https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CvNR_TlaaI The legendary Pentagram is back in a big fucking way (if you haven’t noticed) so it’s the perfect time to crank out a dedication. D-beat lovers Hot Graves have actually slowed themselves down to pull off a faithful and killer cover of “Madman” from Pentagram’s Day of Reckoning. And they’ve gone further by releasing…

There’s nothing like regurgitated giblets in the morning. Using tools of the trade (i.e., fork and knife), we consume the gross, the unsightly, and the wrong to get us ready for traffic, silly ridiculous Excel spreadsheets, and reading press releases about odd bands signing to mainstream indie labels (uh, Jungle Rot signed to Victory). It’s…

Here’s some useless hump-day crap: Nicolas Cage has a 20-year-old son named Weston (the chick on the right) who is in a metal band called Eyes of Noctum. Weston got married to the chick on the left. I read about this on a probably not-at-all-reputable site called Hot Momma Gossip. A little googling uncovered the…

Tracklist:1. “A Grand Declaration of War”
2. “In the Lies Where Upon You Lay”
3. “A Time to Die”
4. “View from Nihil (Part I of II)”
5. “View from Nihil (Part II of II)”
6. “A Bloodsword and a Colder Sun (Part I of II)”
7. “A Bloodsword and a Colder Sun (Part II of II)”
8. “Crystalized Pain in Deconstruction”
9. “Completion in Science of Agony (Part I of II)”
10. “To Daimonion (Part I of III)”
11. “To Daimonion (Part II of III)”
12. “To Daimonion (Part III of III)”
13. “Completion in Science of Agony (Part II of II)”

At what point to you feel a song has been completed? I typically ask this question of bands who write long songs to see if there’s a threshold and if there is when to they feel it’s been reached.James Kelly: For us, it is when it has climaxed in terms of the energy we intend…

Leave Zakk Wylde alone. He’s getting exposure for metal and that’s a good thing. Such was the gist of a surprising number of reader responses to my post last week poking fun at the Black Label Society guitarist for appearing with that metallic theater arts goofball on American Idol. (Alas, these missives remained but a…

In 1993, Burzum mastermind and sole member Varg “Count Grishnackh” Vikernes both embodied Norwegian black metal’s violent strain of pagan nihilism and sought to defy the genre’s increasingly stultifying conventions.

“Γοργόνειον III”, the front cover painting commissioned by Relapse Records for Horseback’s double album “The Gorgon Tongue” has quite a bit of history behind it.

I’m not a big proponent of hyping a band based upon how few members they have. What I mean is I don’t love descriptors like “power trio” because so what if three guys can make as much noise as four or five. That doesn’t make a song inherently better. But with all of that said,…

The disconnect between classical music (all types) and heavy metal (all types) is probably less to do with musical form (although blues-based heavy metal is obviously divergent) than class. See, people into classical music are largely of a different economic, educational, and social background from dudes who headbang and play air guitar to “Fucked with…