Generally Impressed With Riffs
[Cover artwork by Old Hag] When I initially realized that Arckanum’s first album after a long hiatus—and, technically, its breakup—would be released on All Hallows’ Eve, I devised this rather cutesy and far-fetched idea to compare the entire album to …
[Album artwork / art direction by Joseph Niet / The Creative Corporation] Offering up a textbook definition of “holy crap, time flies,” Black Sabbath’s swan song, 13, was released 13 years ago, on June 7th, 2013. In a curious move, …
If you’re just now catching up, well, we’re just now catching up. Seth Buttnam and I (plus one uninvited guest) are rounding up some of our favoritest grindcore (or grind-adjacent) releases of the past however many months, since we (read: …
[Album artwork by Truls Espedal] It’s 17 albums for Enslaved now, comprising a discography I find exceptionally challenging to wrap my arms around. What’s going on here? Does anyone else forget that the relatively rote and by-the-numbers Frost is actually …
Swedish death metal band Mordbrand sounds a lot like a death metal band from Sweden, but as we’ve learned over the decades, things are never quite so simple. A more accurate statement would be to …
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 …
