Generally Impressed With Riffs
[Cover Artwork by Julia Proszowska] Something about the internet that only occurred to me recently is that it’s changed the way we think about death. Like just about everything else, the very notion of death has lost so much of …
[Cover artwork by The Blacksmith] I will freely admit that anonymity when it comes to art largely puzzles me, particularly as it relates to music. Aliased with some sort of elaborate costume? There’s potential there; who doesn’t love a little …
[Cover art by Larisa Brechun] With age, you begin to understand that genuine loss is not the haunting shadow you once thought. It isn’t a short-lived grief that disappears in a few days. Instead, it’s more than a shadow; it’s …
[Cover artwork by Ludwig Missal] Working from a classic build of vocalist/guitarist, bass player, and drummer, the appropriately minimalist design of Germany’s Midnight Prey works in their favor as they charge through seven songs of the kind of hybrid hard …
The one and only concession I will make to any Cradle of Filth haters out there in the course of this review is that a pretty decent burn on Dani Filth’s get-up in the promo …
There’s an old Cherokee proverb my grandma used to paraphrase: Inside each of us, there are two wolves. One is evil, representing anger, envy, greed, arrogance, resentment, lies, and ego. The other is good, representing …
[Cover artwork by Loni Gillum of Minerva’s Menagerie and RWAKE] There are lyrics in “The Return of Magik,” the title track of Rwake’s sixth album and first in almost 14 years, with variable payloads. Two …
[Cover artwork by Jared Fleming] “One of the great things about New York is that if you ever need dead baby eels, you can get them here. Also, there is opera.” – Dave Barry Full …
When was the last time you felt powerful? I’m not talking about anything grandiose or world-historical; think of a time you opened the pickle jar on the first try, or a time when you did …
Absolutes are dangerous. The rhetorical logic of “all or nothing” is a violent assault on the beautiful heterogeneity of the world. Taking any position to its extreme endpoint risks gross oversimplification and infantilizing generalization. That …
Welcome, dear friends, to another edition of Staff Infections, wherein the staff here at Last Rites share what they’ve been listening to for the past month. Everything is still terrible here in the U.S.A., so …
[cover artwork by Adam Vick of Dark Meditation] Everyone you know and love is a shambling whole comprised of smaller and smaller parts. You can drill down through the cutaneous, into the tissue, within the …
