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 …
Some styles of music and metal aren’t just scarce in quality, they’re just plain scarce. Melodic doom/death in the Finnish style is one such limited sound, as is melodic black metal in the Swedish, Dissectionian …
I suppose there’s a decent argument to be made that nobody needs a review of this album, now nearly two full months after its release date. There’s also a reasonably solid argument to be made …
If you spend any amount of time monkeying around on heavy metal websites these days – and for the love of God, why wouldn’t you? – you’ll quickly discover that there’s a fairly epic, abiding …
Rather quietly, it seems, Hail of Bullets put out a new album last year. Either that or news travels to me about as fast as it did to the folks back home during World War …
This album should not be good. There are more mediocre technical death metal bands than there are fish in the sea, and as a whole, the style has been approaching self-parody for years. Recently, the …
Finland’s Graveborne has a slight identity crisis, but it’s a peculiar case. They obviously meant to be a black metal band, and a black metal band they are. The problem comes from their identity within …
In a minor shift of format, this Devil’s Dozen edition will focus not on the work of one band, but on the work of one man in several bands. That man? The man: Ronnie James …
