Tag: metal

  • Shooting Guns: dealing some heavy instrumental magic

    Shooting Guns: dealing some heavy instrumental magic

    When it comes to the metal aesthetic many bands feel they need to choose the route of texture or torture. Bands decide whether to build weapons or evoke atmospheres with their sound, and to focus on the ephemeral often means leaving a sense of visceral threat behind. After all, smoke cannot hurt us, and shadows…

  • The Shrine – Bless Off

    The Shrine – Bless Off

    I was pretty impressed with these guys when they opened for Red Fang last month. While they’re not reinventing the wheel, they sure know how to roll it, bringing down some brief blasts of heavy vintage tuneage. It’s almost like one of those semi-obscure heavy bands from the early 70s (Dust, Bang, Gun, take your…

  • The Unsemble – The Unsemble

    The Unsemble – The Unsemble

    By Bill Adams The complicated thing about instrumental albums is that they’re really easy to make (getting a band to just jam is never difficult), but making a great and memorable one is surprisingly difficult. The reason for that is simple; most rock bands operate within the pop songwriting paradigm which means a song should…

  • Ministry – From Beer to Eternity

    Ministry – From Beer to Eternity

    By Bill Adams For the last thirty-two years, Al Jourgensen and Ministry have been the purveyors of a fine form of subversive songwriting which has regularly pulled the rug out from under the genre they were working in at that moment. Be it electronic music or metal, the wit and subversive bent of the music…

  • Black Space Riders – D:REI

    Black Space Riders – D:REI

    When I first reviewed this German band of Lars Ulrich lookalikes’ (seriously, the band photo in the press pack is uncanny) debut album, I made some remark about how it must be a concept album cuz every song had the word “black” in the title. Well, now they’ve gone and released a proper concept album,…

  • Iced Earth – Plagues of Babylon

    Iced Earth – Plagues of Babylon

    By Jason Wellwood Apparently Dystopia was a hard act to follow for Jon Schaffer and company if the reviews I’ve seen are to be believed.  And I can believe it: Dystopia was a solid album and featured some of the best songs and performances from Iced Earth in over a decade. However, that shouldn’t overshadow…

  • Band Brand Beer Battle: Iron Maiden’s “Trooper” vs AC/DC

    Matt Hinch compares the new Iron Maiden “Trooper” beer to the recently released AC/DC brew in a Band Brand Beer Battle

  • GWAR – Battle Maximus

    GWAR – Battle Maximus

    Hellbound Metal: “Battle Maximus is Gwar’s best album in years”. Review by Bill Adams

  • Fatality – Psychonaut

    Hellbound Metal: ” From start to finish Fatality flat out rip on Psychonaut. One can practically taste the sweat being flung from the flying hair of band and fans alike. Catchy as hell riffs and oh-hell-yeah solos get thrown around like nobody’s business.”

  • Black Tusk – Tend No Wounds

    Hellbound Metal: “Bottom line, if you enjoy the Georgia sludge sounds of Black Tusk, this’ll certainly whet your appetite.”