new albums by my favorite bands came out, I wondered for months at a time what it was going to be like, or sound like. If you’re a big music fan and collect albums, I feel like there’s a certain thing that happens when you find a band you love. I’d say for me at least 80 percent of the time, the FIRST thing they do turns out to be my favorite. Not always, but a lot of the time. A lot of bands careers start at a point and just rocket onward getting better and better and at some point they may dip down. Some of them then come back up and keep on making good records again. Some only have one more. Some never recover. I feel like we started making music at such an early point in our even knowing HOW to make noise with instruments, that EACH TIME we’ve gone into the studio and come back out, you can tell how much we’ve grown by listening to the previous album and then checking out the new one. I find that extremely difficult and/or at least extremely rare for music I listen to. I’m not trying to toot my own horn, I’ve just explained that we didn’t know shit when we began and we’ve tried very hard to learn as much as possible. And I hope that shows on OUR OWN MASTERS.

It was fun looking back on all of our old albums and actually talking about ROCKNROLL with Mario. So much of the time when we are talking about our music it is put in terms of how punk or how metal it IS or IS NOT. We haven’t ever set out to do anything but make killer jams. There are a lot of bands out there that still make Rock ’n’ Roll. They’re not talked about often, or maybe they don’t tour a lot. But they are out there. We like the band Harvey Milk. Somehow maybe it was from our friends in Black Skies, but somehow we heard Kyle Spence (the drummer of Harvey Milk) was making records down in Athens, GA. This seemed pretty convenient, not being too far away for family stuff, and also provided an atmosphere that was MILES different from the records we made in Seattle over the last 5 years. Now I loved working with Jack (Endino), I’m speaking specifically in terms of the difference in the cities, and my own personal party budget. In Seattle, I had money to spare and I personally love the Pacific Northwest. In Athens, I was in a position where bread was tight because I have bills now and the city reminded me a lot of my own college town. Meaning there wasn’t a whole lot to do there on a tight budget. THAT’S OK THOUGH because it afforded me time to come up with 85 (YES, EIGHTY FIVE) demos for this new album. I don’t think I ever did more than 20-25 before now. But that again shows how much time we put into this.

While we were in there, they debuted that new app called Vine, and we made a bunch of seven-second sneak peek vids of the making of the album and here are a few of them for you to check out. We have about 6 weeks before the record comes out, but in the next few weeks, we’ll be dropping some actual tracks for you to consume. So hold your horses.

VALIENT THORR Vine videos:

http://seenive.com/v/908826893011271680
http://seenive.com/v/908174608304316416
http://seenive.com/v/911000011133829120
http://seenive.com/v/910691534175879168
http://seenive.com/v/914319090095628288
http://seenive.com/v/912112148476465152

C.O.C., Torche, and Valient Thorr tour dates:

03/01 Gramercy Theatre, New York, NY
03/02 Sonar, Baltimore, MD
03/03 Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh, NC
03/05 Grog Shop, Cleveland, OH
03/06 Pyramid Scheme, Grand Rapids, MI
03/07 Double Door, Chicago, IL
03/08 Triple Rock, Minneapolis, MN
03/09 Beaumont Club, Kansas City, MO
03/10 Downtown Music Hall, Little Rock, AR
03/11 Hi-Tone Café, Memphis, TN
03/12 Trees, Dallas, TX
03/14 SXSW, Austin, TX ! #
03/15 SXSW, Austin, TX ! #
03/17 One Eyed Jacks, New Orleans, LA #
03/18 Zydeco, Birmingham, AL #^

It’s become an annual tradition for me to see Motörhead. The seminal metal-punk power trio returned to New York City this year with not just a brand new studio album, The Wörld is Yours, but with a full-length feature documentary about founder, bassist, vocalist and hard rock icon Lemmy Kilmister (LEMMY: 49% Motherfucker. 51% Son of a Bitch). Rounding out the triple-band bill were North Carolina rockers Valient Thorr, who have previously toured North America with Motörhead, and modern-day heavy blues-rock band Clutch.

Valient Thorr strutted onstage with confidence and delivered roughly 30 minutes of high-powered, sweat-drenched rock and roll. I’m not familiar with their music at all, so I haven’t a clue as to what they played, but the sold-out crowd definitely loved every song. The rhythm section of drummer Lucian Thorr and bassist Nitewolf was as tight as a clenched fist to the face, while the twin-guitar wizardry of Voiden and Eiden Thorr flowed effortlessly much like Thin Lizzy’s Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson. Singer Valient Himself was electric throughout the set, dude’s a born frontman. Though I can’t say I was particularly taken by their music, I was thoroughly entertained watching them perform.

Up next was Clutch who, like Motörhead, have been delivering their brand of rock on their own terms for a long-ass time. Unfortunately for the Maryland-based group, its groove-heavy music fell a little short in intensity, when placed between the energetic rock of Valient Thor and Motörhead.

That said, guitarist Tim Sult and bassist Dan Maines are undeniable talents, and singer Neil Fallon has the perfect voice for blues-rock. But the best part for me was definitely watching drummer extraordinaire Jean-Paul Gastner—especially his drum solo. Half of the band’s set was comprised of rock tunes, whereas the other half was made of directionless jam sessions. Talented band; wrong tour.

Finally, it was time for the loudest live band in the world—and I’m not talking about Manowar. 36 years since its inception, Motörhead are still louder than everyone else and from the way guitarist Phil Campbell, drummer Mikkey Dee and bassist/vocalist Lemmy played, they’re not winding down any time soon.

“We Are Motörhead” opened the set, reminding their fans this is the way rock and heavy music should sound like. Old-school favorites like “Stay Clean,” “Metropolis,” Over the Top,” “The Chase is Better Than the Catch,” and the obligated “Ace of Spades” sounded as good as ever, while new cuts “Get Back in Line” and “I Know How to Die”—both from The Wörld is Yours—sounded fresh and classic at the same time.

Contemporary Motörhead classics “Rock Out,” “In the Name of Tragedy” and “The Thousand Names of God,” as well as the overlooked ’87 track “Just ‘Cos You Got the Power” and an excellent version of “Killed by Death” (featuring veteran German heavy metal singer Doro Pesch and former Danzig and Murphy’s Law guitarist Todd Youth), sounded vital and powerful. As the band reached the end of “Overkill,” my ears were completely shot. You’re not at a rock concert if you’re feeling comfortable, and Motörhead is still the band to be scared of.