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 …
Okay, so everybody understands the appeal of the Ferrari. Who can resist the draw of 490 horsepower, 340 foot pounds of torque and 0-60 in 4.8 seconds? And, of course, it’s so, so sexy. But …
Originally written by Michael Roberts. The Relapse debut from Tombs isn’t an easy beast to pin down. Winter Hours may be a relatively tidy thirty-seven minutes in length but feels significantly longer, such is the diversity and sheer density that it …
Originally written by Jordan Campbell Quite honestly, it’s tough to swallow another helping of technical death metal at this point. Everything from the band name (come on, guys), the computer-generated cover art, and the maddingly …
For nearly three decades, Germany’s Grave Digger has soldiered on, (mostly) bringing us some killer epic speed metal. (They’d probably love to forget their brief departure into Bon Jovi-esque pop metal—under the abbreviated name Digger—as …
originally written by Chris McDonald While some may view the reissue of such a readily available album as Amon Amarth’s debut Once Sent From The Golden Hall as excessive, I for one am happy to …
“Happy metal” is such a dubious concept. But if it’s humanly possible to listen to Turisas and not be inspired to thrust one’s fist in the air, to move and to smile gleefully whilst doing …
Originally written by Jordan Campbell Progressive power metal is one of the arenas that American bands tend to fare extremely well in. Ball-swingin’ and crunch-centric, we Yanks tend to place just as much importance on …
Sweden seems to churn out melodic death metal bands the way Hollywood churns out douchebags. One of the more recent products of the Swedish melodeath sweatshop is a group of early-twenty-somethings that calls itself Zonaria. …
