Category: Features

  • Contest: AUGURY Autographed CD giveaway!

    Hey, it’s a contest. Check inside to see how you can win an autographed copy of the brand new AUGURY CD!

  • STAFF PLAYLISTS: August 2009

    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.

  • Killswitch Engage: Turning Liquid Sugar Into Gold

    Whether it’s because they have definite hardcore roots, forming as they did from the ashes of Overcast, Aftershock and, later, Blood Has Been Shed, or because they have choruses that sound more like globules of liquid sugar instead of caustic battery acid, Massachusetts’ Killswitch Engage has always had troubles being accepted by metalheads across the…

  • Interview with Phil Freeman, Author of Sound Levels: Profiles In American Music, 2002-2009

    “Metal is hard,” says Freeman. “It’s difficult, rigorous music but it’s not treated as such. These are guys who are on the level as symphony players on their respective instruments. These are guys who went into their bedrooms at age 10 and didn’t come out until age 20, but because they have long hair and…

  • Birushanah: Taking Japanese Culture To New Extremes

    One band that has embraced traditional Japanese culture and used it to make something that is both new and exciting is the Osaka based quartet Birushanah. A band that has ties to the always-amazing Corrupted (bassist Sougyo spent some time in that band), Birushanah melds traditional Japanese percussion (done on metal instrumentation) with sludge metal…

  • Slayer: Preparing for a World Painted Blood

    “I can imagine myself at 75 looking like Charlie Watts playing speed metal,” says Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo. “I’m OK with that. I don’t know about the other guys. I’ll keep playing, though, and as long as Slayer needs me, I’ll be here. Whatever they wanna do.” Keith Carman speaks to Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo…

  • Gojira: Death Metal From the Soul

    Back in the day, the pounding, clanging and grinding sounds of Birmingham, England’s ubiquitous industrial work provided a great wealth of inspiration for the thunderous sounds of metal’s forefathers in Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. Similarly, having grown up in the southwest of France in Bayonne, the members of Gojira are very familiar with the…

  • Judas Priest: Metal Gods Revisit British Steel

    “It’s Judas Priest, man. Judas-effing-Priest!” And really, that’s just about all that needs to be said. That name, it’s a ritual, a mating call, a summons to arms, a bonding focal point. When you hear a bunch of yahoos yelling out “Slaaaaayeeeeerrrrrr!” you know the chances are very good that a Slayer show has just…

  • Cripple Bastards: Two Decades of Provocative Grind

    Happy birthday, Cripple Bastards! My how you’ve grown. No, really. To the untrained ear, the 20-year-long list of releases that Asti, Italy’s long-standing provocative grindcore institution have comprising their discography may sound like short burst of noise after short burst of noise – and we’d be lying if we said everything that has followed since…

  • YOB: Zen and the Art of Crushing Skulls

    Zen Buddhism has always played a central role in Scheidt’s songwriting for YOB, especially on the two previous albums, 2004’s The Illusion of Motion and 2005’s great The Unreal Never Lived, but on The Great Cessation a considerably more blunt approach, which often seems to border on despair and even anger, permeates such tracks as…