Generally Impressed With Riffs
[Album artwork by fleshflies] If Conan The Sumerian had pursued The Secret of Acid in lieu of The Riddle of Steel, Conan The Barbarian would have been a very different film. Like, eat shit, Wheel of Pain; so long, time …
[Cover artwork by David Dubenic] It’s tempting to call Dissona a passion project. Based in and around Chicago, they’ve been making progressive metal for more than 15 years, outlasting the tides of misfortune and disappointment, including the pandemic cancellation of …
[Cover art by Alex Eckman-Lawn] If you look at other pages and conversations about An Abstract Illusion, you’ll likely find that they are most often saddled with the progressive death metal genre tag. Surely, I’m being a bit pedantic here, …
[Album artwork by Martin Messner and Patrick Klopf] Perhaps you’ve noticed by now that these Diamonds & Rust treatments have a tendency to dip into a sort of narcissistic form of self-interest when generated by yours truly. Why am I …
Originally written by Chris Redar Seattle, WA’s Theories released a killer split last year with Wake, who are a personal favorite band of yours truly. And guess what- you didn’t read about it here, because …
Originally written by Chris Redar This is some white-hot shit right here, y’all. St. Louis three-piece Fulgora is redefining what it is to bring the thunder with their debut full-length Stratagem. “Full-length” is a pretty …
Akhlys is a side project of Nightbringer guitarist Naas Alcameth (because a pseudonym is cooler than being a black metal artist named Kyle Spanswick). When first putting ears on sophomore effort The Dreaming I, this …
Savage Land, the debut from death metal super group Gruesome, was born out of Exhumed’s Matt Harvey’s (guitar, vocals) and Gus Rios’s (drums) involvement in the Death to All project. Harvey conceived Savage Land as …
So we’re almost a month removed from the release of this collection of covers from alterna-industrial-hardcore-metal machine known as Prong. That means that anybody who cares has already bought it, heard it, or disregarded it …
From beginnings in 1980 as a Germs-influenced straight-ahead hardcore band, by the time of 1986’s killer Kings Of Punk LP, Portland’s Poison Idea had perfected a mash-up of hardcore and hard rock. Rock’n’roll swagger met …
Last Rites has been accused of metal snobbery in the past, so some may question the logic behind agreeing to review a record that appears to have willfully painted a target the size of Brooklyn …
On its debut album, Nihil Quam Vacuitas Ordinatum Est, Italy’s Ad Nauseam offers a bizarre take on technical death metal that is complex, and jarring, but at the same time engaging and even astounding. Weird …
