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 …
Way back at the dawn of time, Exciter released back-to-back rip-roaring speed-driven rides that laid the groundwork for what would eventually become thrash metal. 1983’s Heavy Metal Maniac and 1984’s Violence And Force stand as …
First things first, let’s address the elephant in the room here: It’s a bit difficult to get past the band name. Calling your band “Fist Fight In The Parking Lot” initially seems like an unforgivably …
Well, this certainly is a queer thing. Sweden’s Svartsyn has long been an exceedingly peripheral member of the nation’s embarrassment of black metal riches. Despite becoming somewhat transparently enamored of the ‘orthodox’ black metal zeitgeist …
originally written by Chris McDonald Hour of Penance made substantial waves with their last two albums, and while I’ve never been overly impressed with what the Italians have conjured up in the past, I thought it …
Australia’s pioneering dISEMBOWELMENT is still spoken of in hushed and reverent tones for a simple reason: The band’s sole album, 1993’s Transcendence into the Peripheral, is an unmatched clinic in woozily beautiful primordial doom/death metal. …
Two years ago, Overkill’s Ironbound topped my Best Of 2010 list, and the perfect score I awarded it [back when we assigned numerical scores] remains the only 10 I’ve given in my five years at …
Murder Intentions is the type of band that reviewers kind of hate to run across. On one hand, this Belgian quintet is pretty good, certainly competent and talented enough at what they do, and aside …
Though the genesis of the band can be traced back to the school days of longtime friends Piet Sielck and Kai Hansen, Germany’s Iron Savior was truly born in the mid-1990s, when mainstay Sielck recruited …
