Coming from the genre of fan films pretending to be documentaries, Death by Metal tries to make Death frontman Chuck Schuldiner into a legend of metal who invented death metal out of thin air. In doing so, it panders to the nostalgia and hard rocker audience but misses many opportunities.
80 CommentsGet Thrashed! (2006)
After spending years analyzing political propaganda and bad philosophy, you might think that manipulation reveals itself like flatus in an elevator, but it does not. You get lulled in, doze off in your inner critical faculty, and then suddenly wake up screaming once the horror becomes too real.
29 CommentsTags: documentary, movie
Sammath Introduces Worldwide Texas Tour 2024
Searing martial black metal band Sammath introduced its “Texas is the Reason” Worldwide Texas Tour today, plotting dates across Texas early next year to terrify and delight audiences with its brand of technical but mystical metal.
48 CommentsTags: Black Metal, sammath, texas, War Metal
Celebrating 37 Years of Reign in Blood
Death metal, like heavy metal itself, merged from murky origins that shoveled many influences into more of a classical style of through-composed music based on phrase and not harmony with vocals, basing the music around the guitar as a lead instrument, adding in lyrical tropes from Romantic poetry.
67 CommentsTags: death metal, slayer, Speed Metal
A Possible Future Without Record Labels
Higher-powered home computers drove the democratization of music production, then the internet allowed individuals to promote themselves. Many at the time wondered if this would be the death of record labels, which previously were the only way for bands to get known.
38 CommentsTags: bitcoin, home production, podcasting, rss, self-publishing, sir libre
Open Directory of Slayer Bootlegs, Live, and Rare
Not many people appreciate the importance of Slayer. Along with other proto-death/black bands — Bathory, Master, Sarcofago, Hellhammer, Sodom, Possessed — Slayer stepped out of the speed metal sound to the tremolo sound and realized the possibilities of through-composed narrative songs based on the riff.
92 CommentsTags: metal, slayer, speedmetal, Thrash
Manowar Re-Imagined Through Hurdy-Gurdy Cover of “The Crown and the Ring”
Few bands inspired as much imaginative exploration of ideas as Manowar, which like Bathory looked toward the pre-medieval past for inspiration about the future, finding that humanity had not changed and our path is one of battle, honor, might, pride, death, blood, and victory instead of “progress.”
37 CommentsTags: borys shchuka, hurdy-gurdy, manowar
Sadistic Metal Reviews: Metal Jihad Edition
Let us review how we got here, how things are going, and where we are going.
122 CommentsTags: Heavy Metal, history of metal, sadistic metal reviews, smr, spirit of metal
Cemetery Urn – Suffer the Fallen (2023)
Coming from the part of the old school that focuses on producing dark cryptograms from the most basic robust and straightforward riffs it can conjecture, Cemetery Urn makes music that sets up a dominant rhythm trope like Immolation or Sinister and then spins contrasts until the theme gains a new weight.
57 CommentsTags: cemetery urn, death metal
Desecresy – Deserted Realms (2023)
On the surface, Desecresy grafted Bolt Thrower into periodically ambient underground metal like Asphyx and Demoncy, producing a sense of exploring catacombs and labyrinths in darkness while pursuing or being pursued, producing a mood of contemplative calm in the midst of intensity.
3 CommentsTags: death metal, desecresy