Believe it or don’t, my lovelies, but I’m a man of some idiosyncrasy. I sleep butt naked except for my wristwatch, which I only remove to shower. I have never worn – will never wear – a green shirt. And I only eat one dish per meal. Which is to say, I’ll make a meal […]

First, a big effin’ “eff you” to Relapse for not including the lyrics with this promo. True, most extreme music lyrics are patent mush, but JR Hayes’ poetry is an essential part of the PD experience. Anyhoo… I’ve always wondered how some (very few) bands can actually recreate and express emotion in their songs while […]

And it had started as such a good day … Yesterday I had a day off during mortuary college finals and it was raining like a pure bitch, so I spent the AM sipping gin & lemonade, blasting my old Weakling and Antiseen cassettes, and watching Webe Web videos. (By the by, to Allison, Sherri, […]

I devoutly maintain that France is a turd upon the face of Life, but damn if the Frogs aren’t croaking out some rad black metal lately. Maybe it’s simply the shame and horror of being born French, but something’s causing the weak circle-jerk of the Black Legions to become an outright beast. I was never […]

So there’s a reason you’ll almost never see me doing interviews; sorta my version of “front-row ballet” syndrome, I s’pose. Dig: I could give a fuck about the mechanics of creating music – I want to enjoy music as a part of my (self-created and maintained) environment, divorced from it’s “reality” as a performing art. […]

The sound-manipulated painscapes of Wold are the proof for which black metal was merely the promise. (After all, even the most vicious black metal still just sounds like some dudes in a room playing music.) This is savagery as sound, or vicey-versey. Wold de(con)structs black metal into a robodemoniac thrum, at least as much Masonna […]

Doom album of ’06? Asunder ain’t exactly reinventing the steel, here, but God Hell, is this some good stuff. Taking the old-school funeral approach of Thergothon and Skepticism and injecting just enough melody to make it stick – without becoming the gothic mope-crawl of Shape of Despair or Saturnus (who I likewise dig, so save […]

Just under thirty minutes of “you just got your ass handed to you.” The first handful of tunes blaze like Lemmy’s secret punk band, and it all reminds me of the Supersuckers’ on-messageness; y’know, they’ve only got one song, but it’s a really good one. But then Zeke start flipping the pillow with some slower, […]

Antimatter is the new project of Duncan Patterson, ex of doom gods Anathema, along with some peers/pals/presumed studio whores. As you should know, Anathema’s mid-nineties output on Peaceville pretty much defined doom metal, bowing only to the once almighty My Dying Bride in terms of crossing melancholia with pure sludge riffuck. Well, ol’ Dunc’s motto […]

Bands like Agoraphobic Nosebleed make or break with me on their willingness and ability to inject a little flava into the whir. Listening to thirty-plus minutes of hypergurgle is no more innately interesting than listening to an electric fan. (I’m weirdly fascinated by the fact that we finally have bands whose music imitates the sounds […]

A lot more mono(metallic)chromatic than most of the MeteorCity hopheads, and a little confusing at first. The hypenotes compare Mushroom River Band to Entombed, Motorhead, and Fu Manchu, neglecting to mention that latter-day Entombed sounds a lot like Motorhead and Fu Manchu. So this basically sounds like … Entombed. Now, Entombed recorded one of the […]

Damned if DeathVomit isn’t becoming quite the nifty little grind-pimp; first, Circle Of Dead Children and now Vulgar Pigeons. As an unreformed little punk rocker, I have to confess a major hard-on for this type of stuff. Eventually, some band’s going to come along and prove me wrong, but for now, death metal without some […]

I was as excited as anyone else when rock bands started sounding like rock bands again, but at this point, “stoner rock” is about as thrilling as pulling your pud. And I am not on very good terms with my pud right now, so that should tell you something. Very few of these bands transcend […]

I wish I were in New Orleans, out on the veranda of a garden apartment on Carondelet, sipping a Pim’s Cup and reading Nabokov and blasting mosquitoes out of the air with Television’s amazing “Marquee Moon” album. (If you call yourself interested in guitar music and aren’t familiar with “Marquee Moon,” you’re simply a cock. […]

No, I’m not going to spend a lot of time explaining why grindcore is so excellent; if you tend to get sick of my polemicizing, believe you me, I get sicker quicker. So I’ll confine myself to remarking that grind roolz, and death metal (for the most part) droolz. Now on to the album at […]

Don’t want to go on the whole free will/determinism riff, but I firmly believe that many of life’s pivotal moments come down to a single choice. For Beantown sluggers Virulence, said moment was when they let vocalist Chris Danecek go anywhere near a microphone. I imagine it seemed harmless enough at the time. Chris: “C’mon […]

It’s high time for folks to realize (or admit) that Grand Declaration Of War is the most important black metal album since, say, ’97 or so. I know, it pissed a lot of people (fans and bands) off. But it’s the Twenty-First Century, ya’ll! I’m sure it was fun back in the day, hanging out […]

OK, the liner notes say that this is a re-release of a promo, and is not reflective of the band’s current direction or talent; which is a lot like the “My Other Car’s A BMW” bumper sticker commonly seen on Pintos. This is so, so bad. It’s unredeemable badness doesn’t necessarily reflect a lack of […]

Thergothon is, for whatever it’s worth, almost universally credited with bringing true extremes into the happy-go-lucky world of doom metal; the slowest tempos, the deepest, most guttural vocals, and the most depressive and depressing atmosphere ever heard. With only one demo and one full-length album to ther credit before disbanding, the two-man project smashed the […]