FOR THE LOVE OF METAL
Our second anniversary celebration wouldn’t be complete without hearing from Hellbound’s evil editor-in-chief. Cara Cross took the opportunity to interrogate Sean Palmerston about his unholy creation.
It’s great seeing bands from our continent carrying the proverbial torch, but it seems these Swedes have an incredible knack for making themselves sound like they came from a 1983 Banzai Records compilation rather than 2011. When a band takes that vintage style and absolutely nails it, like Portrait, like Ghost, like Year of the Goat, like Helvetets Port, like Bullet, and in this particular case, like In Solitude, it’s enough to make any metal geezer over the age of 40 realize that there just might be hope for metal after all.
Continuing on from our collected review of Thursday’s and Friday’s shows, here is what we thought of the bands we saw which played Saturday, Day three, of the 2011 Maryland Deathfest. Reviews by Adam Wills, Laura Wiebe and Sean Palmerston, with photography by Albert Mansour.
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.
If you consider Opus Eponymous to be a pop album, you probably think Yes and Genesis are pop bands, too. Erm, wait a minnit. Well, I can’t say I see Ghost going down that route, anyways. After all, it won’t be the 80’s for another 69 years…
I gotta say, the first black metal album I ever bought was Venom’s Black Metal, and I haven’t purchased many others since. Alas, to call Toronto trio Demontage a black metal band would be applying the word in its traditional sense, the way it was once used to describe Venom and Mercyful Fate.
Mean Deviation is an amazing compendium of everything weird in the world of metal—a book as grand and unlikely as the music it documents.
Prior to Nevermore, Warrel Dane cut his chops in Sanctuary. But prior to Sanctuary? Well, there was this band called Serpent’s Knight, of which remarkably little is known…until now. Shadow Kingdom, in conjunction with guitarist Brad Poland, released all of Serpent’s Knight’s material in remastered form. Accompanying the release are liner notes which seek to set the record straight on what actually went down with this, Dane’s formative band.
Album review by Tate Bengston
Hellbound’s staff give our picks for Halloween-themed songs to coincide with one of our favourite holidays.
The concept of the covers album is a risky one. Nothing wrong with slapping one on as a B-side or extra track. But to propose a whole album of covers often begs the question, “What? Have they run out of their own material already?” When you decide to make the cover album an ongoing series, you run the risk of self-parody; Six Feet Under are getting dangerously close to that point with Graveyard Classics III.