Generally Impressed With Riffs
[Cover artwork by Old Hag] When I initially realized that Arckanum’s first album after a long hiatus—and, technically, its breakup—would be released on All Hallows’ Eve, I devised this rather cutesy and far-fetched idea to compare the entire album to …
[Album artwork / art direction by Joseph Niet / The Creative Corporation] Offering up a textbook definition of “holy crap, time flies,” Black Sabbath’s swan song, 13, was released 13 years ago, on June 7th, 2013. In a curious move, …
If you’re just now catching up, well, we’re just now catching up. Seth Buttnam and I (plus one uninvited guest) are rounding up some of our favoritest grindcore (or grind-adjacent) releases of the past however many months, since we (read: …
[Album artwork by Truls Espedal] It’s 17 albums for Enslaved now, comprising a discography I find exceptionally challenging to wrap my arms around. What’s going on here? Does anyone else forget that the relatively rote and by-the-numbers Frost is actually …
Black Space Riders play what most folks call space rock and the band itself refers to as the New Wave of Heavy Psychedelic Space Rock. Setting aside any quibbles about the existence of various Waves …
Whether it’s publicly admitted or not, one of the most frustrating things about surviving as a longstanding metal band, apart from the obvious lack of money flow in 2015, must be fans’ persistent weeping about …
So I guess that, underneath this suave and collected demeanor, I’ve always been something of a mopey bastard. I say that, because post-punk, in almost all its forms, has always appealed to me greatly, from …
Originally written by K. Scott Ross. These days, when a band that’s been around since the early nineties puts out a new album and it’s full of sloppy playing and reused ideas topped off by …
Norylsk (or “Norilsk”), the city, is Russian – a Siberian mining and industrial town notable for being both the former center of the Norillag cluster of GULAG labor camps and one of the top-ten most …
Step tens of millions of minutes into metal’s past and you’d quickly stumble upon a gallant group of grim trailblazers who were hellbent on ratcheting up the intensity and cruel atmosphere of our genre into what’s …
One of the interesting and strangely rewarding things about being a power metal enthusiast in 2015 is the fact that, due to the general indifference shown by media outlets and the metal population at large, …
Let’s get this out of the way: The snare sounds fine. Five long years after the sonic abortion that was All Idols Fall Before the Hammer, Toronto’s Adversarial have returned with full-length number two, the …
