Features

Features, Headline, Staff Picks July 1, 2009

Staff Picks: Favourite Canadian Metal Albums

With July 1st being our nation’s official birthday here in Canada, we thought we’d try to do something to pay honour to the many great bands and albums in the metal realm that our ten provinces and three territories have given birth to. We asked Hellbound’s regular contributors to write a paragraph or two about their favourite Canadian metal album of all time, the results of which follow below. All of the albums mentioned are indeed worthy of the nod and worth checking out if you have never heard them before.

Articles, Features, Headline June 26, 2009

Epica: Classical Conspirators

Despite the fact that symphonic metal has become a very popular metal subgenre over the last decade or so, and although it’s become commonplace for metal bands to employ full orchestras on their studio albums, it’s not every day that a band is afforded the opportunity to perform live with a full orchestra behind them. So when Epica had a chance to stage a full-blown extravaganza in Miskolc, Hungary, of all places, needless to say the Dutch symphonic sextet jumped at the offer.

Articles, Headline June 24, 2009

Saros: Collaborative Creativity and a Heavy Flow

San Francisco boasts a long and well-recognized tradition of musical creativity. Not just an artefact of the past, this inventiveness has carried through to the present. Saros stands out among the Bay Area’s current crop of eclectic and talented artists, fusing multiple influences and personalities into a flowing inundation of moody aggression.

Articles, Headline June 22, 2009

Label profile: Shadow Kingdom Records

Taking the name of his label from the first of writer Robert E. Howard’s fantastical Kull story series, it’ll probably come as no surprise that Shadow Kingdom Records’ and Distro deals extensively in material where swords, shields, impossibly tall marble castles and scenic green hills are stained claret-red with the remnants of some mythical battle feature prominently on album covers. But a random sampling of both the titles Shadow Kingdom owner Tim McGrogan distributes and the bands with which he works illustrates that he’s not as dogmatically dedicated to epic/traditional metal as you might expect.

Articles, Headline June 17, 2009

Fatalist: Rechanneling Swedish Death Metal In Ventura County

While the classic Swedish death metal scene of the late eighties and early nineties has influenced today’s scene immeasurably, there are legions of new metal fans today that have yet to discover classic bands like Nihilist, Carnage, Unleashed and Grave. The retro thrash movement is of course all the rage as of late, but not a lot of new bands have yet to pay homage to those classics captured in the formative days of Stockholm’s Sunlight Studios. Ventura County, California based quartet Fatalist is one band that would like to try and help reintroduce that classic Swedish sound to the burgeoning metal masses.

Featured, PSA June 16, 2009

HELLBOUND To Co-Sponsor BURIED INSIDE Summer Tour

Ottawa, ON’s BURIED INSIDE has announced a cross-Canada tour in support of their brand new album Spoils Of Failure and HELLBOUND is proud to announce we have been asked to co-sponsor the tour along with the fine folks over at Lambgoat.com.

Articles, Headline, Reviews - Books June 15, 2009

Doing The Devil’s Work: An Interview with Amy Sciarretto

“I get so many emails a day, through Facebook and even through my personal email account from people who don’t know me – and even people who do know me,” explains music journalist Amy Sciarretto, who teamed up with her friend and colleague Rick Florino to pen Do the Devil’s Work for Him: How to Make it in the Music Industry (and Stay in it) (McCarren Publishing). “I was giving advice away so much that I realized I was giving the same advice over and over again, so obviously there was a need for this information, so why don’t we put it in a book?”