Generally Impressed With Riffs
Heavy metal and gimmickry have had a complicated relationship since the very day the genre first crawled from the primordial soup. When the strategy has worked, the results have been remarkable: KISS, Mercyful Fate / King Diamond, Venom, GWAR, Ghost, …
New York’s Tombstoner delivers crushing death metal and pummeling breakdowns in near equal measure. It’s not an unfamiliar combination, but one that requires careful execution. And execute it Tombstoner does with Victims of Vile Torture, the band’s debut full-length. Two …
Have you ever been glad that a release was only 15 minutes long? Not because it was bad, but simply because it was so damn heavy that to experience even a minute more was to put your health at risk? …
Even in a year as loaded with great goregrind as 2020, the debut demo from Copenhagen’s Septage really stood out. Septic Decadence was four tunes in just under 12 minutes, loaded with blasts and tremolo riffs and mid-tempo lurches and …
The EP is the definitive introductory format for a reason. Australia’s Fate’s Hand waste little time making use of it here. And while its four tracks vary more in pace than sound, the self-titled EP …
[Cover art by Paul Booth] Before Jennifer Wrestled Her Friend Playfully to the Ground By the mid-90s, bands like Discordance Axis, Brutal Truth, Assück, Extreme Noise Terror and many others were adding new structures to …
[Artwork by the incomparable Eliran Kantor] The most convenient way to describe Desolate, the sophomore effort from Icelandic tech-deathers Ophidian I, is to call it a serious guitar nerd’s death metal album. This is far …
Experience matters. Between the four of them, the members of Stockholm’s Exil have a lifetime’s worth of experience in hardcore and metal, from the raging Umeå punk of DS-13 and UX Vileheads to the grinding …
8 Hour Animal certainly wants to fuck up your Tuesday. “Wake,” the concluding track to the New York industrial/noise project’s second work Resigner, emerges after a hypnotic whitewash at the end of “Pushing Myself Down.” In …
The world is not lacking for metal bands. Between Bandcamp and blogs, there’s an endless supply of new discoveries at our fingertips. Though somehow we’ve heard and seen it all. Several times over. Yet once …
Howdy, kids. It’s time for Staff Infections. If you’re new here, the idea is we listen to music and tell you about it, which in turn, we hope, inspires you to check out something you …
Not many bands can say they helped to launch a genre. (Or to launch a sub-genre, whatever you want to call it. We’re splitting hairs.) Even fewer bands can say that they helped to launch …
