There’s a new Ozzy Osbourne album out this month. There’s also a new Striborg album out: two and a half hours of oppressively bleak — and, at its best, downright chilling — “blackwave” courtesy of the Tasmanian loner known as Sin Nanna. I state these facts to demonstrate a simple point: The universe of what […]
Wallowing in hopelessness isn’t always healthy, but as long as there’s labor that’s not properly compensated, sometimes it’s all you can do. In the right light, it can even feel great. Boston’s Grief trafficked in overwhelming negative feelings with their particular strain of sludge metal in the ‘90s, especially downtrodden even amongst their contemporaries like […]
There are two reasons you should be paying attention to Rochester right now. The first is RXK Nephew, the workaholic rapper whose “American Tterroristt” is bar none the most insane song I’ve heard recently. (Yes, I’m late.) The other is death metal quintet Undeath, who do not work at the prolific pace RXK Nephew does but […]
Back in 2016, when this column had a different name in a different publication, I stumbled upon Italian doom band Messa and their debut full-length, Belfry. It lit in me a particular fire — a fire signaling that this band could really cross over. While Belfry could go into dimly lit drones and dark jazz […]
Immolation have one of the most consistently great discographies in death metal. Their 11th album Acts of God, out this Friday (February 18) on Nuclear Blast, meets their benchmark for excellence. It is not just their brand of death metal in its prime, but death metal itself in its prime, when it became more complex […]
Changing your sound rarely feels autobiographical. But for Liam Neighbors, a.k.a. A.L.N., the man behind Portland blackened doom band Mizmor (often written as מזמור, the Hebrew word for “psalm”), it is. Though not a strict, sober play-by-play of his life, Mizmor has largely been a journey of a man losing his faith. Albums like 2016’s […]
It’s list season, the only season that matters. That said, let’s talk about a list from nine years ago. Specifically, SPIN’s 100 Greatest Guitarists list, which highlighted a lot of names that don’t usually get brought up, including Arto Lindsay and Sonny Sharrock. It also didn’t take half-measures going left-field, like putting Jam Master Jay […]
When I first heard about Dream Unending, I did the Vince McMahon meme in real time, excitement scaling too far past healthy or sustainable. Tomb Mold’s Derrick Vela teaming up with prolific bruiser Justin DeTore (of Innumerable Forms, Sumerlands, Magic Circle, Mind Eraser, numerous other killer bands) to take on the Peaceville Three sound? The […]
You can pin a lot of influences on Dallas death metal band Creeping Death, and most of them wouldn’t be far off the mark. Like a lot of modern death metal bands who came up through hardcore, you hear a lot of Bolt Thrower’s pointed riffing and slamming breakdowns. Some of those breakdowns hit with […]
September saw two high-profile metal releases from Iron Maiden and Carcass, plus a reissue of Metallica’s “Black Album,” one of the best-selling metal records in history, complete with a tribute so ill-conceived it’ll make you want to invest in oil companies to hasten our demise. But Blast Rites is more about legends in the making, […]