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 …
Ironsword hails from Portugal, and this is their third full-length release of epic METAL. (Ironsword is too METAL for lower-case letters.) Manilla Road comparisons abound, and they’re more than justified, as Ironsword evokes the METAL …
I travel for a living, and as I was listening to this record, planning my angle of approach to this very review, I found myself on the road again, this time traveling through a particularly …
It seems it was only weeks ago that I read Erik Thomas’s review of The Dead’s self titled debut. As it turns out, it was only weeks ago. Obsidian Records was apparently a year or …
Originally written by Michael Roberts. Now that the party-crashing hipsters have well and truly deserted it for whatever this month’s flavor is, for those of us who still love our metalcore it’s time to clean …
Originally written by Jordan Campbell There was a time, roughly 2-3 years ago, that Willowtip was absolutely unfuckwithable. The label put out a handful of records that would set the standard for the death metal to come …
Things seem to be going pretty well in the Darkthrone camp. Nocturno and family are tucked away in the middle of Nowhere, Norway doing cozy-cuddly family things, and Fenriz is living comfortably enough to toss …
Originally written by Sasha Horn Self-professed “abrasive grind/powerviolence” trio drops debut album, In Narcosis, and succeeds in both being abrasive and powerfully violent. What else is new. Maruta have left the kind of impression that …
Originally written by Michael Roberts. Beneath The Massacre’s first album Mechanics of Dysfunction was a technical marvel but a frustratingly sterile affair song-wise. I loved and hated it in equal measure. So now the follow-up Dystopia has landed and the …
