Generally Impressed With Riffs
Horror and metal have intertwined all the way back to the moment Black Sabbath saw the marquee for Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath. Countless bands since have turned to horror–both fiction and non–for inspiration. While the inspiration manifests in different ways, there is …
Cover art by Ov Exvn Infërnvz. A lot of metal bands wear their influences on their sleeves, sometimes literally in the form of a long-sleeve t-shirt with 15 logos on each arm. Much rarer are the bands that decide to …
At the place where Powerviolence Alley runs into Grindcore Blvd, just between Hardcore Street and Sludge Avenue, a block or three from Psychedelia Place, there’s a dingy basement rehearsal space filled with smoke and cockroaches and anger. Inside that space …
Icelandic power metal with heavy leanings is the kind of thing that immediately piques my interest. And the heavy part is not something I’d particularly expect looking at the richly textured, very much fantasy-based, (and excellent) cover art. Nor does …
Blast Rites: because grindcore rules. Author’s Note: Hey, look at that, will ya? I’m trying something new here, taking our established Fast Rites short-form review concept and applying it to my obsession with all things …
Fast Rites: because sometimes brevity is fundamental. At the risk of repeating myself (as if this would be anywhere close to the first time for that), France’s Blockheads are far and away the best grindcore …
[Cover artwork by Héloïse Merlin] Where were you when the world’s hottest new doomsday cult slipped into their fresh Keds and velour tracksuits, shimmied down an obscured underground passageway into the basement of the Great …
Fast Rites: because sometimes brevity is fundamental. Whatever the band’s conscious influences may be, Eternal Evil’s The Warriors Awakening Brings the Unholy Slaughter sounds Teutonic in aesthetic. From the unrelentingly guitar-forward POV to the frantic …
If you dig deep enough, there are about as many interpretations of black metal as there are black metal bands. Regardless of the details, at its core, black metal is about conflict. Man vs nature, …
Happy New Year, friends. It’s time for Staff Infections, wherein the Last Rites staff share what we’ve been listening to over the last month, and hopefully you, dear readers, come away with an appreciation of …
This is it, kids, the finale of Most Anticipated Release Week 2022 here at Last Rites World Headquarters, Inc. If you missed the first two installments, you can catch up here and here. And if …
I’m sure by now you’ve all spent the last two days reading and re-reading the first part of our annual Most Anticipated Releases series, but in case you’ve just now crawled forth from beneath a …
