Generally Impressed With Riffs
[Album artwork by James Koehnline] As much as I love and appreciate the fact that my metal foundation was fortified by growing up alongside the genre in the ‘80s as a youth, I owe a great deal of my undying …
[Cover art by Fenomeno Design] Did you know that Chile is pretty darn good at death metal? If not, you must be new around these parts, in which case, I say, welcome friend! We’re glad to have you here and …
It’s a magical corner of the musical world where a band can combine an infectious nature with extreme oddness, and it’s in that corner that Idaho’s Seven Chains makes their home. Make no mistake about it, third album Swollen, In …
[Cover art by Claudio Elias Scialabba] Italy’s Into Darkness has been a band for approximately 15 years but is just now releasing its first full length album, Route to the Other Side, but all that time has been greatly beneficial …
Howdy, friends. It’s time to see what your pals at Last Rites have been listening to. But first, let’s talk about the state of the world: It’s still shit. I feel slightly better equipped to …
Minnesota’s Inexorum, now on album number three, offers a stirring example of the power of summoning feeling through form. The duo of Carl Skildum (guitars, vocals, keys, drum programming) and Matthew Kirkwold (bass, vocals) plays …
When it comes to grindcore, at least, France has been kicking some serious ass lately. Between Blockheads’ stellar Trip To The Void at the end of last year, and since then, the new Pulmonary Fibrosis, …
Railing against God and religion is nothing new in our precious little realm of heavy metal. Plenty of anti-god and pro-Satan rhetoric has abounded for generations both intentional and unintentional. While the cover art may …
Given that I’ve been recovering from a particularly nasty virus and piled some mayo-based pasta salad of a questionable age on top of a hangover stomach this morning, starting a review of a band called …
Knuckle-dragging death metal insanity with the odd dose of psychedelia. That is Falling into Damnation in a nutshell. And that hypnotic core is Continuum of Xul’s Crazy Glue, transforming those seemingly disparate influences into something …
[Artwork by a fellow called Adam Burke] “Wait, this is black metal! I’m eating black metal!” ~ Tom Colicchio There’s a thing that happens in extremely sophisticated restaurants and amidst scheming competitive cooking shows where …
Too awkwardly dated and impure to be obviously cool in the social media age, melodic death metal (melodeath) revivalism is – compared to its metalcore cousin, and despite the loaded term – well, not a …
