Generally Impressed With Riffs
[Cover artwork by Old Hag] When I initially realized that Arckanum’s first album after a long hiatus—and, technically, its breakup—would be released on All Hallows’ Eve, I devised this rather cutesy and far-fetched idea to compare the entire album to …
[Album artwork / art direction by Joseph Niet / The Creative Corporation] Offering up a textbook definition of “holy crap, time flies,” Black Sabbath’s swan song, 13, was released 13 years ago, on June 7th, 2013. In a curious move, …
If you’re just now catching up, well, we’re just now catching up. Seth Buttnam and I (plus one uninvited guest) are rounding up some of our favoritest grindcore (or grind-adjacent) releases of the past however many months, since we (read: …
[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 …
The temptation when writing about a band like Hungary’s Sear Bliss is to obsess over what is so unusual about them (a horn section in a metal band) and neglect explaining how they excel at …
Death is, to most metal fans, the most important band in death metal, but just as Judas Priest rivals Black Sabbath in its influence on metal as a whole, Morbid Angel rivals Death in its …
“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 …
The ancient, hallowed halls of heavy metal are filled with grotesque statuary and portraits of the elders. They speak to us of a time long since passed when our religion was still just a cult. …
A seeker of truth risks life and limb to make their way up a sacred mountain in hopes of eventually reaching a solitary guru for consultation and enlightenment. After a treacherous journey, the mountain’s peak …
If you were to assemble a couple teams of metal fans for a game of Family Feud, and the reanimated corpse of the late, great Richard Dawson asked the contestants to name an adjective that …
…so then I says to the guy, I says, “Maligner?! I hardly even KNOW her!” What? Hello… Hello… Is this thing on?… I shouldn’t screw around, though, because Maligner doesn’t. This Swedish three-piece rips through …
As a suburban kid raised on the one classic rock radio station in a mid-sized southern American city, I was bombarded daily with the same 45 songs on a never-ending shuffle. “Free Bird,” of course, …
