FOR THE LOVE OF METAL
eta: new rules!!! Like to win things? Yeah, us too! Well, courtesy of the fine folks over at Metal Blade we have two (2) copies of the brand new BLACK DAHLIA MURDER Deflorate album to give away. And if that in itself wasn’t good enough, these are the limited edition CD/DVD versions of the album and it comes fully autographed by the members of the band.
For me, anything that Massacre/Denial Fiend vocalist Kam Lee is involved with gets me excited and I am very happy to report that this new Bone Gnawer project is no exception. In fact, it is possibly some of his finest work.
While Clutch traditionally is known for its forays into hard rock and metal, the all-instrumental Bakerton goes off onto other musical tangents that are also engaging although they can be very different from their main gig. El Rojo finds the group heading succinctly into jamband territory, creating an engaging mixture of funk, blues and classic rock that gives the musicians lots of room to breathe and let their musical chops shine.
California gothic /progressive metal outfit Echoes of Eternity return with nine new tracks on their second full length album As Shadows Burn.
Like Goatwhore, like Crucifist, Black Anvil is not so much preoccupied with the thin-sounding Scandinavian aspect of black metal (although we are privy to the odd melodic movement reminiscent of Dissection) as they are completely obsessed with the mid-1980s first wave of Bathory, Possessed, and early Celtic Frost, the kind of primitive, immediate, old school metal with crust-infused riffs thick enough to stick to your ribs.
Adrien Begrand reviews the fantastic new debut release by NYC black metal/punk trio Black Anvil.
Sadly, most of Trouble’s albums are long out of print, which makes Escapi’s decision to reissue the first two in expanded, remastered formats that much sweeter. Released individually in slipcase, two-disc versions, both 1984’s Psalm 9 and the following year’s The Skull have been digitally remastered, and are much louder and clearer than the original CD issues.
Newly reissued again in North America this September through Dismanic, Sean Palmerston revisits the first two classic slabs of doom by Chicago’s legendary TROUBLE
Like the album Lorentzian Lineshaper, this performance dates from 2006 – Hansel’s first live appearance on Canadian soil (or a Torontonian basement bar, if you want to be more precise). The set list delves further back, delivering a (then) eight-year-old acoustic ditty alongside tracks from 2003’s Respond_Violence and some newer material.
Gulch is a salt-of-the-earth metal band. It does not adopt airs. It is not pretentious. It does not experiment. It just plays heavy rock. The guys in Gulch may not win awards for outstanding feats of musicianship, but they do play the kind of music that they would like to hear when they walk into a bar. It’s loud, heavy, and catchy with plenty of aggressive swagger and not a drop of sugary melody or limp-wristed balladeering.
The breakdowns are so damn catchy I turned a baseball cap sideways and slammed danced by myself, right into a wall. My cat looked at me funny.
The words “Megadeth” and “Dave Mustaine” are pretty much synonymous. In fact, we’d be willing to wager substantial sums of money that we don’t actually have that “Megadeth” and “Dave Mustaine” are far and away more synonymous with each other than “megadeath” and “Herman Kahn,” the gentleman who just happens to be the RAND military strategist who devised and first used the term in 1953 to describe one million deaths as a result of a thermonuclear war.
Kevin Stewart-Panko speaks to Megadeth’s Shawn Drover about their new studio, new guitarist and upcoming new album.