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 …
No pirate jokes. No pirate jokes. No pirate jokes. NO PIRATE JOKES. Rock ‘n’ Rolf Kasparek is the Stephen King of the metal world: he cranks ’em out like a bloody machine, and long-time fans …
When you come across an album that ranges from a mix of Code and Root to full Arcturus worship, a touch of Solefaldian weirdness, and every quirky sound in between, the labels are tough to …
Originally written by Jordan Campbell Last Friday, Blut Aus Nord released What Once Was…Liber III via Bandcamp. With zero fanfare. Unless you were one of the forty-odd people slavishly following Debemur Morti’s Facebook feed, this …
Originally written by Ian Chainey The Vision Bleak is tagged as a “gothic metal,” though the German duo prefers the more precise “horror metal.” This is worth noting, not for an immediate point of reference, …
To get the uninitiated up to speed: New Jersey’s favorite drug-riddled space-cavemen Monster Magnet released two jaw-dropping, ear-exploding, mind-expanding, cosmos-rending classics in 1992’s Spine of God and 1993’s Superjudge. Main magnet Dave Wyndorf and crew …
Originally written by Matt Longo I don’t know how much of the old “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mantra is consciously incorporated into the lives of Skeletonwitch, but I will point out that Serpents …
Do vocals alone make an album metal? If Martin van Drunen fronted an album featuring a classic three-piece jazz combo playing standards from the great American songbook, would you be required to call it metal? …
2011’s Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm was a milestone of sorts for long running black metallers Inquisition, if only because it gained them a wider audience than ever before in their history, not …
