Sometimes it’s easier and more efficient to just take care of business on your own. Don’t get me wrong, there’s definitely an appeal to teamwork and having others help with a task can certainly make the work easier and less lonely. That being said, when it’s a creative endeavor, other people around can dilute your…
Metal, as much as any other genre, loves a good comeback story. There’s something immensely satisfying in a band that comes roaring back to life as strong as ever that just feels exhilarating for both the fans and the performers. The last decade has been filled with triumphant resurgences of a multitude of killer bands who have…
Black metal has always had a history with helping people express deep wells of pain and sorrow within their lives. The tortured shrieks, the dark lyrics, and the harshness of the music all make for a natural outlet for artists to purge the demons from their minds or at the very least commiserate with other like…
The old saying goes that if you stare into the abyss too long, it’ll stare back. While that might sound like a frightening prospect to most people, extreme metallers are cut from a different cloth. If you’re a fan of heavy records that effectively mix doom, death, and black metal, the abyss returning your gaze isn’t…
It’s almost more difficult to grasp how the bizarre wouldn’t interest someone than how it would. Everyday life can get so boring and dull and routine definitely can make today feel like yesterday feel like tomorrow feel like yesterday in one long, unbroken line. The bizarre, the weird, the strange all give us a chance to…
Extreme metal is meant for the nighttime. Ok, so there’s obviously nothing wrong with blaring Celtic Frost at any time of day but the night just feels more appropriate for anything and everything extreme. Face it, your black Cause of Death T-shirt looks way cooler when it’s not 80 degrees and sunny out. Sure, outdoor festivals are…
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…
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…
Extreme metal desperately needs bands like Blackbraid. There are so many bands starting out or stumbling out of their infancy that all end up sounding, if not the same, pretty damn close to it. There are only so many new ways you can do brutal death metal until it gets repetitive, for instance. That’s not…
Plenty of toxins have done plenty of damage to the world but, for my money, no toxin has been more damaging to the face of the Earth and the cause of humanity than the toxin of organized religion. If you’re a thinking adult, you really shouldn’t need too many examples to back this up but…