FOR THE LOVE OF METAL
With a few defeats and changes of members along the way, along with a fairly lengthy discography, Desaster are still campaigning like true survivors. Having never gained the sort of popularity or visibility of many of their German brethren, the band have remained a cult act, and their new album, The Arts of Destruction, isn’t likely to change that scenario any time soon.
Without taking Les Discrets’ sound to a more adventurous place, Ariettes Oubliées… unfortunately ends up sounding like an adequate but less inspired version of the band’s debut.
Blood For the Master isn’t a radical step forward, but nor, given its traditional metal underpinnings, is it a step back. It is exactly the album Goatwhore needed to make right now.
There’s something evil baking in the kitchen of Kathy Bejma, a Chi-town native who’s creative to the max with her concept of merging metal with cupcakes. Developed in 2008, Metalcakes is a culinary tribute to her favourite bands, baking with supreme passion whilst listening to the most blasphemous of records. From the simple topping of whipped cream to the intricacy of edible flowers, Bejma’s blog includes a detailed account of each process, sharing her recipes with a global following.
Ola Mazzuca in conversation with Kathy Bejma about her blasphemous cupcake creations.
if this band’s MO is to copy Candlemass and Argus as closely as they can, they’ve hit the mark. I gotta dock ‘em a couple points for originality, but full marks for execution are well-deserved.
When Napalm Death made their much-anticipated trek across Canada last fall, I set my sights on sitting down with vocalist Barney Greenway, as he’s someone I’ve long admired as an elder statesman among forward-thinking, politically-minded metalheads. With the now-released new Napalm album Utilitarian still a few months from release, Mr. Greenway and I sat down to chat on the date of their Vancouver stop, last October 27th, over an undrunk cup of tea at Hastings & Main’s Ovaltine Café…
Interview by Kyle Harcott
Against all the odds, the band has managed to believably make twenty-seven years of chasing its tail melt away and re-present themselves in such a way that implies they were never actually gone.
This album fucking destroys and I wouldn’t have expected or accepted anything less from my favorite Death Metal band of all time.
“Veteran hard rockers Deep Purple are either insane or still some of the hardest working musicians in show business – there is no other explanation to describe their decision to tour Canada coast to coast in February. Even the most grizzled tour dogs usually avoid going nationwide in our frozen home and native land, but with its members now well into their sixties the quintet stopped down in my current hometown, Hamilton ON, for an early week show on Monday, February 13th that was nearly halfway through their Canadian only tour.”
Live review by Sean Palmerston; Concert photos by Albert Mansour
You can sit and stew in your cynicism; you can bemoan the state of the world. You could even pour scorn on anarchist thought. But you cannot deny that Better To Die… is a triumph of political thought turned into genuinely innovative and inspiring action.