Generally Impressed With Riffs
[Cover art by Christian Ward] No one has ever accused Dreadnought of being doggedly orthodox in any respect. Their music is a product of the watercolored mishmash of monoculture in which it was and is created, a world of intrusive …
[Album artwork by Maciej Kamuda] I’ve always been fascinated by Japanese culture, but more importantly, I admire its people. That fascination has persisted throughout my life, stemming from childhood when I was just captivated by the beauty and courage of …
It’s been a minute since I’ve committed any significant amount of time to listening to doom. Any doom, really. From anywhere. Of any type. And not because there hasn’t been great doom the past few years. Rather, my attention has …
[Cover Art by Daniel Karlsson] Februus is a one-man project driven by the prodigious and still developing talents of Sweden’s Andreas Karlsson. His latest, Construction of Conflict, delivers 40 minutes of guitar-centric death metal that, despite being packed to the …
The new record by Seattle’s Pound, the title of which is just two dots, is absolutely bonkers. Bonkers. The most convenient way to describe it would be as an instrumental hybrid of Meshuggah and The …
Nostalgia is probably overrated, at least the most common notion of it, the poignant sense that what was is somehow inherently better than what is. It’s a lie of which we are well aware, if …
Swedish kängpunks Martyrdöd have always sounded iron-willed and up for a fight. No more so than on their new album, Hexhammaren. With a who’s who lineup of Scandi punk / metal heavyweights, Martyrdöd have spent …
Astres, the debut full length from French duo Epectase, manages to be both incredibly promising and a mite confounding all at once, often for the intertwining reasons. The record is absolutely sprawling in both style …
Sometimes you’re sitting around with your buddies, listening to all your favorite old records, when you notice one of the guys staring extra intently at the iconic sleeve art of Screaming for Vengeance. “You guys …
Though it was early a decade ago now, Ares Kingdom still couldn’t have picked a better title for their second album than Incendiary. If one word encapsulated this band’s aesthetic, that word was “incendiary.” And …
“Album Of The Day” is a Last Rites Facebook feature we started whose purpose is quite straight-forward: highlight one album per day and say a few words about it. Understanding that not everyone chooses to …
Thirty-odd years ago, I placed a classified ad in the pages of punk zine Maximum Rockandroll (MRR). I was searching for a penpal who was plugged into the subterranean punk and metal scenes in the …
