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 …
I’m two for two with South American doom bands in the last few months. After the excellent surprise that was Mar de Grises‘ Draining The Waterheart, I got lucky again by running across this record, …
Originally written by Chris Chellis. I’d like to think that I keep up with most doom, whether it’s stoner, traditional, epic or whatever subdivision you want to apply to the root there. When I saw …
Originally written by Keith Fox. (First a Note: I don’t pretend to know anything about ambient music. But as a sincere Leviathan fan I think my opinion on this ambient record should tell black metal fans like myself …
One of the nice things about being a writer is that, for the most part, you can pick-and-choose what you write about. Even so, there are times you get more than you bargained for. Such is the …
Australia’s Limb From Limb spew forth a machine-precise, practiced and tight batch of brutal death metal on their first full-length, the questionably titled Rip Him From His Fucking Throne. It’s nothing you haven’t heard before; …
Originally written by Jordan Campbell Previously a metalcore band, Belgium’s Psalm have unveiled a new sound, a new direction on this transitional EP: blackened death metal, or something resembling blackened death metal, anyway. Given this information,Manifest sounds exactly as you’d …
For the record, up front I will say this to avoid having to defend myself later: I don’t hate deathcore. I don’t hate Whitechapel. I just find both of them to have less staying power …
Ep-ic [ep-ik]: noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in which a series of great achievements or events is narrated in elevated style. Ep-ic as Balls [ep-ik az bawls]: …
