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 …
The name of the band is taken from a song by Entombed / Nihilist. The title of the album is taken from a song by Dismember / Carnage, albeit with a “k” where a “c” …
Southern Lord has been cornering the market on all things crusty and d-beat-y of late, so it was little surprise when they announced that they’d signed long-running Swedish act Wolfbrigade. Starting out in the mid …
Originally written by Doug Moore. Most metal bands build themselves out of a shared stockpile of visual, lingual, and musical tropes. Accordingly, you can usually tell a lot about a metal band by its name. …
In today’s lesson, we will examine a couple of riffs from the Candlemass song “The Well of Souls,” from their second album, Nightfall. This album featured the debut of the band’s “classic” line-up. Founding members, bassist Leif Edling …
In this bimonthly column, staff writer Doug Moore takes a very close look at extreme metal lyrics. Some will be serious, some will be silly, but they’ll all go under the microscope. The term “fertile …
The level of build-up and promotion behind the release of Lillie: F-65 is proof enough that doom is undoubtedly experiencing a level of renown many veterans of the genre never dreamed they’d see. It’s a …
originally written by Chris McDonald As the death metal sea has parted, with old school on one side and new on the other, a small but notable sect of bands has arisen and strived to …
Heavy, of course, is relative. And I suppose, in a phrase, that’s the whole point of this damn editorial series. Too many of us, for too long, have willingly (or at least unthinkingly) participated in …
