With the International Day of Slayer coming up, it was hard to pass on one of these at SoundWaves. After all, you always need a Igloo™ Thermos.®
21 CommentsTags: consumerism, slayer
Sadistic Metal Reviews: Invert the Cross Edition
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Apparently Facebook, after shutting down my account for suspicion of “impersonation” a decade ago, has now decided to ban our page. The current framework of beliefs by which modern people live is shaking. Eighty years has revealed only the weakness at is core. Sea change is coming.
100 CommentsTags: AI, apostasy, blasphemy, heresy, sadistic metal reviews, sea change, smr
Imprecation, Necro Blade, and Mephitic Corpse in Houston April 26, 2025
The record release celebration for Vomitum Tempestas, a collection of songs featuring drummer Ruben Elizondo pieced together after his untimely death, showed Houston death metal band Imprecation in its most refined and vicious form.
18 CommentsTags: death metal, imprecation, mephitic corpse, necro blade
Outsiderness
Almost all revolutions begin with the idea that what you have known is wrong, and an alternative exists that although unproven will bring about a better world. The hangup is the word “better” — does it mean pragmatically (short term) better, realistically (long term) better, morally better, more profitable, more individualistic — and this detail bedevils the most adventurous of plans.
35 CommentsTags: blasphemy, censorship, Nihilism, obscenity, sodomy
Sadistic Metal Reviews: Fuck Your Feelings Edition
Life philosophies differ across the Bell Curve. In the middle, where the big bucks are, people want to avoid unpleasant thoughts about their status in the world; on either end, people know that their role is not what most idealize and, as a result, have accepted their limitations (left) or duties (right).
57 CommentsTags: censorship, fisting, free speech, say FUCK for FREEDOM, smr
What Tony Iommi Gave to Guitar
Part of the fun of being a metal historian, as writers about metal tend to become looking back at the evolution of the art form, is to pick apart threads of history and then look where they converge. These points are horizons, and in each are many paths, some still unexplored.
36 CommentsTags: black sabbath, cream, Heavy Metal, jethro tull, king crimson, proto-metal, the stooges, tony iommi
Sadistic Metal Reviews: Self-Erasing Message Edition
It does not matter what I write here because people no longer read articles. They read headlines and summaries, then skim for embedded media. Television finally took over through the computer. As usual, the voters/consumers are their own worst enemy, choosing the dumbest format they can find.
36 CommentsTags: sadistic metal reviews, smr
Sadistic Metal Reviews: PTSD and Age of Symbolism Edition
When you start writing about metal, you rapidly find that metal connects to lots of other stuff. Not just by lyrics and imagery but by sound alone, since listening to metal seems to shape consciousness toward viewing reality differently than what The Herd wants: oblivion, free stuff, nudes, and donuts.
36 CommentsTags: ptsd, sadistic metal reviews, smr
Sadistic Metal Reviews: End The Farce Edition
When this site was started, back as an FTP server growing out of USENET and before that a collection of BBS g-philes, the paucity of information about underground metal was an issue. Now we have too much underground metal and too much information about it, almost all of it bad.
42 CommentsTags: aesthetics, ethics, genre, robert fripp, sadistic metal reviews, smr
Occult Roots of Literature in Metal
We know there is broad cynicism toward religion here; after all the Abrahamic (Islam, Christianity, Judaism) religions seem awfully simple and emotional. However, there is a whole world of spiritual belief out there which is not metaphysical dualism, neoplatonism, or universalism.
77 CommentsTags: christianity, golden dawn, h.p. lovecraft, j.r.r. tolkien, magic, Occultism, Paganism
