Judas Priest came out of the era that melded Black Sabbath with Led Zeppelin and came up with some of the most creative guitar riffology in history, raising the standards by which any new album will be judged, and Invincible Shield tries to balance their past with multiple career peaks.
56 CommentsTags: Heavy Metal, judas priest, NWOBHM, power metal
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
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
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
To appreciate metal means that to a degree one appreciates its roots and constituent influences, sometimes even when they incorporate elements of newer subgenres. Seax makes classic heavy metal in the Iron Maiden or Judas Priest style as if it were Master covering it: stripped down, uptempo, and riff-powered.
4 CommentsTags: Heavy Metal, seax
Where did black metal go wrong? Like Western Civilization, it forgot the goal and the why and focused on the how in order to keep together a growing group of people who were more interested in being shopkeepers than warriors, kings, geniuses, and shamans.
9 CommentsTags: Heavy Metal, vinterland
After slaying the world with North From Here, Sentenced reverted to the Iron Maiden and Queenrsyche side of the equation, trying to come up with a hard rockin’ version of death metal, in the process turning off most of their fans.
6 CommentsTags: Heavy Metal, sentenced
Birth Ritual records added Sentenced Down to its roster of tapes licensed from Century Media. Originally released in 1996, the album showed where Sentenced went after the formative North From Here, and while it was quality heavy metal, it missed out on the mystical atmosphere of earlier releases.
No CommentsTags: birth ritual records, Heavy Metal, sentenced
Continuing the legacy of progressive/folk heavy metal band Absu, Proscriptor McGovern’s Apsû releases its self-titled debut this year. Now, the band has released the first single, “Caliginous Whorl,” from the upcoming album.
1 CommentTags: absu, apsu, Heavy Metal
Longstanding mythological metal act Absu collapsed in a series of legal challenges to the name last year, but the core of the band — songwriter Proscriptor McGovern — continues with a new band named Proscriptor McGovern’s Apsû which plans to release its debut Proscriptor McGovern’s Apsû later this year.
1 CommentTags: absu, apsu, Heavy Metal
