Interviews

You might remember our friends from specialty vinyl label Last Hurrah. Last year, they pressed an ultra limited vinyl run of 16’s Lost Tracts Of Time. This summer, they will release a full length album from Mike IX project The Guilt Of… Although this will only be released on vinyl Decibel scored an early peak…

According to their Facebook page, UK doom/Heavy Metal quartet Arkham Witch‘s personal interests include, “Ales, Histories, Wars, Invocations and Audible assaults. Drinking as fuck!” And their description of their sound is pretty much bang on too. “Old School Heavy Metal/Doom infused with Lovecraftian horror, tales of mighty Barbarians and festering evil superstitions!” What’s not to…

The consensus seems to be “Amorphis is back.” Was process to create Circle any different from previous albums? The energy is palatable.Tomi Koivusaari: We started to think before recording this album that maybe we should change the process of making album this time, as the last four albums we did at same studio with almost…

Because every day another band records another song.  Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck.  Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm.  Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days)…

The news that rabid, unhinged, original wave thrashers, Soothsayer have returned may not mean much to anyone under the age of 35 who lived outside of southern Ontario or the band’s home province of Quebec, but they’re back and I for one am rather pleased at the news. Initially reconvening to play an old-school Quebec…

One of my favorite albums so far this year, Woe‘s Withdrawal, drops on Tuesday. To mark the occasion, guitarist Ben Brand sent along the following playlist that I’m pretty sure only he could adequately describe: “In honor of the transition into Spring, I want you all to start thinking about getting that garden growing. Inch…

If you spend enough time on the Internet you begin to think that most readers visit sites just to stir the proverbial shit pot. But occasionally the Web will serve up something so delightful and unexpected that it validates the whole premise of connecting the world and equipping the population with tools to allow them…

I’m trying to put a finger on The Formulas of Death, but I can’t. Was the intention to make an album that’s hard to fit into one easy category?Adam Zaars: No, that wasn’t the intention, but I’m not surprised to hear the question. The intention was just to create flowing music. It would have been…

Welcome to Tales From the Metalnomicon, a new twice-monthly column delving into the surprisingly vast world of heavy metal-tinged/inspired literature and metalhead authors… In her exquisitely rendered, frequently disquieting, always edifying new book House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films well-respected critic, festival programmer and King Diamond…

Because every day another band records another song.  Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck.  Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm.  Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days)…

Hmm. How did we miss this one? Did we miss this one? Was it only I who wasn’t paying attention and missed it? Either way, Arizona’s North has a “new” album out. It’s a wall of crushing, psychedelia-tinged post-Neur-Isis mania entitled The Great Silence, though “new” is a bit of a misnomer as it was…

The dudes in Anciients will release their debut album, Heart Of Oak, on Tuesday. Just in case Jeff Treppel’s lead review in our April issue or Kevin Stewart-Panko’s profile the following month weren’t enough to convince you of the Vancouver quartet’s awesomeness, guitarist/vocalists Chris Dyck and Kenny Cook passed along some of the records they’ll…

That Satan were one of the most slept-on bands of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal because of their name is a cruel irony. For a genre that adopted the devil as chief muse and aesthetic patriarch, Satan should have fitted right in; acceptance should have been instant. But while Satan, too, were a…

Last week, as part of what became an unofficial Soilwork week around these parts, the Swedish sextet’s drummer Dirk Verbeuren gave us a glimpse into his diverse listening habits. As promised, we now present five more tracks from frontman and founder Björn “Speed” Strid, each of which helped meld his musical tastes during his more…

For three decades, Jim Van Bebber has been one of the most abrasive, iconoclastic filmmakers in the American underground. His debut feature Deadbeat At Dawn was a perfect rendition of 60s biker films shot guerilla style on the streets of his hometown of Dayton, Ohio. His mini-feature My Sweet Satan is an updated retelling of…

 Because every day another band records another song.  Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck.  Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm.  Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days)…

