Generally Impressed With Riffs
[Cover art by Per Spjøtvold] Want a fun way to acknowledge your own mortality? Think about how many years you’ve been listening to certain bands or albums. Of course, you, a distinguished devotee of this publication, surely engage in this practice, …
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 …
Meshuggah is about much more than rhythmic trickery. That isn’t to say that they aren’t very much about rhythmic trickery, because with all their polyrhythms and irregular phrase lengths and odd time signatures, they definitely …
Heavy metal, of course, is very serious business. Anger, misanthropy, pessimism, dour facial expressions, dark clothing, corpse paint, all the loud, all the fast, the ugly, and the brutal… It’s all Very Very Serious Business. …
There exists an occasionally silent and almost always deadly killer among us at any given moment with the potential to soil our greatest triumphs just as effortlessly as it has the capacity for heroism during …
Fast Rites: because sometimes brevity is fundamental. Pus waste no time getting straight to business, and neither should we. The Lima, Peru quintet deliver five rapid fire tracks on their debut self-titled EP, all bursting …
Whether it’s a product of conditioning or a reflection of the fighting spirit of humanity, we tend to have a penchant for rooting for the underdog. So many protagonists in modern storytelling have their tales …
[Cover artwork by Metastazis] Most of us have been around the game long enough to recognize that a modest amount of caution may be advised when approaching solo albums from metal artists. Yes, they’ve often …
There’s a lot to like about Silver Talon, not the least of which is that the band manages to get the most out of its three guitarists. And while the Portland, Oregon-based band may have …
Self-described genre tags are always a mixed bag. On the one hand, many bands don’t conform to the pre-existing parameters of whatever style or sub-style, but on the other hand, the reason those styles and …
