FOR THE LOVE OF METAL
Sinister wrote guitar riffs that were choppy and contained that classic old school death metal sound, but the band also could inject the speed to up their attack to an almost grindcore style. Mike Van Mastrigt’s vocals were very low and guttural for that time and I’m sure influenced a lot of the bands soon to follow.
The blasting, ferocious drumming, growling vocals and classic old school death metal riffs pierced by the occasional tormented lead breaks, all of the sheer violence with thrashing power and a good dose of chaotic melody where needed makes this an essential album.
Russia’s Forest Stream have released their second full-length album after their almost fifteen years of existence, and the end result is a collection of songs that really work in all their multiple elements and many potential influences.
Ladies and germs, here is the playlist for this past Sunday’s edition of Hellbound Radio. This week we had our youngest guest yet. Sean’s older son Kieran (age six) rode shotgun with us (although for most of the taping he was playing games on www.tvokids.com). While young Mr. Palmerston isn’t really a fan of metal, when asked what he thought of the show Kieran said it was awesome.
The Red in the Sky is Ours did not depart from the core tenets of the genre, but it did offer a vision of death metal that stood apart from its peers. Based on that singular vision, The Red in the Sky is Ours has not seen its power diminish with the passing of time; hence the reason that it deserves to be celebrated as a “classic.”
Tate Bengston explains why At The Gates’ The Red in the Sky is Ours is Hellbound’s first Classic Album.
This is a good example of ‘meat and potatoes’ death metal that does not venture very far.
For the uninitiated, OSI is a prog rock/metal side project band featuring Jim Matheos of Fates Warning and Kevin Moore (ex-Dream Theater). Their latest release Blood sees this project going forwards into a very modern prog rock/metal sound. It is a very compact sound that relies on the constant simple riffing of Matheos, underscored by Moore’s trippy keyboards.
England-based Xerath have released their first full-length album on Candlelight Records, and its an interesting wedding of groove metal with orchestral bombast. Right from the get-go I invokes the kind of Hollywood film scores reserved for bloated big budget science-fiction and post-apocalyptic films, as if a metal band had been asked to score a film by Roland Emmerich or Steven Spielberg.
Find out what HELLBOUND’s contributors are listening to going into the month of August. Each writer has submitted their Top 5 list and have an option to list a book and a film they are into right now too.
Delving even further into the apocalyptic fury of mid-’80s thrash coupled with DRI-esque hardcore, Massive Aggressive finds Municipal Waste’s raw power becoming even stronger and more refined.