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 …
By common consensus, Black Sabbath kick-started this entire thing called heavy metal. As such, not only did they set the goalposts for what heavy metal would sound like, but also many of its thematic and …
Welcome back to Priest Week! It’s a pretty universal opinion that Judas Priest is one of the most important, most influential, and downright greatest heavy metal bands in history. If you came here to argue …
Something terrible happens to bands that endure life and times for a significant period and produce an abundance of records that end up beloved by many—they become the property of their fans. Well, not really, …
Greetings, fellow acolytes of the great Judas Priest! And welcome to the very first ever Judas Priest Week here at Last Rites. All week, we’ll be honoring one of the all time greats in various …
Welcome, friends, to another edition of Staff Infections, wherein the Last Rites staff shares its collectively impeccable taste in music with the general public. This month, as has become typical, no runaway favorite has emerged, …
There’s no denying that death metal has been kicking our scene’s ass for the last eighteen months or so. Skeletal Remains is yet another killer death metal band hailing from California, and their third LP, …
Everyone has records they prefer to play in certain settings. Some almost demand to be heard through headphones or a hi-fi system, while others sound just fine through Bluetooth speakers or the stock system of …
Musically, there are generally two major approaches when combining black metal with Scandinavian folk music that come to mind: that of simply attempting to shoehorn folk instrumentation against the wall of sound guitars of black …
