Generally Impressed With Riffs
To put it mildly, I’ve been a bit sidetracked this year, so I apologize to all zero of my readers for not keeping them informed on the state of grindcore as I see it. Thankfully, I have some conscientious compatriots …
[Cover Artwork by Julia Proszowska] Something about the internet that only occurred to me recently is that it’s changed the way we think about death. Like just about everything else, the very notion of death has lost so much of …
[Cover artwork by The Blacksmith] I will freely admit that anonymity when it comes to art largely puzzles me, particularly as it relates to music. Aliased with some sort of elaborate costume? There’s potential there; who doesn’t love a little …
[Cover art by Larisa Brechun] With age, you begin to understand that genuine loss is not the haunting shadow you once thought. It isn’t a short-lived grief that disappears in a few days. Instead, it’s more than a shadow; it’s …
[Artwork by Adam Burke / Nightjar Illustration] Listening to the debut full-length from Chicago’s Fer de Lance is akin to witnessing the epic origin story for the US interpretation of Germany’s Atlantean Kodex, but with …
There are no limits, you are only limited by however far you want to be limited. –Chuck Schuldiner Only death is real. –Thomas Gabriel Fischer Mortality casts its shadow over everything we do and experience. …
Once known as, ahem, Herpes, the buzzsaw devotees in Disfuneral distinguish themselves not in aesthetics, necessarily, but where it counts—quality songwriting. Though the Frenchmen’s debut, Blood Red Tentacle, borrows liberally from the Entombed, Grave, and …
In all of heavy metal’s fifty-ish glorious years, how many conversations have been had the world around concerning some variation on the theme “Who is the heaviest of them all?” Tens of thousands, no doubt. …
Surprises are relatively rare in this age of hyper-publicity. Yet every once in a while something like Azaab’s Summoning the Cataclysm falls from the sky to clock you in the noggin before landing at your …
Get your antibiotics ready, friends, it’s time for Staff Infections. Staff Infections, if you didn’t know, is our monthly examination of the Last Rites staff’s listening habits. Typically I also spend a little time discussing …
[Cover art by Lordigan] To listen to and fully enjoy Analepsy requires a state of mind matching the above. The band’s wares are most effective when you’ve turned off your brain and you can be …
[Artwork: João de Sá from a 16th century anonymous Flemish painting, The King’s Fountain] With Heltekvad, Ole Pedersen Luk of Afsky sacrifices little aggression in adopting a medieval theme. And though I am still not …
