Faceless Burial – Speciation Review
A tasty riff; a prime cut; a hearty slab; a juicy lead; vocals that bite; drums that bring the heat and band members that look like a snack…wait, what? When it comes to describing music, it is very common to …
High Spirits – Hard To Stop Review
Often times, I believe we are the architects of our own discontent. In a world that so often engrains in our minds that nothing worth having comes without effort, pain, and struggle, we find ourselves …
A Devil’s Dozen – Blind Guardian
[Artwork: Felipe Machado // interior gatefolds of the 2018 Nuclear Blast remasters] Once upon a time, there was no such thing as power metal, and the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was …
Pale Divine – Consequence Of Time Review
I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night a lot lately. All the stuff going on in the world. It’s sometimes hard to figure out what to do with myself in the sleepless …
In Crust We Trust: Vol 18
Kia ora, comrades. Welcome to In Crust We Trust: Vol 18. I promised I wouldn’t write any more long-winded introductions around here, which is a bit of a struggle given the world’s in flames and …
Skeleton – Skeleton Review
It’s no secret that every member of the crew here at Last Rites is a huge fan of Pittsburgh label 20 Buck Spin. Of course, that doesn’t mean we love every one of the label’s …
Unborn Suffer – Commit(ment To) Suicide Review
Unborn Suffer have 25* songs for you. You need only set aside 33 minutes to experience those songs. There are samples, and popcorn drums, and vocals from the bottom of the gutter. If you guessed …
Missing Pieces: The Best Of What We Missed In 2020 So Far, Volume 2
Surely you checked out Volume 1 of this feature, but if you didn’t, to catch you up now, we’re revisiting some jewels that we stupidly didn’t cover during the first six months of the absolute …
Missing Pieces: The Best Of What We Missed In 2020 So Far, Volume 1
So much music, so little time. Even though we do our damnedest to stay current and hit the high points (and sometimes the low ones, too), it’s inevitable that some musical jewels will fall through …