Generally Impressed With Riffs
[Album artwork by THEE Travis Smith] If you manage to get old(er)—and I sincerely hope you do—and you also happen to be music-obsessed and surrounded by like-minded chums, you will likely notice that at some point a number of people …
[Artwork by Petri Ala-Maunus] There’s nothing quite like that sense that you get as a listener that you’ve fully connected with an artist through their music. There’s about a million ways it can happen, from simple appreciation of the music …
[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 …
How about this weather, huh? There is nothing happening this year that is more important to me than what a third of my country did to the rest of us, while another third sat with …
Well, you’ve almost made it through another year. Another year of life, death, love, hate, labor, boredom, politics and all the good, the bad and the ugly that ends up stacked to the rafters in-between. …
You ever see that movie The Expendables? Yeah, it’s pretty awesome. Retro-80s action piece, throwback to the golden era of the style, totally captures the spirit and the feeling and everything that was great about …
One of the more amusing grievances metal fans toss into the ring these days relates to our genre’s prevailing fondness for keeping most every branch cemented in the past. Truth: It would be tragic beyond …
‘Tis the season for lists, and there is no shortage of them. Since it’s impossible to uncover every gem — those who feel they came close are surely bullshitting themselves — this is merely a …
What can be said about this year of our Lord 2017 that is now (thankfully, in many ways) behind us? I am tempted to go on a political rant about the demise of our planet …
For most of the year, I found myself thinking, “Huh, it hasn’t been a particularly great year for heavy metal.” Of course, I found myself thinking that while also getting busy listening to a whole …
Born from the same anarcho-punk bloodline, crust and grind are natural bedfellows. But of course, when bedfellows come from the same bloodline, well… sometimes the results are… a bit stunted. Belgium’s Marginal is a good …
