Category: Reviews
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Goya/Wounded Giant split
Less than a week into 2015 and what will likely be the year’s best – or at least heaviest – split has already sold out. The split LP from Goya and Wounded Giant sold out in less than eight hours upon its release January 3rd at noon. I had my eye on the Die Hard…
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Crypt Sermon – Out of the Garden
Everything about Crypt Sermon just screams power-metal (in a Dio-style falsetto) to me. The name, the font, the album cover of a knight riding up to a castle…and yet, I’m told they have more than a hint of the Candlemass, or even the Dio-era Sabbath, to them. Hey, if this album’s anything like Atlantean Kodex,…
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Bewitcher – Midnight Hunters
Unlike the vast number of their Pacific Northwest contemporaries, Portland, OR party kvlt BEWITCHER keep it simple, succinct and proudly Satanic. Eschewing lumbering, portentous doomdoomdoomDOOMYdoomdoomdoom in favour of a relentless, no nonsense speed metal attack, these lithe Bacchanal sonic sorcerers have conjured a confident, defiantly lo-fi sound. Over the course of their three demo EPs,…
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Karma to Burn – Arch Stanton
You always kinda know what you’re getting from Karma to Burn. Debut album aside, on which Roadrunner insisted they add vocals, they’ve always been an instrumental band, with song titles consisting simply of numbers—they’re up to 59 now. And while they took a seven-year break just past the turn of the century, they’ve been cranking…
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Underworld – Dubnobasswithmyheadman (20th Anniversary vinyl reissue)
There aren’t many occasions when the artistic population of an entire musical genre is able to point to a single album and say it pretty much inspired everything that would matter in and about the genre thereafter, but that’s actually possible when it comes to dubnobasswithmyheadman – Underworld‘s third album. Dubnobasswithmyheadman didn’t just break the…
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Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble – The Complete Epic Recordings Collection
Some Hellbound readers may see this review of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s new box set on the site and be confused: “Stevie Ray Vaighan’s not metal,” they may scream, “he’s a blues guitarist!” This is true. SRV IS a blues guitarist (and a damned good one), but his work garners mention on Hellbound for a few…
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Varga in Kingston ON, Dec 5, 2014
VARGA with Non-Existent, Rise of Dissension, Meathook and Ithon December 5th, 2014 at the Overtime Sports bar in Kingston, Ontario What better way to spend a Friday night than watching a band you grew up listening to and, not to mention, supporting your friends and their local bands that were also attending and playing on that night? Ithon…
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Blooodbath – Grand Morbid Funeral
Well death metal enthusiasts, it’s finally here and it’s only taken six years for another Bloodbath release. There has been a lot of speculation over the past year or so as to who was going to be the new vocalist, so when it was announced that it would be Nick Holmes of Paradise Lost fame it was…
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Xerxes – Collision Blonde
The first lesson that Xerxes‘ sophomore full-length teaches us is that, if you’re going to start something, you’d better see it through. That’s definitely the lesson this critic learned; when I first put my copy of Collision Blonde on my turntable, I thought I had a good idea of what to expect when the needle…
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Sans Soleil – A Holy Land Beneath a Godless Sky
The band’s name, Sans Soleil, translates to Sunless, and they worked with a guy who produced Earthless on this EP, but their music actually sounds more like Earth. And no, not just because some of these songs are viola-driven, although that certainly helps. It’s the stringed instrument that rises right away on opening track “A…