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 …
To be perfectly honest, taking on Woods 5: Grey Skies & Electric Light was a bit of a daunting task. Not only were there the questions over Woods of Ypres founder David Gold’s passing, but …
An EP that consists of only two songs doesn’t leave me a whole hell of a lot to talk about here, but I’ll do my best… … But first, the lead-up: Megascavenger’s Encyclopaedia Metallum bio …
News reports regarding Tony Iommi’s health, combined with the recent tragic losses of Mark Reale (Riot) and Ronnie Montrose, have set me to thinking about the whole notion of ‘guitar gods’ lately. There’s an end …
Death metal’s basically the same thing as poetry, right? Different schools, geographic origins, minor stylistic innovations over time, and a handful of strict compositional rules — artful words on a page, angry notes in the …
Austria’s Hellsaw is the highly melodic black metal project of Horned Almighty guitarist Aries, and with its fourth album Trist, the band has perfected a pleasant but wholly inoffensive type of Goldilocks black metal: everything …
originally written by Chris McDonald Some albums can be weird without integrating banjo solos or techno interludes. Case in point: Macabra‘s debut album, Blood-Nurtured Nature. This is the kind of record that may sound pretty ordinary …
Seattle’s death/thrash/hardcore act Black Breath is back with full-length number two, Sentenced to Life. The band’s first album, Heavy Breathing, saw the band integrate a heavy Swedish death metal influence into the crossover/thrash sound it …
Good hygiene is important; it’s a sign of maturity and, more basically, evolutionary fitness. Society expects cleanliness. But for some of us, that primal little devil inside who so enjoyed flinging us headlong into mud …
