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 …
As a very recent addition to the writing staff here, I feel a bit like I’m crashing everyone’s party. Nonetheless, I am pleased to have joined the ranks of such an august organization, and just tickled …
Originally written by Jon Eardley To say Profound Lore Records has had an enormous year in terms of the quality of metal music they’ve helped get out to the underground masses is an absolute understatement. …
A masked sky. An immeasurably vast landscape. One lone creature soaring above the earth, confused by the encroaching heavens and rumbling chaos from below. Shifting terrain scatters trees, beasts, life. A great spire of rock …
Israel’s Dukatalon is the latest entrant into the increasingly crowded field of vaguely sludgy stoner doom that this particular writer absolutely refuses to refer to as having anything to do with facial hair. Still, the …
2010 was a weird year. While there was a ton of heavy metal for the taking (the disparate lists of my colleagues will attest to this), I didn’t really have much time to digest it. …
Martolea is the one-man black metal project from Alin Drimus, known perhaps not by name but certainly by musical presence as the wooden flute and frula player on Negura Bunget’s already-legendary OM album. After releasing a …
Human Concept is the debut album from French brutal death metal act Offending, and it bears all the marks of a typical brutal affair: rampant blast beats, double bass and dozens of riffs per song. Offending, however, …
It’s albums such as Omega Wave that present the biggest scoring headaches for me. I can tell you directly off the bat that I’ve greatly enjoyed dipping back into the Forbidden pool with an hour’s …
