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 …
Our riff for today’s lesson comes from one the finest traditional metal bands to every come out of the U.S., and almost certainly the best thing to ever come out of Kansas: Manilla Road. Manilla Road took …
Originally written by Rae Amitay Borknagar is an experimental metal outfit that has been through its share of lineup changes and sonic shifts since their formation in 1995. They’ve delved into the nooks and crannies …
The mind of the hopelessly obsessive music fan cannot help but search for hidden connections, shared trajectories, the limnal algebra of an ever-expanding dendritic web. For our current purposes, two of Germany’s most deliberately reverent …
That’s right, y’all. We’re back with the third installment of Pit Therapy, and this month we’re in the streets of New York City, the the most popular breeding ground for many of America’s favorite past …
While not quite the please don’t suck case that say, the new Van Halen was, a new Angel Witch album certainly falls under the umbrella of only being welcome if it’s good. Or if it …
I’m not into this whole zombie phenomenon. I’ve never participated in a zombie crawl, planned for the zombie apocalypse, or watched a single episode of “The Walking Dead.” So naturally I was skeptical when I …
originally written by Chris McDonald Ever hear music that you know you would have loved if you were still in tenth grade? Lay Down Rotten‘s newest effort Mask of Malice falls into this category for …
Originally written by Rae Amitay When Meshuggah announced their plans for Koloss, I knew that this news would dominate every metal outlet from that moment until weeks after the album’s release. Sure enough, each time …
