Generally Impressed With Riffs
[Cover artwork by Jose Gabriel Angeles] Take a journey with me, my fellow grizzled riff-gluttons who’d likely rather bong all the world’s remaining Schlitz wounded soldiers in lieu of sacrificing an original Effigy of the Forgotten tour shirt, to a …
The metaphor isn’t hard to spot in the cover art of Stratovarius’ 16th album, nor in its title, Survive. The world’s pretty fucked up these days and we may very well be beyond the threshold, able at this point to …
“Sometimes you just need some… disgusting blastbeats and just like… y’know…” “…some fuckin’ sick fuckin’ vocals, man.” And when you do, then here you go. From the idyllic Midwestern paradise of Lima, Ohio, comes Couple Skate, an irreverently snarky mincing …
It feels like it’s been ages since Cruz came crawling out of Catalonia with their first album, Culto Abismal, but apparently it’s only been six years, and really only five since I first heard it, late to the party as …
Fast Rites: because sometimes brevity is fundamental. When your band pedigree includes members of tech-heads Obsolete, dissonant death metallers Sunless, black/death churners Suffering Hour, and several others, you’re probably creating both a certain level of …
Long, long ago—even before the days when the lonesome warble of AOL’s “You’ve got mail!” swept through the wilds of the heartlands—goths and metal freaks shared an equitable “the enemy of my enemy is my …
[Cover art by Randy Ortiz] “I don’t believe that you mean well” That lyric perfectly sums up KEN mode’s eighth album. The artists involved don’t feel the world has their best interests in mind, and …
Given the current collective headspace, the thick layer of death/doom on Dead Void’s Volatile Forms probably isn’t the healthiest use of forty four minutes for the lot of us. There are certainly days where I …
In all things, balance is key. Such is the case here at Blast RItes, and so, for every disgusting gurglegore offering like the recent Organ Failure, we must achieve parity and a centering of our …
Two of the things I love most in this life are grindcore and the Green Bay Packers. So when the new EP from this Green Bay-based death/grind outfit landed in the ol’ inbox, it came …
[Cover art by Adam Burke] This is an allusion, Michael! To describe an album as interesting can be damning for some people. It can equate to introducing a stranger as having a great personality. You …
Hello, loyal readers of Last Rites. It is time once again for you all to get a gander at what the heck we’ve been listening to for the last month, in a little feature we …
