From its upcoming album All The Shadows, classic swords and sorcery heavy metal band Cirith Ungol has released its first single, the title track. Hit the play button below to check it out.
22 CommentsTags: cirith ungol, Heavy Metal
Kaine – Extinction’s End (2026)
If you can imagine a crossover between Mercyful Fate, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Sodom but with its own zest for life and flair for the majestic, Kaine delivers NWOBHM-drenched speed metal at mid-pace with old school riff composition.
15 CommentsTags: Heavy Metal, kaine, NWOBHM, Speed Metal
Venator – Psychodrome (2025)
Malaise shares a space between underground metal, heavy metal, and classic jazz: the greats came and left such a legacy that few stand up to it, and little can be so distinctive that it will gain the status of perceived greatness, so most stay away.
38 CommentsTags: Heavy Metal, judas priest, mercyful fate, scorpions, venator
Requiescat in Pace: John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne, 1948-2025
Ozzy Osbourne, pioneering singer of pioneering proto-metal group Black Sabbath, has passed on to the great mountain of weed, cocaine, booze, LSD, metal, and good times in the sky.
20 CommentsTags: black sabbath, Heavy Metal, ozzy osbourne, proto-metal
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
How Heavy Metal Died of Success
Some civilizations have public viewings of the dead; some bury them as soon as possible under cover of night. Some have wakes, others solemn commemorations. Human death rituals take many forms but they all serve to fix a discontinuity, to knit a past that cannot continue with an unknown future.
72 CommentsTags: assimilation, authenticity, commercialism, commercialization, conformity, entropy, Heavy Metal, non-conformity, selling out
The History of Metal and Horror (2021)
Apparently emerging from a podcast done by lead writer Mike Schiff, this documentary concerns the parallel lives and interwoven fates of heavy metal music and horror films, making a good case that people who do not buy into society’s nonsense tend to choose a path where power is more desirable than safety and popularity.
15 CommentsTags: alice cooper, anthrax, documentary, film, Heavy Metal, horror movies, iron maiden, king diamond, megadeth, metallica, mike schiff, the ramones
Interview with King Fowley of Deceased
Moving through the underground without noticing Deceased over the past three decades would prove difficult, and many of us know this band as an early effort to bring heavy metal technicality to death metal at a time when the genre was still considered primitive.
74 CommentsTags: death metal, deceased, doomstone, Heavy Metal, hells headbangers
Desultory – Darkness Falls (The Early Years) (2024)
Before melodic death metal became a new way to rebrand Iron Maiden style heavy metal with death vocals, a few bands explored the idea of applying melody to death metal, and Desultory distinguished themselves early on with a speed metal influenced variety of heavy metal that used a lot of death metal technique.
112 CommentsTags: death metal, desultory, Heavy Metal
What Is Art?
Writing about a dead genre can be exhausting. You search through ten thousand bands looking for the few that grasp what the genre was always about — its newer incarnations are meaningless — and despite enjoying this, find that the good is drowned out by the mediocre.
103 CommentsTags: art, Black Metal, Heavy Metal, Satan, underground metal
