It is always a big risk for bands to take chances on their sound early on their careers. Change too much and fans will label you a sellout and if you don’t change enough, people will say everything sounds the same. On the Fort Worth, TX quinte…
It’s hard to approach a new album from a band like Cattle Decapitation, who have become one of the defining bands in contemporary extreme metal. Personally, I found the last album left me a little cold. This is partly because on the previous t…
Crossover has become a hot genre again in the metal world. Bands like Power Trip, High Command, and Spiritworld have rose the ranks in the metal world to become house hold names. Another band who has garnered a lot of love in this genre is Richmond,…
I try to use the formula “album of the year” as little as I can, but sometimes it just applies. We’re still early in 2023, but we’re going to talk about Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean’s new record Obsession Des…
Last year I was fortunate enough to see Afsky, one of the leading lights in contemporary black metal, and they gave one of the standout black metal performances I saw in 2022. Their previous two LPs were both outstanding, and so I eagerly antici…
Finding the right balance between atmosphere & heaviness in metal seems like an oxymoron. Most bands don’t even bother with it. You do either one or the other or you awkwardly slap melancholic synths before Earth-shattering breakdowns …
It’s been five long years since Finland’s Grindcore darlings put out a record. Apocalypse’s predecessor, the Suffer to Abuse EP was hardly the encore fans were hoping for after the raucous 2016 full length, Abuse to Suffer. That&rs…
I’ll be honest, prior to this release I was unfamiliar with German/Finnish two-piece Order of Nosferat. How could this happen, you may ask?! You had assumed that Mochi the Black Metal Cat is the font of all underground black metal knowledge, a…
One man bands always fascinate me. The absolute raw talent one must possess to not only write every part for their songs but then also record all those parts is truly captivating to me. They are an artist in every sense, using their tools of the tra…
Nothing starts a fight between metalheads quicker than a conversation about metalcore. It’s in the genre’s nature to be divisive. Not only it is an “impure” blend of metal and hardcore punk, but it’s getting m…