Most popular music memoirs fall into either criticism or worship of the phenomenon of popular music itself, focusing more on the fan response and megalomania of musicians than the reasons behind the creation of this music. The Serpent and the Pentagram takes a different approach.
2 CommentsTags: aris shock, Black Metal, necromantia, the magus
Legion are those who have attempted a synergic hybrid of speed metal into underground metal. Although the number of succesful outcomes remains modest, a handful notable works such as Immortal At the Heart of Winter and Merciless Unbound make the idea somewhat plausible.
No CommentsTags: amoured angel, Australia, Speed Metal
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.
11 CommentsTags: brocas helm, Heavy Metal
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.
76 Comments
Among seemingly insatiable hunger for all things old school or concept-oriented, it seems unbelievable that Doomstone were once an anomaly. Bypassing the early 1990s underground metal boom, Doomstone embraced a deliberately retrogressive channeling of the “evil” side of 1980s heavy metal.
30 CommentsTags: doomstone, Heavy Metal
Death metal followed a standard distribution like everything else. At first, a few pioneers patched it together out of what they had at the time, then a generation of bands emerged who solidified the style, followed by others who tried to make sense of that strong lead, before the imitators came.
15 CommentsTags: death metal, eulogy, Florida Death Metal, New York Death Metal
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.
29 CommentsTags: Abyssus, birthy of depravity, bones, Carnal Blasphemy, cursed blood, flashout, gorilla panic, Grindcore, mass defect, progress of inhumanity, psychotomy, ripped to shreds, sacrovore, sarkast, skullsmasher, soulskinner, stheno, terrorizer
In its earliest incarnation, Blood created crafty riff-alert grindcore like Disharmonic Orchestra and Carbonized, other European grind that took a backseat to the UK and US versions, despite playing more with song structure and phrase. This origin has now almost entirely been swallowed by death metal.
7 CommentsTags: blood, death metal, hells headbangers, incantation
As the world continues to worship 1960s anti-heroes who lived egotistic lives while hiding behing altruism, the wisdom of Mark David Chapman continues to resonate long after he shot ex-Beatle John Lennon to death outside the Dakota in New York City.
68 CommentsTags: hipsters, john lennon, mark david chapman
It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of Issei Sagawa, perhaps one of the foremost experts in dealing with The Human Problem during the twentieth century. While he is gone from our physical world, he remains forever in our hearts.
57 CommentsTags: cannibalism, ecocide, eugenics, natural selection
