“Nothing gold can stay,” reminds us the poet Robert Frost, and this applies to black metal. Its gold occurred between 1991 and 1994, when its progenitors innovated a new style and took it to great heights, but after Burzum – Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, it became clear that black metal was not content to be a normal, rock-style music genre.
13 CommentsTags: Black Metal, Enslaved, epitaph, gorgoroth, Heavy Metal, immortal, impaled nazarene, nuclear war now! productions, NWN/FMP, selling out
Bathory‘s Under the Sign of the Black Mark turned turned thirty years old last month. The album marked the start of Quorthon adding in the epic atmosphere of Manowar and Iron Maiden which would come to fruition on Blood Fire Death. Under the Sign of the Black Mark also happened to be one of the first black metal CDs I ever purchased, which I preceded to play non-stop for about a week until getting bored of it and going back to listening to Altars of Madness.
16 CommentsTags: anniversary, arthur schopenhauer, Bathory, Black Metal, charmimg, Heavy Metal, quorthon, Speed Metal, Under the Sign of the Black Mark
Living in a dying time presents as many troubles as recording in a dying genre. Something went wrong with metal in 1995, and since that time we have had big oaf idiot metal from the NWN/FMP types which bores us, versus popular metal music which is vapid and consumerist at its core and so has nothing to offer of substance.
11 CommentsTags: dawning, Doom Metal, gothic, Heavy Metal, nothing left, review, rotten copper, steve cefala
Metalucifer, the heavy metal loving parody side project of Gezol from Sabbat (Japan), released a new video to Youtube from their upcoming split 7″ with Sabbat. “We Are Still Metal Kids” is a disposable, haphazard parody of NWOBHM bands such as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest just like all other Metalucifer songs . It will also eventually appear on an upcoming album to be released on Iron Pegasus / R.I.P Records. Metalucifer’s previous albums (Heavy Metal Drill, Heavy Metal Chainsaw, and Heavy Metal Bulldozer) and all of their other cash grab releases are all pretty much disposable kitsch but still better than most of the war metal, metalcore, and crypto-indie rock the Funderground attempts to force down our throats.
16 CommentsTags: beer metal, funderground, gezol, Heavy Metal, Japan, kitsch, metalucifer, music video
Barry McKay, one of the parties in the recent Beckett versus Iron Maiden “Hallowed by Thy Name” and “The Nomad” plagiarism lawsuit sent Death Metal Underground an email and statement to publish to clear up what he claimed were inaccuracies in George Psalmanazar’s initial article on the lawsuit.
10 CommentsTags: beckett, copyright, Heavy Metal, iron maiden, NWOBHM, prog rock, progressive rock
Article by George Psalmanazar.
A member of 1970s British progressive rock band Beckett is suing Iron Maiden for a six line lyrical tribute in ‘”Hallowed Be Thy Name” off Number of the Beast to one of Steve Harris’s favorite prog rock songs, “Life’s Shadow”. Some random band manager Barry McKay is suing Iron Maiden on behalf of Brian “Ingham” Quinn, one of the two credited writers of “Life’s Shadow”. McKay is alleging that Iron Maiden came to a secret settlement with the other writer credited on the record, Bob Barton, and that Quinn really wrote the song himself back in 1969 rather than in the early 70s when both of them were in Beckett. Barton is also being sued and McKay is now trying to hit Iron Maiden up for a “few hundred pounds per live performance” for a license to perform their own music.
3 CommentsTags: beckett, copyright, Heavy Metal, iron maiden, lyrics, news, NWOBHM, prog rock, progressive rock
Article by George Psalmanazar.
Evil were a Danish metal band from the mid 1980s often held up as yet another “lost gem” by record collectors as their sole studio release, the Evil’s Message EP, has never been reissued except for a hard to find, bargain basement compilation with French heavy metal band Sortilège’s self-titled EP in the late 90s. Evil’s Message is far from actually being good though; it is nothing special, bog standard Motorhead and Metallica style speed metal.
10 CommentsTags: 1984, car metal, Denmark, evil, evil's message, Heavy Metal, review, Speed Metal
Some of the best of doom metal seems to originate as a hybrid of Shakespearean drama and medieval heavy metal, and Cromlech comes to us from the Candlemass-tinged depths of that mental state.T
12 CommentsTags: cromlech, Doom Metal, Heavy Metal, power metal, review
Midnight are the definition of beer metal. Midnight sound like Motorhead if Motorhead accidentally took tranquilizers and forgot to write chord progressions and progressive minor-key heavy metal leads in their songs. Midnight are Motorhead if when Lemmy got arrested for drug possession in Canada in the early seventies while touring with Hawkwind, Lemmy did not merely get kicked out of Hawkwind and deported back to the United Kingdom; Midnight are Motorhead if the Canadians were really the Soviets who institutionalized and lobotomized Lemmy while forcing him at gunpoint to cart around a potent IV drip of anti-psychotics and sedatives for the rest of his life.
14 CommentsTags: 2017, beer metal, cash grab, EP, Heavy Metal, hells headbangers, midnight, review, shox of violence, Speed Metal, thrash metal
Century Media has reissued third rate Gothenburg melodeaf band Gates of Ishtar’s first two studio albums, The Dawn of Flames and At Dusk and Forever, remastered by Dugout Studios (vinyl mastering by Patrick W. Engel) and with new artwork from Juanjo Castellano as the original artwork was “really ugly” according to the band. The band should have been more concerned with writing worthwhile material than artwork for lame, cash-in releases on the popularity of In Flames and other competitors with VH1’s adult contemporary lite rock. Gates of Ishtar were not “melodic death metal masters” but warmed-over bouncy speed and power metal for a late 90s mallrat and Wacken audiences just like the most of their contemporary bands from Gothenburg, Sweden when they weren’t making outright pop music.
6 CommentsTags: century media, crap, Exciter, gates of ishtar, Heavy Metal, lame metal, melodeaf, power metal, reissues, remaster, Sweden
