Generally Impressed With Riffs
[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 …
[Cover artwork by Subhuman at Desert Dungeon] Let’s talk about our love for quirky metal. Okay, sure, any definable level of ‘quirk’ is obviously subjective, but I’m guessing you know we’re not talking about the guy who loves The Black …
Forever the End is a superbly-realized first effort from Portland, Oregon’s Atriarch. Summoning a thick, melancholy doom metal that drinks deeply from the wells of black metal and ‘proper’ gothic rock (think Bauhaus, not corsets), …
Originally written by Rae Amitay Witch Mountain is a doom metal group from Portland that has been on the scene for over a decade, but since the addition of vocalist Uta Plotkin in 2009, they’ve …
Polish grinders Squash Bowels came on strong with their last few efforts – both 2005’s Love Songs and 2009’s Willowtip-released Grindvirus were stout records that saw the band moving away from the goregrind that characterized …
We’re seven weeks into this, and by now, you know the drill. Here are ten more albums that every metalhead worth his or her Slayer shirt should know and know well. For this seventh entry …
There are thousands of bands similar to Attick Demons out there. Not just stylistically, mind you (Maidenisms abound, once again), but also in terms of groups that manage(d) to remain ‘active’ over a long stretch …
Originally written by Rae Amitay The thrash metal community has placed a lot of stock in Evile, and for good reason. This assemblage of Brits is tirelessly working to revive the genre, and they’ve done …
[For our sixth installment of our 90s Essentials interview series, we asked NOLA legend Jimmy Bower to shed some light upon Eyehategod‘s perpetually-lauded Take As Needed For Pain. These are the fruits of our exchanges.] MetalReview: First of …
originally written by Jim Brandon Technique and talent; such things have been proven time after time to not be mutually exclusive by any stretch of the imagination, and there are few better examples of this …
