Tag: metal
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Crusty Culprits: CRUST PUNK FROM BANDCAMP, Part Two
Welcome to part two of this Crusty Culprits feature. The point of the lengthy list below is to highlight a bunch of steel-edged punk rock that I’ve been enjoying in recent times. I stumbled on most of the bands featured here while exploring Bandcamp, and the majority of them are crust punk groups, because that’s…
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Pyramids On Mars – Echo Cosmic
When I went to see the film Jonah Hex in the cinema I was astonished by two things. One, how it was possible to take such a good character and make such an utter balls-up of a film. Seriously, all they had to do was adapt the graphic novel Riders of the Worm and Such…
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Shardborne – Living Bridges
Hailing from Limerick, Ireland (and thus, local lads!), Shardborne are on the right label with Out On A Limb, as they did a fine job with fellow Irish instrumental prog-metallers, Rest. On ‘Not That Axis’, Shardborne are very reminiscent of Voivod circa ‘The Unknown Knows’, whereas ‘Qualia’ displays virtuoso jazz influences. In a sense, Shardborne are a…
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Crusty Culprits: Crust Punk from Bandcamp, Part One
I’ve loved heavyweight crust punk since I first heard bands like Discharge, Hellbastard, and Amebix adding metal to their respective visions of punk rock in the early 1980s. To this day, nothing satisfies my musical appetite more than some filthy battle-vested punk with a snarling metal accent. In recent years, Bandcamp has proven to be…
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Venom – From The Very Depths
Venom have always been weighted down by a very metal millstone: that of their own legacy. The classic Mantas, Cronos, Abaddon line-up is the one everyone thinks of when Venom is mentioned. Since that era, Venom have been all over the place, with various line-ups, none of them achieving any great success. The Welcome To…
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Unleashed – Dawn Of The Nine
As I write this review I am looking out over the mighty River Shannon where, centuries ago, the Vikings sailed their long ships to establish the still-thriving city of Limerick. As an Irishman, the Vikings are a big part of my cultural heritage and one I am very proud of. Vikings still strike a chord…
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NXNE 2015 – Urvah Khan, Cold Cave, Deafheaven
Gig-hopping at NXNE 2015 – from the Bovine to Adelaide Music Hall on June 20th: On the edges of the metal world we get a lot of interesting phenomena these days. With a full program at NXNE, I got some direction and was led to an act called Urvah Khan & the Scrap Metal Army.*…
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Fredericton: GREBER video premier and tour dates
GREBER‘s latest full-length, Kiln Hardened Psalms, came out late last year but the momentum is still building. The newest result? A video for one of the most ferocious tracks on a seriously (but not too serious) ferocious record. Bassist Marc Bourgon took the time to answer a few questions: Why this song, “Fredericton”? Fredericton has been…
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Hellbound @ Tuska Open Air 2015 in Helsinki
The annual Tuska Open Air festival in Helsinki has become my most traveled metal festival aside from ProgPower USA in Atlanta, Georgia. People go nuts over the bigger festivals in Germany like Wacken and Summer Breeze as well as others like Hellfest in France, but I think the Finnish people have it right. It’s just…
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Faith No More – Sol Invictus
The last time Faith No More released a new studio album (which was Album Of The Year in 1997, by the way), I was eighteen years old – it was literally half my lifetime ago. While it wasn’t the band’s best album (critics complained that the proliferation of side projects the band’s members were contributing…