Generally Impressed With Riffs
[Album artwork by Truls Espedal] It’s 17 albums for Enslaved now, comprising a discography I find exceptionally challenging to wrap my arms around. What’s going on here? Does anyone else forget that the relatively rote and by-the-numbers Frost is actually …
[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 …
“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 …
Class is back in sessions, students of the riff. For this lesson, we will be examining some riffs from the Sepultura classic “Dead Embryonic Cells,” from 1991’s Arise. Arise might be the last great thrash …
Tucked away at the arse end of the world, Aotearoa New Zealand is home to plenty of noisy bands and appreciative fans. Over the years, a number of local punk groups have managed to infiltrate …
Fuck Paladin. If there are two areas of metal I have little patience for its power metal and melodic death metal. Not that I don’t find plenty to appreciate in both, but I don’t really …
Way back about a billion years ago, the first version of Nocturnus was formed when drummer / vocalist Mike Browning split from a young Morbid Angel. After a pair of demos and a shifting line-up …
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 …
