Features

Heavy Metal, Popular Culture, and Academia

“Importantly, the presentations often approached a generalized assumption that some group or groups of people hold about metal music or culture only to complexify the issue, demonstrating how research in particular locations, milieus, and demographics reveals the diversity in the ways people understand and engage with metal.”

Laura Wiebe reports back on the first North American academic heavy metal conference.

Chicken Dinner with Quorthon

In 1996, Hellbound’s Sean Palmerston was offered the chance to do the first ever in-person North American radio interview with Quorthon, leader and visionary behind legendary Swedish black metal act Bathory. They also went out for dinner together beforehand, and here are Sean’s memories of that fateful night some seventeen years ago, shared in public for the first time since.

View From the Vault: Warpig Wails Again

Originally published in VIEW Magazine in November 2006, this interview was with Warpig founding vocalist/guitarist Rick Donmoyer about the 2006 re-release of their self-titled album, originally released on Fonthill Records Canada on 1971

J.P. Gaster of Clutch: The Hellbound Interview

“I think they would see the band touring and we had a very solid touring fanbase and we would sell a consistent amount of records album to album. And I think the record label saw that and they’d get excited about that and they thought to themselves “Well surely this band can sell this many tickets and can sell 100,000 records. With any kind of help at all we can make this a gold band or even a platinum band.” It didn’t take them long to realize that it’s tough work to sell real music.”

Matt Hinch in conversation with J.P. Gaster, timekeeper for Maryland hard rockers Clutch.

Barge To Hell Cruise Recap Part 4

In early December the inaugural BARGE TO HELL cruise sailed from Miami, FL to Nassau, Bahamas and back and featured live performances by forty-two metal bands. Hellbound.ca was lucky enough to have been able to send some of its contributors on the cruise and here is what they had to say about the performances that took place on the fourth and final day of the cruise.

Live reviews by Adrien Begrand and Sean Palmerston. All photography by Albert Mansour unless listed otherwise.

Seventeen Questions With… Titan (Canada)

Earlier this month Toronto’s Titan saw their latest album “Burn” make Hellbound’s Top 10 Canadian Albums of 2012 list. Here is Matt Hinch’s recent interview with band vocalist James M. and guitarist Chris W. about the making of the album, touring Europe last summer and what else lies ahead for this emerging Canadian hardcore/metal act.

LISTENING TO THE PAST: Death – Human

“(Human) embodies much of metal’s concern for and obsession with material questions of existence. It remains special partly because of its historical importance for extreme metal, but also because it stands out as a prime example (out of many) that it is very possible to merge anger and aggression in extreme metal with a compassionate search for answers to social and philosophical questions.”

A revisitation and re-evaluation of the classic DEATH album Human by Jonathan Smith