Generally Impressed With Riffs
[Cover art by David Preissel] The sounds of Neurosis’ “Locust Star” emanate from a desktop speaker wired to an iPod Nano via ⅛-inch cable “Hey maaaan … is that Ponderous Post Metal?” “Yeah maaan …” “Well turn it up MAAAN!!” …
[Artwork by Vicky “Liddo” Morales] In a soak-your-underwear sweaty, tetanus-to-the-touch warehouse in the middle of Skid Row, Raw Addict played its first show. Weeks earlier, drummer Isaac made the irresistible sales pitch, stating that the multinational band connecting grind lifers …
Picture this, brah brah: You’re out enjoying a nice meal with the in-laws. It’s a pleasant setting—a beach vacation, let’s say. The sun gently peeks above the horizon, illuminating the tides as they roll in and wash away the footprints …
[Artwork by Pierre de Palmas] When revealing Melting Rot as the first band booked to play at Revenge of the Corpse 3, festival organizer Isaac Horne wrote on Instagram that the Aurora, Illinois, trio was “the closest you’ll ever get …
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 …
Here we are again, friends—still in the grip of a pandemic, and most of us still under quarantine. Some states have begun easing restrictions to varying degrees, so it’ll be interesting to see how these …
As the virtuous musketeers of Dark Angel once pronounced, “We Have Arrived”—the tenth and final installment of our 100 Essential Albums of the 2010s is here, and with it comes all the goodness associated with …
[Cover art by Nick Keller] If you’ve been paying attention to the goings on here at Last Rites (but why would you?), you might have noticed that we’ve had a rebirth of brutal death metal. …
Kia ora, comrades. Welcome to In Crust We Trust: Vol 16. You might have noticed that every new day seems to bring another new catastrophe. (Or yet another increasingly deranged soundbite.) Who knows what the …
