Generally Impressed With Riffs
[Cover artwork by Marald van Haasteren] Objectionable confession from the gate: The 2023 debut from The Keening, Little Bird, didn’t get a lot of attention from me. I feel kind of awful admitting that for reasons I’ll get into in …
Godflesh is pain. Regardless of whether Justin Broadrick and G.C. Green are plumbing the industrial depths they invented on their earliest records or hitting harder with danceable grooves and beats, this band is an expression of pain. Broadrick himself admits …
[Cover Art by Francesco Gemelli] I need to make a confession to you, my friends. Lately, I’ve been taking a little break from pouring the sound of heavy metal into my ears. I can explain. First, I’m trying to get …
Friend, here’s a truth that I hope you will carry with you, especially if you ever feel even a twinge of guilt or shame about being unfamiliar with a particular album, or about being not quite as well-versed in a …
[Cover artwork by Joachim Luetke] I have always found thrash to be one of the more interesting case studies in heavy metal because thrash in its purest form experienced one of the more spectacular near …
Let’s just blow the lid right off this review from the start. When you absolutely, positively have to rip everything to shreds, only a band like Sweden’s Mutation will do. Debut Esoteric Order of Debauchery …
Howdy, friends. It’s time, once again, to bask in the Last Rites staff’s exquisite musical taste, with a little feature we call Staff Infections. Before we get to the music, though, let’s take a moment …
[Cover art by Noah Cutter Meihoff] It’s been more than 40 years since Watchtower really ushered in the age of tech metal with their debut Energetic Disassembly, and in all those years, the techy arms …
[Album artwork by Tomáš Mitura] What I love most about Sněť is that it dips its toes into but never fully commits to doom. That is, Sněť is not a death/doom band. Rather, Sněť is …
Here’s one for the “two things can be true” files: Death metal, in its purest, most feral, regular-assed form, can be the most thrilling, primally satisfying music out there, AND Death metal, in its purest, …
[Album artwork by THEE Travis Smith] If you manage to get old(er)—and I sincerely hope you do—and you also happen to be music-obsessed and surrounded by like-minded chums, you will likely notice that at some …
[Artwork by Petri Ala-Maunus] There’s nothing quite like that sense that you get as a listener that you’ve fully connected with an artist through their music. There’s about a million ways it can happen, from …
