You shouldn’t really need an intro for a Jonas Renkse interview. Chances are, you’ve dug his work in one of his bands. If you’re a death metal fan, you are seriously missing out if you haven’t heard anything from his supergroup, Bloodbath. If you’re bread is buttered more on the prog and doom metal side,…
When everything has been said and done, by a conservative estimate, around a billion times by now, it truly takes something out of left field to feel original. Combining death metal with thrash and throwing in banjos, saloon piano, and hand drums sounds like a recipe for either disaster or something wholly original. Pairing the…
In the world of extreme metal, the Chicagoland area is an underrated spot. Sure, Florida, New York, and California get a lot of attention, and deservedly so, too. That being said, Chicago’s contributions to extreme metal and the bands that call that area home have been criminally overlooked by the national media. Plenty of cool…
It’s no surprise that musicians put a ton of themselves into their work. Just the act of creating is, in and of itself, an incredibly intimate process of putting something of yourself into your art that, you hope, will deeply affect its particular audience in some way. How much of yourself you put into that work…
Ask any metal fan and I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to tell you their own personal list of bands that are too big and bands that are too small. Everyone has their own unique takes on who should be huge by now and who shouldn’t. For every band you say, someone else will argue…
Longevity is hard to come by. In the world of music, it’s damn near impossible to stay consistent and relevant over any period of time, let alone 40-plus years. Bands come and go with regularity and many acts with a stretch of time behind them will inevitably find themselves wearing down and slowing up. Albums…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again here: the future of metal is in good hands. It’s easy to get down about the state of music these days, particularly if you turn on any Top 40 station and hear whatever indistinguishable pop song or mumbly indie rock track is currently ripping up the…
Horror and death metal go hand-in-hand. Just looking at the name, death metal, should obviously be a clue that this is a type of music that caters to the darker side of life and draws from the same wells of terror that the horror genre does. Both art forms are littered with broken bodies, viscera,…
There are a lot of bands that, when you think about them, one person comes to mind. When I say Deicide, you probably think of Glen Benton. With Behemoth, it’s Nergal. For Death, Chuck Schuldiner should pop in your head. With death metal legends Monstrosity, Lee Harrison is the man in the eye of the…
Any fan of extreme metal knows, or should know, that one of the most fertile spots for exciting bands is Finland. For decades, Finland has turned out a variety of great death metal bands in particular and extreme metal bands in general. Amorphis, Rotten Sound, Demilich, Necropsy, and many, many more have put Finland on…