Shane Mehling

Bay Area post-hardcore foursome wants you to take your job and scream at it.

Dazzling Killman Nick Sakes has returned with a new band that makes inspiring, hideous music.

Portland noiserock quartet Ils want you to scream a little prayer for them on “Hail Mary.”

Seattle speaker-blowers Sandrider rock out, explode, feed giant birds and puke confetti in the video for their Alternative Tentacles debut.

Hear noisemongers Intercourse blow their load in under 90 seconds with a track from their forthcoming Egyptian Democracy EP.

If you’ve got one minute and 18 seconds, you’ve got the time for noisemongers Dry Socket to clean out your earholes.

Spend two minutes with Bay Area quartet Strangelight, featuring members of Kowloon Walled City and Transistor Transistor, and then spend way more recovering from the aural beating.

We’re not gonna give away the ending of this new video by Idaho quintet THROES, but it will only take you about 90 seconds to figure out the twist in the chaotic “Fang.”

Sometimes a name perfectly encapsulates what a band sounds like. And Portland’s Dry Socket found the exact right moniker to describe their painful, impossible-to-ignore approach to hardcore punk.

Canadian noiserockers Tunic need only a couple minutes to thoroughly assault your senses.

Midwesterners Chrome Waves chose to celebrate their new single, “Gazing Into Oblivion,” with an homage to a true ’90s masterpiece by… Stabbing Westward.

Full of Hell push the limits of grind at an accelerated clip.

Great Falls count down the sets they’re most excited to see on their US tour.

In 2015 Death Engine released Mud, undoubtedly one of the best records that year and a high-water mark in noiserock that no one would feel confident trying to top. But while I’ve only sat with Place Noire for a couple days, goddamn it feels like they may have done it. Over the course of six tracks…

You put so much of yourself into the record that of course you’re crushed when someone dismisses it. It’s the most human reaction. If you had a new baby you couldn’t fathom someone typing on Facebook that “Eh, it doesn’t really do anything interesting and that goo goo ga ga junk is derivative of other, much cuter babies.”

Maybe you’re not a fan of the name Meatwound. But rest assured that any revulsion you feel when hearing the name is blown up ten-fold when you listen to the Tampa quartet’s music. 

Consisting of members from both Wake and Seminary, easily two of Canada’s best grind bands, you may be skeptical about this turn towards “Blackened doom.” But their five-song debut goes way beyond what anyone is expecting. 

Some people on the internet just want to make you smile. But with their new video, Brown Angel would prefer if your day were a little bit worse. 

1985’s “We are the World” became the fastest-selling American pop single in history and featured dozens of the world’s biggest musicians. What you may not know is that same year 40 metalheads and hard rockers tried the same thing, with far less successful results. 

Almost four minutes into Temple of the Morning Star is when the infamous fundamentalist preacher says, “Right now I want the undivided attention of every God-fearing American citizen.” And that’s pretty much where Today Is the Day officially began their new brand of misery.

Being inspired by the classics doesn’t mean you can just follow through and pull off something worthy of your forebears. But someone in Portland has unbolted a crypt and unleashed the debut four-song EP Summon Horrendous Destruction by Petrification. 

It doesn’t take long to say a lot. Case in point is the song “Under the Wave Blanket” by the Austinites Drip-Fed, who pack plenty of pain and hope into 2 1/2 minutes. Though it helps that the music itself is the hooky, hulking kind of punk hardcore that makes you listen over and over until you develop welts.

I am not a luddite. Far from it. But there are some things I miss in this digital age. One of those is combing through a record layout to read the list of bands that are thanked. 

If you know anything about Napalm Death you probably know this bit of trivia: the band contains no original members. While they are known for the revolutionary Scum album, not even their oldest current member played on it. So when it comes to people leaving, dying or being fired, when is a band no longer the same band?  

Throughout the decades of arguing over metal, there is one undeniable constant: metal videos are usually pretty dumb bullshit. 

When it comes to members of Danzig and the visual medium, it’s hard to top Henry & Glenn Forever. But there is some pretty stiff competition in the form of Misery Obscura, a compendium of nearly 30 years of photography taken by bass player Eerie Von. 

Is technology killing music criticism? This is an honest question. It’s killing plenty of other things, so why would this somehow be immune?

All loud things must come to end. And that is why Fight Amp have decided to break up. The band’s own Mike McGinnis offers this eulogy: a list of surprising influences you may not have picked up on. 

The frontmen for each band—Ministry‘s Al Jourgensen, Helmet‘s Page Hamilton and Sepultura‘s Max Cavalera—share stories from one of the most oddly perfect mixes of diversified brutality in metal history. Get ready for tales of heroin, highway crashes and a puke-covered Eddie Vedder.

Write about metal long enough and it becomes increasingly difficult to find new, interesting ways to describe loud guitars and screaming. So having a little extra color to add to a review or a profile is always helpful. And when there is a woman in the band, that’s often the first place you turn to for a slightly fresher angle… right?