Sometimes the metal release calendar doesn’t make you wait too far into the year to have new faces rip your old face off. The ink is barely dry on the shitshow that was 2022 but we already have one of the most exciting debuts of 2023. That Repulsive Nature, the first LP from Seattle death metallers…
It doesn’t take long into Ritual of Ash, the debut longplayer from Australian death metallers Ashen, to realize that these dudes know what the Hell they are doing. If you’ve listened to enough death metal over the years, Ashen’s influences should be pretty readily apparent upon firing up their first LP. Pretty much any band that…
Heavy times call for heavy music. It’s no secret that people lean pretty mightily on whatever brand of music speaks to them when the going gets tough. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you’ve noticed that the going has gotten tough lately for most people. Having a great piece…
A ton of great debuts come out every year from across all subgenres of metal to the point where compiling a list of the best debuts every year can be a pretty perilous task. Last year I ended up putting together my end-of-the-year debuts list way too late and had a ton of albums to…
It takes a lot to stand out in the world. With more people having more access to more types of entertainment than ever before, getting yourself recognized and remembered as someone or something that rises above whatever crowded field you play in can be a Herculean task. Granted there are more outlets for exposure than…
Finding the line between thrash and death metal can sometimes feel like trying to determine the world’s shortest tall person. There’s not a lot of difference between the heaviest of thrash and death metal sometimes, and honestly, who cares? Genre definitions can be extremely limiting and, honestly, if a band is a thrash-influenced death metal band or…
Talk to anyone deeply into extreme metal for long enough and you’ll walk away with a list of new bands to check out and a full playlist of stuff you’ve missed or haven’t gotten around to yet. Extreme metal fandom, and music fandom in general, is a mapping diagram of bands leading you to other…
It’s been a Hell of a year for metal. Bands thought long dead clawed their way out of their graves, old favorites signed off after putting in years and decades of stellar work, new bands celebrated the start of what will hopefully be long and fruitful careers, and veterans of the scene put out stunning…
Trying to tackle a top ten list of songs is a lot more work than it sounds like it should be at first, but then you take into consideration the sheer number of songs that were released in 2022. Even when a parameter is set, considering we’re called Metal Plague, that it should be in…
A lot of the time the start of the journey is the most exciting part of the whole thing. The future is wide open with promise and no one really knows what the rest of the path will end up looking like once all is said and done. The untapped potential that still waits to…