Generally Impressed With Riffs
Through 10 years of frustrating underexposure and relative obscurity, Psychotic Waltz never compromised their vision. Even in the comparatively wide open world of heavy metal, they broke boundaries and defied expectation, creating music that was theirs completely and that reflected …
Every passionate music fan has a litmus test band or artist, the one that, when mentioned, signifies the speaker’s legitimate expertise in that area. For a lot of progressive metal devotees that band is Psychotic Waltz. When chatting with a …
Did heavy metal begin with Black Sabbath, or were the young Brummies behind that grim denomination simply the optimal vessels at that very moment for an entity perhaps as old as the Earth itself? Few would argue that evidence of …
[Cover artwork: Fluisteraars] There are no rules in an art world where a banana duct-taped to a wall hauls in $120k and receives extensive press, and that’s a beautiful thing. Art is here to explore every corner of the imagination, …
That Tamás Kátai and Thy Catafalque can still surprise after several albums of increasingly decreased musical boundaries isn’t just impressive, it’s a testament to the very nature of the project. Kátai and his ever-expanding band …
Hyperbole is a useless endeavor, particularly when allowed to run amok within the often comedic realm of music reviews. Beyond the sheer awkwardness of it, limitless hyperbole mostly ends up yielding the opposite of its …
A few preliminaries: before note one of Worm’s Gloomlord plays, it is recommended that the canny listener pause a moment and wonder at its tremendous title and cover art. Are you a gloomlord? Am I? …
Like most of us, Andrew D’Cagna grew up in a quiet town bereft of Crusades, wars fought upon horseback and plagues. Thus, we were all forced to cobble together medieval weaponry made from sticks, battle …
The kitchen sink approach is risky. Throwing a bünch of inflüences together in hopes of carving oüt a distinctive soünd can have its payoffs, büt can come out as a jümbled mess much more easily. …
Sometimes evolution is just unnecessary. Chicago’s gods of caveman death metal Cianide return with their first release in nine years, and only their third in the past twenty. (And even then, Unhumanized is only half …
[Beyond the Lighted Stage: Banger Films] Rush is for the nerds. Okay, sure, the band is clearly for everyone, but it’s hardly a newsflash to reaffirm the fact that, in a great many cases, people …
Welcome, friends, to the first edition of Staff Infections in 2020. You might have noticed we took last month off, and that’s because we thought you probably didn’t need another list-based feature to read alongside …
