I’m willing to stretch my metal arms pretty wide to accommodate a wide variety of the sub-genres that have sprung up in the past decade. This new wave of black metal that Nachtmystium has been courting for a couple albums now was a pretty big deal a few years ago. I still remember the first […]

You folks in the metal-know might’ve heard of a little band called Skeletonwitch out of Athens, Ohio. And chances are, if you’ve seen a metal tour in the past four years, you’ve seen them blow up on stage, inciting madness and mayhem in metal fans the world over. Their latest, “Breathing the Fire,” was met with acclaim and landed a spot on the Billboard charts. And, as would befit a group of excellent metal players, they happen to be excellent metal dudes. In my fifth overall interview with the band, I stood outside the Rock in Tucson, Arizona with guitarist Scott Hedrick, with cameo appearances from brothers Nate and Chance Garnett, as well as Derrick “Mullet Chad” Nau, who explains what it really means to be crushed beyond dust.

Immolation’s one of those bands where I don’t feel like you need to justify liking them; they’re just that damn likable. I actually got in an argument with an artist I was interviewing when they admitted they didn’t like the band, and my (perfectly reasonable) response was, “what the fuck is wrong with you?” Not […]

Given the cover artwork, and the name, I figured Scorched-Earth would be some haphazard grindcore band and the Mars experience would be up after, oh, 30 minutes at most. I was also reminded of the old school trajectory-based strategy game Scorched Earth on the PC (come on, space, tanks, and that band name?). Color me […]

I, like many others, have a deep fondness for Pierced From Within. For many, it’s like a capstone to the silver age of death metal, a brutal yet technically complex episode embedded in the minds of the long time fans; the guys that had seen a Tirant Sin show or two in a garage or […]

Metal Blade is a wonderfully sharp company. What better time to rerelease one of their more popular band’s older material than now (y’know, when they’re finally popular)? And in retrospect, it’s really bizarre that it took an audience this long to take notice of Amon Amarth. Certainly they now can be mentioned in the same […]

God Dethroned is a band that we’ve witnessed in either one of two forms: “on” or “off.” It’s a little harder to prove when God Dethroned is “on” nowadays, considering many of their detractors haven’t thought them good since 1992’s Christhunt. That said, it’s terribly easy to point at the bad in the God Dethroned […]

Band reunions are getting pretty goddamn tiresome, and I think that’s important to say though it’s been said already probably a handful of times on other publications. The timing has been great for quite a few of these bands, what with profitable tours, major (and not-so-major) label releases, and a stable of gnashing old school […]

It is no secret there are bands that are mediocre on CD but manage to destroy live. Goatwhore is one such band, an act whose studio efforts have never wowed me the way their presence on stage ALWAYS has. Skinless is another, and though I’ve liked their earlier material, From Sacrifice to Survival onward hasn’t […]

SOS has all the signs that they’re a band that entered the metal scene too late. I want to like Adult Situations, but most of the songs on here sound a little too generic and old hat, like they could’ve been taken from could’ve been taken from Queens of the Stone Age b-sides. Further ostracizing […]

I don’t know what there is upon which to capitalize in the drone/ambient genre, but Lustmord does pretty well for himself, this being a recent cap on his 25 plus year history in new album [Other]. I’ve personally never been much for the genre, but after taking the bait on one of the genre’s most […]

Iscariah is not a newcomer to the world of metal; after all, the bugger was on Immortal’s last two records playing oft-inaudible bass, as well as the more bass-aware black metal troupe Wurdulak, who added, if nothing else, another couple of metal albums with a ravaged nun on the cover. He’s also been in Necrophagia, […]