Brocas Helm – Into Battle (1984)

Spurred on by the epiphanic New Wave of British Heavy Metal, heavy music exploded in the United States during the early 1980s with literally thousands of bands spawning across the country. Taking obvious influence from seminal acts such as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Motörhead, and Dio-era Black Sabbath, US heavy metal managed to acquire a character and life of its own, manifesting in some cases in a more muscular sound while others pursued more progressive or melodic leanings.

(more…)

11 Comments

Tags: ,

Xysma – No Place Like Alone (2023)

For years many of us have told death metal bands that instead of trying to mix hard rock into their death metal, it makes more sense just to cast off the underground metal aspersions and go full hard rock. With a mix of Motörhead, Iron Maiden, and AC/DC plus their own melodic and prog touches, Xysma do that.

(more…)

76 Comments

Tags: ,

Sadistic Metal Reviews: Heat-Death of the Metal Universe

Imagine a genre: it succeeds, so then all these lost people come in and make their own versions of it, trying every possible variation. Soon the field is so full of weird instruments and odd timings that all of it sounds just about the same, and no one can pick a good band from a bad one. This is heat-death:

(more…)

56 Comments

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

World Terrorizers: A Tribute to “World Downfall” (2021)

Bands do cover songs to learn from them, to show their ability to nail it as well as the original, and to expand upon what have become classics of the metal culture. It is one thing to play a song, and another to deconstruct it, analyze it, and reassemble it to show an understanding of it.

(more…)

29 Comments

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Best Metal of 2022

What can we say about 2022? Late Stage Democracy hit terminal velocity in 2019 and in response to the flu erased three years with a panicked response. The wolves at the door from Asia and Eurasia as usual want to take over. Pop culture became an even more polished average product.

(more…)

13 Comments

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Classic reviews:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z