FOR THE LOVE OF METAL
Fitting eleven tracks into 52 minutes, Leeches of Lore is quite the mixed bag. It goes from fast-paced neo-thrash/NWOBHM riffing to heavy rock a la Big Business to mellow proggy noodling and Johnny Cash-era country
music—and that’s just within the first three songs!
While previous efforts have been mired in attempts at being grandiose, Endgame strips away pretense…for the most-part. Omitting a few questionable moments, it still rages closer to the band’s early-’90s output than they have in years. No, it’s not an outright thrash metal masterpiece but Endgame still assures us that the important aspects of Megadeth’s personality remain intact, acting as a Jack Of All Trades by referencing high points in the band’s career.
Endless echo contains a brand of energetic, melodic thrash that is just a complete aggressive metal listen; tracks like “No exit,” “My Haven” and “Spiritual shift” are both very fast and very intense. Rage is the best word to describe the reaction I had after listening to this CD. It got me all fired up.
Here is the playlist for Sunday night’s version of Hellbound Radio. The show was hosted by Albert Mansour, Kevin Stewart-Panko and Sean Palmerston.
It takes just a few seconds for In the Constellation of the Black Widow to erupt into a blistering frenzy, and the bombastic chaos drives through to the end with few interruptions. The U.K. duo has produced a hurricane of sound, with a whole spectrum of throat-wrenching vocal eviscerations, thundering blasts, grinding riffs, and lightning-speed leads.
In The Constellation of the Black Widow begins with a head-first charge into the listener’s gut. England-based Anaal Nathrakh’s latest album is just over half an hour of black metal-tinged grindcore that barely stops to take a breather, and it ends just as chaotically as it begins.
At barely 15 minutes, it’s an all-too brief preview, but that’s all it takes to instantly establish Howl as a band to watch for in late-’09 and 2010.
To think that it took 23 years for someone to come up with this brilliant notion of paying respects to Cliff Burton, the true backbone of Metallica, by providing a biography of his life is quite shocking. Seeing as metallians around the world have been mourning his passing—and the requisite downward spiral of the quartet give or take a few late-’80s releases—ever since, it’s sad something so obvious has gone under the radar for this long. Hell, even bootleg-ish videocassette Cliff ‘Em All sold boatloads…why wouldn’t this?
This classic debut album by Holland’s Black Out was originally released by Roadrunner way back in 1984 and surprised many in the metal world with a few very positive reviews written toward this album back in the day. Needless to say, that this band is almost seamlessly connected with the British metal invasion of the early eighties.
Poland’s Behemoth have returned with their ninth album in nineteen years, and this time around the band sounds as though they are pushing themselves even further. While Evangelion is still recognizably (and perhaps even predictably) Behemoth, there’s a controlled chaos to the sound that gives things a certain energy.