Tag: USA

  • Icarus Witch – Draw Down The Moon

    A thundering and energetic traditional sounding band of heavy metal thunder, Pittsburgh’s Icarus Witch continues their excellent approach with this, their third full-length album. A highly talented band, Icarus Witch is far too under-recognized for their ability to rip out albums that are well-crafted and chock full of shredding metal.

  • End Of A Year – You Are Beneath Me

    There’s nothing easy about the album; no chant-along moments that incite crowds and establish instant followers. Everything with this affair is begrudging and hard-won on both sides of the band/listener relationship. Yet those who stick around long enough will realize that sometimes it’s those things we fight hardest for which wind up being the most…

  • Hellbound Handshake Clip Of The Week: DECEASED “The Silent Creature” Live at MDF 2010

    The fourth installment of the Hellbound Handshake Clip Of The Week is DECEASED live at Maryland Deathfest 8, performing “The Silent Creature”.

  • Melvins/ Totimoshi @ Rickshaw Theater, Vancouver BC, July 5, 2010

    “Having seen the Melvins in previous three-piece variants over the years, this was my very-excited first time seeing this four-on-the-floor version that includes the Big Business guys, even though the band’s been touring in this incarnation since 2006. First, the stage set-up is key: Looking like one monstrous kit, the twin drumsets are dead center…

  • Charred Walls of the Damned/ Piledriver/ Ash Lee Blade @ The Opera House, Toronto ON July 4, 2010

    The awkwardly-named Charred Walls of the Damned delivered a solid headlining performance. While the other bands they shared the stage with has set a decidedly un-serious precedent, CWotD were much more straightforward and earnest in their presentation. Not to say that they were stuffy or stoic. They play unabashedly entertaining power/thrash metal, but choose not…

  • Racebannon – Wrap The Body

    Wrap the Body is a neat little experiment, but is likely only bound to be wholly accepted and tolerated by Racebannon die-hards, masochistic punishment gluttons and maybe even the occasional DJ. It’s probably a good thing that only 500 of these have been pressed.

  • Pelican – What We All Come To Need

    What We All Come To Need isn’t new news by this point, but it’s a real recommend for anyone looking for a heavy album that trims away most of the muscular excesses of progressive and noise metal while still that retaining their heavy-hitting skeletons.

  • Inter Arma – Sundown

    Gather ‘round, ye of the underground, for here is a band of Richmond dudes who combine touches of all manner of metal, from doom and thrash to black and traditional to sludge and psychedelic, and do so with a gritty, dirt-under-the-working-man’s-fingernails sound lacking show and polish

  • Hellbound Handshake Clip of the Week: TOTAL FUCKING DESTRUCTION live at MDF 2010

    Here is installment #2 of the Hellbound Handshake Clip of The Week! This week it is TOTAL FUCKING DESTRUCTION Live at Maryland Deathfest 2010, as captured by Handshake Inc.

  • Book Review: From The Graveyard Of The Arousal Industry By Justin Pearson

    From The Graveyard Of The Arousal Industry isn’t a perfect book, but it’s a very good one. Metal and punk fans often greet the world with a raised middle finger and a grimace; this book is about how a wry smile and a good joke will take you much further.