Author: Laura Wiebe
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The Melvins – Tres Cabrones
By Bill Adams It might be a little late in the game to try and call what The Melvins have done on Tres Cabrones a mid-life crisis. The average age of the band’s members is around fifty – no one tries to call that mid-life with a straight face – but there’s no denying that…
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Crimson Shadows: Ready to Take on the World
Hellbound is a Canadian-based metal site. That doesn’t determine our coverage – we can appreciate, evaluate and cover heavy tunes from anywhere in the world. But we do like to support our fellow Canadians who are involved in making ear-stimulating music. And though our Canada Day features and annual best Canadian metal lists are fun…
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Drawers – Drawers
By Gruesome Greg Sure, there’s certainly no shortage of silly European band names, but Drawers!? If you’re going to name yourself after furniture, at least adopt the Swedish moniker they give it at Ikea (that would be Helmer, in case you’re wondering) to avoid sounding like a pseudonym for underpants. Boy, we’re not off to…
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Wacken Metal Battle Canada: Canucks winning their way to an international stage
Interview by Laura Wiebe If you’re a metalhead you’ve heard of Wacken Open Air. Founded in 1990, the German festival is a mecca for metal pilgrims, a status immortalized in Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen’s Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (2005). But Wacken is a desired destination for more than fans. For a band, playing Wacken…
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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…
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Dark Forest: Land of the Evening Star
“Sometimes album art can be misleading, but visual imagery is to some extent genre specific, so there’s usually a pretty good chance I can judge by an album cover if a band’s style is likely to be my kind of thing. Such was the case with Dark Forest’s Land of the Evening Star. What I…