Given that Soilwork unleashed its first double album (and ninth overall), The Living Infinite, earlier this month, it’s only appropriate that the long-running Swedish outfit passed along a double playlist. Up first: a collection of tracks from drummer Dirk Verbeuren, each offering an insight into his diverse tastes (Prince is becoming quite a fixture in…

First of all, are you crazy? A double album in 2013?Dirk Verbeuren: [Laughs] We kind of thought that at first, too. Speed [Strid] had come up with that idea. That’s something he had wanted to do. In his head he’s like, “I wanna do a double album.” When he first told us he wanted to…

Selling out… of all their cassettes, that is.  Crazy, right?  I mean, when you make 100 white cassettes and 100 red cassettes, there’s no way you expect to sell all (er… drop the zero, carry the…) two hundred of them!  So Vampire wised up and ordered 100 more black cassettes of their demented lo-fi thrash…

  Any song that kicks off with a full-blast Danzig riff followed by the line, “Down in the workshop, baby, all dressed in black…” is total tits in our book. Somehow, Connecticut wolf-runners NightBitch suspected this all along and wrote “Chainmaker” just for us. And, okay, the other handful of Danzig fans who have a…

Not only did Intronaut just release its fourth full-length, Habitual Levitations (Instilling Words With Tones), on Tuesday, but the band also recently wrapped up a tour in support of Meshuggah. Needless to say, the quartet probably spent quite a bit of time driving from show to show. Sacha Dunable was kind enough to pass along…

It’s funny, the press releases that accompany doom records are unlike any of your typical puff-sheets, the purpose of which, of course, is to sell you on the record. No, the doom press release always comes with the caveats abound, stressing the oppressive track lengths, moribund subject matter, and advising helpfully that “it’s not for…

To paraphrase my favorite comic, Mitch Hedberg (R.I.P.), Semantik Punk is a Polish experimental punk outfit that people will either love or hate, or think they’re okay.  They’re hardcore enough to sound like a badly scratched Converge or Dillinger Escape Plan CD that won’t stop skipping to random spots on the disc; they’re rock enough…

If you’re a fan of Lightning Bolt’s immensely quirky, insanely loud, outsider extreme music, then the name Brian Chippendale is probably very familiar to you. He’s the dervish behind the drums, often seen wearing a sock on his head with a microphone sewn into it as he seemingly grows three extra arms so as to…

BATILLUS kicked off a month of shows in support of its latest record, the awesome Concrete Sustain, at the end of February. The trek has seen them scoot across the Midwest, over to the left coast and, most recently, Pitchfork’s Show No Mercy SXSW showcase in Austin, TX (check out the band’s remaining dates below)….

“RICHIE HAWTIN is someone that I got exposed to when I was maybe seventeen or eighteen, at an age when I was most into the metal scene, and something just clicked with me. He had these records that were so trancey but trance in the sense of trance-inducing not trance dance music. You just get…

Last year, Torche was so stoked about the coming of summer that it passed along a “summer fun” mix. To help get ready for the warmer weather this year, we enlisted the assistance of Inter Arma guitarist Trey Dalton to tell us about some albums to spin once “spring has come and it’s time to…

Quick test: go check your music shelf or your iTunes. How many metal albums have some kind of mention of the Devil? A third? How did that symbolism get there in the first place? Why is it so powerful, and so enduring? In the second installment of blues into metal, we’re honored to have bluesman…

As much as I swore I was never going to do a blog post about goddamn Metallica, when Bazillion Point Books contacted me about doing a spread celebrating the 30th anniversary of Cliff Burton’s first show with Metallica (March 5, 1983, for those of you who aren’t so good with math) – featuring actual photographs…

Early in 2011, I was floored by a band I had never heard before making noise I never knew I always wanted to hear.  They’re from Finland, so, yeah.  Duh.  At this point I expect sweet Finnish lullabies to kick my ass and melt my face. The phrase “Wisdom through Agony into Illumination and Lunacy”…