Prosthetic Records

Amon Amarth/Eluveitie/Holy Grail @ Odeon, Saskatoon, SK, April 16, 2010

As opposed to the combination of muscle and nuance that Eluveitie excels at live, Amon Amarth is always strictly about brute force. No frills at all, just five guys taking the stage and hammering out an hour and a half’s worth of rousing tunes. Led by the gregarious, downright jolly Johan Hegg, the band hunkered down and regaled the hot, sweaty crowd with a considerably longer set than their first North American tour, which was certainly a nice touch.

Postcards From Natalie Zed, Part 1

Hellbound readers, please welcome aboard Natalie Zed! Natalie was our big grand prize winner back in January, taking home more than 50 CDs + and shortly after she received her huge box ‘o CDs, Ms. Zed asked us over at Hellbound HQ if we’d be interested in running reviews of her winnings if she did postcard sized reviews of the albums. How could we say no?

So, without further adieu, here is Natalie’s first installment in what Hellbound likes to refer to as “Postcards From Natalie Zed”…

Meeting of the Metal Minded: The Noctis III Metal Festival and Conference

In terms of metal fests, you’ve got your Milwaukees, your Maryland Deathfests, your Wackens, your Holes in the Sky, Dudefests, Hellfests, and so on—all of them well out of range of western Canadians. Thankfully, a new metallic mecca has sprung up in Alberta, at Calgary’s Noctis Festival. The third gathering (full title: Noctis III: Tritagonist) featured two days’ worth of gigs and a full-blown conference peppered with esteemed guests and international acts brought in exclusively for the event. The concert lineup, which included Slough Feg, Novembers Doom, Aura Noir, Destroyer 666, Suffocation and Cynic, was more than impressive enough to get me onto a WestJet flight from Vancouver to witness the carnage in Cowtown.

Rob Hughes gives a fascinating overview of last weekend’s Noctis III Metal Music Conference in Calgary, Alberta.

Gojira: Death Metal From the Soul

Back in the day, the pounding, clanging and grinding sounds of Birmingham, England’s ubiquitous industrial work provided a great wealth of inspiration for the thunderous sounds of metal’s forefathers in Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. Similarly, having grown up in the southwest of France in Bayonne, the members of Gojira are very familiar with the undeniable power of the Atlantic Ocean’s waves, and they’ve sought to emulate that power in a musical format. And with success, their dynamic and grooving, Morbid Angel-esque pummeling rises like a climbing wave before climatically crashing down.

Having just announced new fall tour dates supporting Metallica in the USA, Jay Gorania speaks to Joe Duplantier about life,death and metal.