Generally Impressed With Riffs
[Cover art by Quinn Henderson] You’re familiar with the term, “unc,” right? If not, it generally refers to a washed up older feller whose personality in large part revolves around extravagantly performing confusion and/or displeasure at the mere notion of …
[Artwork by Caroline Harrison] “Nonsense” opens with a slow fade-in of distorted guitars and seismic drums — the chaos before the swarm. It’s a trick of the trade, the extreme metal equivalent of a camera operator calling out “speed” before …
[Cover artwork by Luca “Zeero” Zironi] There was always something uniquely charming about Konquest’s brand of traditional heavy metal—an almost whimsical breeziness that still felt like a near perfect balance of playful and substantive. A long-lost Italian cousin to Sweden’s …
[Cover art by Beyond Art] There are bad musical moods, and then there’s Mylingar. Over the course of the last decade this group of anonymous Swedes has concocted the type of ill-meaning black/death that makes Diocletian seem like a Care …
Originally written by Rae Amitay Sonata Arctica has always been the kind of “metal” you’d hear playing at Disney World (or at least in the Disney store), but I’ll admit that I thoroughly enjoyed 2004’s …
A Collection Of Depravation rounds up most of General Surgery’s post-reactivation EPs and splits, along with assorted other gurgling goodies for the de(a)dicated fan. Relapse recently reissued the band’s semi-classic 1991 Necrology EP with some …
Sometimes, music can be so brilliant, so original and so creative that it occupies just about genre and soundwave it can get its hands around. In a sense, it’s inescapable. It’s the exception to every …
originally written by Chris McDonald Wodensthrone‘s Loss was the definition of a breakthrough debut. There was nothing formative or primordial about it — this was the sound of a band fully prepared to make a …
Nunslaughter poses something of an interesting question – in their twenty-five year existence, they’ve offered up approximately 118 releases, be those LPs or splits or EPs or live albums or compilations or demos or DVDs …
Los Angeles trio Ides of Gemini is nothing if not evocative. For this particular listener, Constantinople conjures images of a caravan trudging into some unknowable wilderness, wrapped in the gauzy patina of memory. The music …
A fairly normal thing to do upon receiving a new album from a new band, aside from just listening to the damn thing, is figure out who’s behind all the instruments. Okay, so we have …
Since his unceremonious ouster from the seminal Nihilist, Johnny Hedlund has led Unleashed through eleven studio albums in twenty-three years. They’ve always consciously stood a few steps away from their Swedish compatriots – avoiding the …
