FOR THE LOVE OF METAL
Last weekend saw America’s biggest metal party, the annual Maryland Deathfest, happen at Baltimore’s Sonar club. The fun started on Thursday night with an evening’s worth of bands indoors at Sonar. Here is what Hellbound’s Kevin Stewart-Panko, Laura Wiebe and Sean Palmerston thought of the bands they saw that evening, with live photos by Albert Mansour.
The beastly grit of doom. Grindcore’s fiery onslaught. Black metal’s confrontational excess. The jarring obtuseness of tech. Metal is founded on explosive, aggressive and often combative attitudes. Still, just when one feels remotely comfortable—possibly slightly expectant—as to what the genre’s next twist will be, something so dominant, furious and volatile comes along that it redefines the parameters of what makes a band extreme.
Keith Carman talks with Toronto’s Vilipend about their multifaceted and dangerous approach to music.