Generally Impressed With Riffs
[Cover artwork by Michael Cloutier] Prog, of course, is known for technical musicianship and songwriting complexity above all else, a reputation well-earned by the early giants of the genre and happily maintained by their progeny ever since. It’s also true …
[Cover artwork by Timbul Cahyono] In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I’ve always found the concept of the split to be flawed. It works best when there’s a shared theme or the band’s involved cover each …
[Cover art by Mars Triumph] Petrichor, the sixth full length album from Greece’s epic metal stalwarts Battleroar, commences with the sound of rain and an invitation to reflect. That word, “petrichor,” is a relatively new one (coined by scientists in …
To start, let’s acknowledge that you and I don’t really know each other. This means, among other things, that I can’t say what “war metal” means to you. To some extent, maybe you just throw your hands in the air …
[Artwork by Daniel Corchado] Here is a noteworthy truth related to classic extreme metal bands and many of their fans: If you’ve been a part of that particular sphere since the early days, chances are …
There’s a big difference between the words, ‘naked’ and ‘nekkid.’ ‘Naked’ means you don’t have any clothes on. ‘Nekkid’ means you don’t have any clothes on… and you’re up to something. – Lewis Grizzard What …
In an effort to be tidy and fastidious, we offer you this handy and insanely organized assemblage of the full results of Last Rites’ 10-week salute to the 2010s. Perhaps a bit overkill? Eh, we …
Hopefully you can appreciate just how challenging it can be to force twelve unique individuals who are utterly obsessed with music into a situation where they must agree on the best of anything. Sure, there’ll …
The evolution of …and Oceans from an excellent but fairly standard symphonic and melodic black metal band in the late 90s to a group incorporating plenty of industrial and avant-garde influences was not entirely unlikely …
As I write this, it’s early May 2020, and for all intents and purposes, the world is ending. A new plague has killed hundreds of thousands of people the world across; in hard-hit areas, hospitals …
On April 20th, I wrote a lot of words about Bong Metal, a very arbitrary but surprisingly expansive subgenre of stoner metal. Many people have said that I wrote too many words, questioned the entire …
Anger. It’s one of the unifying themes of extreme metal. Anger against authority is perhaps most common. Anger at parents, anger at priests, anger at politicians. Anger against certain particular non-authority people comes up now …
