Sometimes a record comes along that is both firmly rooted in a genre and that transcends that genre. It’s a tough task to make something that is readily identifiable as death metal, for instance, but that also includes elements and ideas that are pretty far afield from what you’d normally get with a typical release…
There’s not much better fodder for death metal inspiration than horror. It doesn’t particularly matter if the horror in question is the kind that hunts you down in your dreams with a knife glove or the more realistic kind that sneaks into your house while you’re away and waits in the closet for the lights…
People find inspiration everywhere. A brush with death could be the push you need to make a grand change. Maybe something as simple as a nice walk in the forest gave you the motivation to write something haunting. Even just experiencing someone else’s art can be the impetus that a lot of people need to…
Death metal needs bands like Nothingness. There’s nothing wrong with sticking firmly within a specific genre and making art that doesn’t stray from the boundaries of what makes that genre unique. Bands do it all the time and plenty of my favorite bands aren’t the most experimental in their approaches. There’s nothing wrong with that…
Going it alone can be tough, especially when you’re a band. Writing, recording, and performing music is an onerous enough task when you have partners around you, let alone when all the decisions fall on your shoulders. There certainly are benefits, like not fighting over creative directions and figuring out how to split revenue, but there’s…
It’s always a Hell of an exciting time when a band you really dig releases new music. As soon as that album gets announced, you circle that date on your calendar and now you’ve got something to look forward to, something to get you through the day and give you some kind of light at…
There are some places around the world that just seem to breed great music. Whether it’s the climate, the attitude of the natives, the local water…some places just seem to be hotbeds for creativity. Anyone that loves extreme music (or Hell, music in general) knows that New Orleans is one of the strongest scenes for pretty…
The music that stays with you, that actually lives as a part of your life, that shit comes from the heart. It’s probably a real “duh” statement but you have to put your heart and soul into something to make it last. How many disposable pop albums that all sound the same are released in…
The best music doesn’t give a fuck what you think. That shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone reading a zine that tends to skew towards the more extreme side of metal. It’d be pretty damn near impossible to make a killer death metal album if you were worrying if this lyric or that idea…
You ever listen to something new and pretty quickly think, “Wow, that was nice of the band to make something specifically tailored to me!” Granted, bands make music for the unwashed masses to enjoy but still, every once in a while, something hits you that feels like it was your own personal taste profile that…