Hope Drone is from Australia, but listening to their music, one could easily mistake them for a band from the U.S. Their 4-track debut EP demonstrates a bleak style of black metal strongly indebted to the Cascadian variety, specifically Wolves in the Throne Room and Altar of Plagues, played with surprising maturity and aplomb. The […]

Whores, a band from Atlanta, play a sweaty, fuzzed-out version of Unsane-like noise rock. There is also a heavy 90s vibe- Helmet being the second-closest possible comparison. Their previous record, Ruiner, seemed to center on the absolute bludgeoning power of their tone, but on Clean there is more focus on vocal hooks and catchiness, coming […]

This is my first exposure to Italy’s Lorn. Apparently, they were once a fairly straightforward, traditional black metal act. With no knowledge of their back catalogue, I can’t comment on the band’s change from past to present, but the music on this album is anything but straightforward, and anything but traditional. Wasting no time, “Definitive […]

Portland’s Red Fang are a band I feel I should like more than I actually do.  On the surface their style of greasy heavy rock meets stoner metal jams holds great appeal.  Yet the significant hype that has been bestowed upon Red Fang and the commercial headway they have made suggests something extra special boils […]

In music, there are said to be innovators and consummators. Consummators perfect pre-existing forms; innovators pave the way for new movements. However, to draw the line that distinctly is misleading; innovators always build upon previous forms. They never innovate from scratch. Beethoven, one of the most important innovators in music, first went through an entirely […]

Technical death metal is a demanding trade–and not just in terms of sheer speed and accuracy. Bands fall prey to various traps in the tech-death world: songs that overstay their welcome, boggling the listener’s mind with endless flurries of notes; a lack of musical coherence as the songs change tempo and/or time signatures over and […]