Generally Impressed With Riffs
It’s a magical corner of the musical world where a band can combine an infectious nature with extreme oddness, and it’s in that corner that Idaho’s Seven Chains makes their home. Make no mistake about it, third album Swollen, In …
[Cover art by Claudio Elias Scialabba] Italy’s Into Darkness has been a band for approximately 15 years but is just now releasing its first full length album, Route to the Other Side, but all that time has been greatly beneficial …
[Cover art by David Preissel] The sounds of Neurosis’ “Locust Star” emanate from a desktop speaker wired to an iPod Nano via ⅛-inch cable “Hey maaaan … is that Ponderous Post Metal?” “Yeah maaan …” “Well turn it up MAAAN!!” …
[Artwork by Vicky “Liddo” Morales] In a soak-your-underwear sweaty, tetanus-to-the-touch warehouse in the middle of Skid Row, Raw Addict played its first show. Weeks earlier, drummer Isaac made the irresistible sales pitch, stating that the multinational band connecting grind lifers …
Originally written by K. Scott Ross. It’s almost a truism of heavy metal that we have lost the loudness wars. Too often modern music gets compressed to Hell and back again before being laminated with …
One of the most considerable windfalls afforded by the second wave of black metal in the early 90s was the fact that it provided a harsh and crucial reconnection with metal’s Primordial Soup. That’s not …
When Oranssi Pazuzu‘s debut album, Muukalainen Puhuu, touched down in 2009, it was a shock to hear such a fully formed vision. Despite the fact that plenty of black metal bands had exploded the genre …
Originally written by K. Scott Ross. I have a very particular idea in mind of what makes a good Borknagar album: the listener should be able — perhaps even compelled — to sing along to …
I remain an ardent supporter of physical media. I don’t feel like I really own an album unless I can hold it in my hands, and though I don’t always go in for every special …
Germany’s Septagon goes for the trad metal splicing approach on their debut, Deadhead Syndicate. While this is indeed a debut, three of the four instrumentalists are current or former members of long-running power/progsters Lanfear, and …
There’s almost no good reason anymore to discuss Megadeth’s last two decades. But I guess we sort of have to… Either you started with the band in their prime, their mostly classic run from the …
How do you know what music is about? It seems like a silly question, but the answer often strongly influences how one experiences a given piece of music. The easiest clue is usually lyrical: if …
