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 …
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 …
Germany’s Mindflair has been lurking around the grindcore scene since 1994, issuing a series of splits over the course of nearly a decade before releasing their first full-length in 2002’s Green Bakery. That one was …
Murg is from Sweden. Murg shows a real dedication to black and white cover art. Based on just these facts, one can make a pretty good guess what Murg brings to the table. If you …
It’s hard to write about a show when you’ve worked up such expectations of it that your head wants to explode. No, wait, I’m doing this all in medias res. Let’s start from the beginning. I …
