Death has been rising in the middle of the country. Over the last decade, the midwest has seen some killer death metal bands start up and carry the torch for both old school death metal and other varieties on the theme to push out a ton of the best modern death metal albums. Bands like…
Bunker 66, based in Messina, Sicily, has been waging musical war on the world for more than a decade. Formed in 2007, this blackened thrash outfit unleashed their debut EP, Out of the Bunker, in 2009. Since then, the band has unleashed four full-lengths and a slew of thrashing compilations. Throughout it all, the band has managed to…
When the stunning news that Sepultura is calling a day dropped a few weeks ago, fans around the world were baffled. The band had obviously gone through some very public changes over the years but had always managed to refine and retool for the next run of albums, all of which have been great (I…
Resurrections might not happen in a literal sense (sorry, Jesus) but in metal, they’ve become a bit of a common occurrence. Bands fall by the wayside for a multitude of reasons, from infighting to life changes to just plain malaise. Time away to grow, more opportunities to release their music, and new generations discovering what…
Big, important shows are a Hell of a time. Seeing Tom. G. Warrior perform Hellhammer songs with Triumph of Death at Maryland Deathfest last year? Yeah, that’s a once-in-a-lifetime event. Getting to finally hit a Metallica concert, and it happens to be a headlining slot at Lollapalooza? Buddy, you better believe that’s quite the occasion….
Are you ready to have your skull caved in? Kind of a weird question to ask, I know, but if you’re a death metal fan then you’re probably always down for a little cranial crushing if the mood is right. Well, it’s a Friday and the mood is more than right if you’ve picked up…
Faith, at least how it’s practiced by a large swath of the world, is a cancer on our society. Think about some of the worst abuses of power in recent years, from pedophile priests to apartheid states to the vicious and obsessive persecution of trans individuals across the U.S., faith in a higher power has…
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…
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…
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…