So Mike “Gunface” McKenzie, the guitarist for Deathcore titans The Red Chord and Beyond the Sixth Seal has a Doom project. How should someone like myself who pretty much despises anything with the Deathcore tag (full disclosure: I can still rock Fused Together In Revolving Doors hard, and even dug Clients), but is a long […]

Frank Zappa passed this mortal coil in 1993, leaving behind volumes of brilliant and often criminally underappreciated music. He’s now looking down from The Great Wazoo in the sky, where thankfully yellow snow isn’t a concern. If by chance the sounds of Lye By Mistake’s Fea Jur reached his groovy orbit he would no doubt […]

Its been 3 year since the debut, Devour the Power, and I knew just judging from the cover and the album title, that Tennessee’s purveyors of uber cheesy fantasy based metal was going to up the ante from the debut-and they do. Cut from the same heavily bearded and classically inspired cloth as 3 Inches […]

Arguably the poster child for the current trend of squawking, screeching chaotic pseudo grind, Louisiana’s The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza, despite their silly name, song titles, skits and irreverent humor are actually musically more in line with the likes of early Ion Dissonance as well as labelmates From A Second Story Window, Architect and Khann […]

I’ve always thought of Animosity as the deathcore/hardcore equivalent of Decapitated; they released their impressive debut, Shut it Down when they were 15 years old, and thought have not yet matched Decapitated’s outputs yet, with the slightly under helming and overly chaotic Empires, the band, with Animal, looks to be rising to the same level […]

Metal Blade/Black Market Activities Either Metal Blade/ BMA have reached the bottom of the spazz/tech/grind barrel or this is some sort of Halloween joke. Chicago’s Dance Club Massacre play the now popular herky jerky, screamy, spazzy form of grindcore as plied by the likes of Destroyer Destroyer, Heavy Heavy Low Low, Arsonists Get All The […]

Here’s one of those releases that make me question Metal Blade sometimes; another angular burly hardcore act along the lines of A Life Once Lost, (former label mates) Achilles, The Minor Times, Apiary and The Handshake Murders. The Dregs is competent, heavy and angry but delivering absolutely nothing new or original. Of course, if you’re […]

From the label that recently punished my ears with the likes of Animosity and The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza, as well as other noisy acts like Ed Gein, The Network and Architect, comes a slab of grinding Vegan chaos that’s a perfect fit next to their label mates as far as sheer, discordance tenacity, but […]

You’ve got to give FASSW some credit for trying something a bit new here. After the incredibly heavy debut EP, Not One Word Has Been Omitted, the Ohio act had a bit of a line up change with vocalist Will Jackson coming over from St. Louis act End Of All and bringing with him a […]

Metal Blade has a knack for finding highly touted, unknown (mostly metalcore) bands that garnered considerable buzz with debut records and signing them for their subsequent efforts; The Black Dahlia Murder, Unearth, As I Lay Dying, The Red Chord, Into The Moat, Premonitions of War, Born From Pain, etc. And now they have done it […]