Category: Devil’s Dozen
A Devil’s Dozen – W.A.S.P.
By 1996, I’d been listening to W.A.S.P. for about seven years. My first infection had come through one of those cheap compilation cassettes I loved so much back then. I’ve long forgotten which cassette, but …
A Devil’s Dozen – Absu
When one thinks of “black/thrash” metal, one typically thinks of bands such as Aura Noir and Deströyer 666. Both are staunch defenders of the style’s classic sound, which is not something typically said about Absu. …
A Devil’s Dozen – Helloween
Sometimes there’s no tomorrow. Sometimes you hate the day. Sometimes you’re attacked by “Heavy Metal Hamsters”. Then you put on a little Helloween, and by the grace of “Mrs. God”, it just makes everything better. …
A Devil’s Dozen – Black Sabbath: The Tony Martin Albums
There’s a common misconception among most fans of metal. The idea is that Black Sabbath ceased to make top quality metal either after the (second) departure of Ozzy Osbourne in 1979 or on albums without …
A Devil’s Dozen – Overkill
One of the incredible things about being a fan of music — if not the actual most incredible thing about it — comes in the nearly magical connection between the listener and the song. A …
A Devil’s Dozen – Katatonia
With apologies to the poet Wallace Stevens, one might think about Katatonia’s career as something like thirteen ways of looking at melancholy. Few bands have been more single-minded in their pursuit of gloom and creeping …
A Devil’s Dozen – Vader
Vader. It takes guts to give your band a name like that. Death? The most common thing in the world. Grave? Yeah, everybody has one. But naming your band after the Dark Lord of the …
A Devil’s Dozen – Hypocrisy
Throughout the 1990s, few European metal bands were as consistently great, deceptively complex, and downright catchy as Sweden’s Hypocrisy. From their earliest, more purely death metal days of Penetralia and Osculum Obscenum through to their …