Category: Features
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Cold weather, death metal and beer
More entries in Hellbound’s “Events You Don’t Want to Miss” category The February edition Wednesday, the 4th NAPALM DEATH and EXHUMED top off a multi-course death metal feast rounded out by VOIVOD, Iron Reagan, and Black Crown Initiate. [Opera House, $25/$30 (doors), Inertia Entertainment] Saturday the 14th MUFFIN treat you to a Valentine’s evening like no other…
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Anticipating: Wolves of Avalon and Meads of Asphodel (Godreah Records)
A couple upcoming release picks from our Irish correspondent, Steve Earles: Godreah Records will release a new Wolves of Avalon MCD this year entitled Across A Twilight Field of Corpses Grey, Only The Trilling of Nightingales Can Be Heard. Keep an eye out for it in February 2015. This will include a 25-minute prog pagan epic…
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Wacken Metal Battle Canada 2015 competition has begun
In 2013, Canada stepped up to compete in the international Wacken Metal Battle competition, a contest for emerging metal bands that takes place alongside the annual Wacken Open Air metal festival in Germany. In 2013, Canada also won the competition – or, more specifically, Toronto’s Crimson Shadows fought their way to the top while representing the…
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Best of the rest – 2014 (part 2): re-dos and other odds & ends
Here we offer the last of Hellbound’s 2014 heavy mostly metal year-in-review coverage. We’re wrapping up with some of the older records effectively revisited last year, Bill Adam’s best vinyl picks, and some random selections highlighting things we particularly appreciated, regardless of genre. BEST RE-DOS (Reissues, re-recordings…) SONATA ARCTICA, Ecliptica Revisited: 15th Anniversary Edition I usually…
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Best of the rest – 2014 metal (part 1): instrumental and short releases
Best instrumental metal of 2014 Horrendous, “When the Walls Fell.” I can’t get fully behind Horrendous’s ambitious second album, finding its blend of death metal and old-school metal melodies a little slipshod compared to Arsis a decade ago, but there are a few very promising moments, especially this instrumental from late in the record. These guys…
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Best metal of 2014 – Collaborations
Collaborations between artists are never a sure-fire thing. While some releases can pool creatives together to create a piece that meshes well, there’s always Metallica and Lou Reed’s disastrous project to remind us that sometimes these mashups just don’t work. Here, Hellbound contributors review some of the better collaborations that were released in 2014. Esoteric…
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January metal shows you don’t want to miss (Toronto edition)
Need some live metal to spice up your post-holiday life or dispel the winter blues? The January chill is on here in Hellbound’s southern Ontario home but there are lots of good reasons to drag your carcass out onto the frosty evening streets. If you’re in the Toronto area, here’s a glimpse of the heavy delights scattered…
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Best metal album art of 2014
My favourite metal art of 2014 doesn’t come from an album cover, but a poster. I’ve been a great admirer of Costin Chioreanu for a couple years, and with time the Romanian artist’s work just keeps getting better and better. He was commissioned to do the poster art for the Roadburn Festival this past year,…
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Worst metal album art of 2014
Sometimes great albums have great cover art. Sometimes the worst art disguises the best metal. And sometimes bad art and bad music are in perfect (dis)harmony. Here are Hellbound’s picks for some of the worst album art of 2014. Adrien Begrand Getting CDs in the mail is getting rarer and rarer these days, but every so…
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Best metal events of 2014
Between us, we Hellbound folk make it out to a fair number of shows, festivals and other metal events throughout the year. Here are some of the ones that impressed us most in 2014. Adrien Begrand I was lucky enough to see a great deal of memorable shows over the course of 2014, in wide…