As more people flee the world of vapes and cigarettes, pipes and cigars — but mostly cigars — show the signs of experiencing a renaissance. If you can work from home, why not enjoy a leisurely two-hour relaxing smoke instead of hurriedly wolfing down a nicotine jolt in the parking lot?
42 CommentsTags: dark fired kentucky burley, mac baren, pipe smoking, pipe tobacco, royal twist, tobacco
Sentenced burst into existence like a moment of drunken exuberance but then vanished just as quickly, appearing with Shadows of the Past in 1991 to ride the Demigod and Darkthrone style of dark mid-paced death metal to its conclusions, then peaked with the magnificent North From Here two years later, but by the next album, became some kind of gothic hard rock that drove away death metal fans in droves.
7 CommentsTags: death metal, sentenced
Listening to the review queue, it strikes me how few bands write songs with any unifying patterns to them. Most piece together riffs around a form, like those paper cut-outs seamstresses use to make dresses, and when it all seems to work, cut tape and call it a day.
No CommentsTags: assault, Melodic Death Metal, Speed Metal
As humans, we depend on social interaction for information, especially since 99% of everything is spam. The parts that are not advertisements often consist of other people trying to manipulate us for politics or to make themselves look good, and much of the rest comes from people furiously typing, speaking, filming, and gesturing to promote themselves, a condition where truthful accuracy is secondary at best.
8 CommentsTags: early day, english blend, pipe smoking, pipe tobacco, smoking tobacco, tobacco, tobacco pipes, tobacco smoking, villiger
Guest article by Svennerick
Released in August of 1996, Monstrosity’s second effort Millennium is an album I personally hold in very high regards, considering I nearly spent eight months listening to it multiple times a day. This is an addictive album and each new listen made it clearer why this album stands head and shoulders above anything released under the term “technical death metal.”
9 CommentsTags: analysis, death metal, millenium, monstrosity, Technical Death Metal
article by Svennerick
Morbid Angel’s output after Covenant led to a huge divergence between Extreme metal fans. After the huge failure and one of Death metal’s biggest downfalls, which was Domination, the band decided to change things up, which is a move that has to be admired, since many bands would milk out such a success and let their own music suffer in mediocrity.
28 CommentsTags: forever advancing legions, mithras, morbid angel, worlds beyond the veil
Article by Salustiano Ferdinand
I was listening to Persecution Mania yesterday when I opened my email and saw some new releases thrown my way to sift through for potential reviews. Although I’m generally skeptical of newer metal releases, the Shadows in the Crypt album was a pleasant and recent surprise, so I figured why not.
(more…)
Tags: 2018, in inceptum finis est, odium totus, panegyric of death, sadistic metal reviews, smr, tatanhammer, the synoptic picture of negativism, vulturine, write good riffs or die
Until now, metal works (albums, EPs, pieces, etc.) have been regarded as products, even by those who would assume anti-commercial postures. Why this is so, why the underground metal community still sees albums as products and so judge them in that light, has to do with the history of metal as arising from the general rock business context. Black Sabbath as the foundational metal band followed this path and they were also the first metal band to sell out, though there never was much to sell out. In any case, they did not really know what they had and quickly devolved into rock-ized (standardized) “improvements” on the gold they had struck at first, instead of exploring those new sounds and ideas regardless of the commercial context, regardless of the business prospects (gigs, deals, etc.). We must understand, however, that the ideal of metal beyond rock, beyond trends and commercialism, only arose with the Mayhem cabal. Their commercial activities, it should be understood, were a means to something greater, as can be seen from the meticulous selection of albums that came under the auspices of Deathlike Silence Productions.
3 CommentsTags: black sabbath, consumerism, Deathlike Silence, Demilich, dionysus, mayhem, metal, Philosophy, stepping stones
Long ago, there was Nicotiana Rustica which the Asian natives of the New World smoked in various forms. It had a taste like burnt squash when smoked and a potent blast of Nicotine. The Caucasian newcomers began to experiment with different cultivars of Nicotiana, and eventually settled on using Nicotiana Tabacum, a domesticated version from South America. (more…)
2 CommentsTags: burley, gawith hoggarth & co., pipe tobacco, tobacco, virginia
