It is rather commonplace among certain circles to engage in lamentations over the current state of Metal and a perceived disconnect between the classic glory days of high adventure with contemporary mediocrity.
31 CommentsTags: Black Metal, death metal, Heavy Metal, nowadays, originality, some brief thoughts, spear of longinus, Speed Metal, thrash metal
Perennial Warrior-Kings of True Heavy Metal MANOWAR have announced that their “long-awaited” upcoming (farewell?) album The Final Battle will be released this year, initially in the form of three separate EPs.
1 CommentTags: 2019, epic, eric adams, Heavy Metal, italian-american culture, joey demaio, manowar, new york, power metal, true metal, USPM
[Continued from Part 1]
10 CommentsTags: 2018, aeschylus, ballads, barbaric romanticism, blues, by the gods, classical music, cock rock, composition, Concept Album, cover songs, david defeis, dionysus, edward pursino, epic, exorcist, frank gilchriest, hard rock, hatred, Heavy Metal, insanity, jack starr, josh block, lilith, long island, love, madness, Mythology, new york, Occultism, Opera, original sin, over the top, Paganism, passion, piano, piledriver, power metal, rock opera, Romanticism, sexuality, Speed Metal, the hammer of zeus, the wrecking ball of thor, tragedy, Transcendence, USA, USPM, Vengeance, victory, virgin steele, wine
By the Gods my friends!
Forged in the desolate halls of 1981, hailing from the majestic kingdom of Long Island, New York… Virgin Steele have been one of the most enduring acts of Powerful Epic Heavy Metal for aeons! The aural magnificence of ultra-charismatic vocalist / composer / keyboardist / all around renaissance mad-man David “Dionysus” DeFeis and trusty six-stringed axe warrior of indomitable fury and vengeance Edward Pursino’s combined creative efforts have been overlooked by scholars of Metal for too long!
21 CommentsTags: aeschylus, ballads, barbaric romanticism, blues, by the gods, classical music, cock rock, composition, Concept Album, cover songs, david defeis, dionysus, edward pursino, epic, exorcist, frank gilchriest, hard rock, hatred, Heavy Metal, insanity, jack starr, josh block, lilith, long island, love, madness, Mythology, new york, Occultism, Opera, original sin, over the top, Paganism, passion, piano, piledriver, power metal, rock opera, Romanticism, sexuality, Speed Metal, the hammer of zeus, the wrecking ball of thor, tragedy, Transcendence, USA, USPM, Vengeance, victory, virgin steele, wine
Let us say that genetics may be upstream of culture, but culture including philosophy and religion is upstream of politics, and therefore, that if we want to understand politics, we need to read it as philosophy, just like we need to read religion as literature to understand its point.
What, then, would be The Metal Philosophy™? (more…)
8 CommentsTags: distortion, Heavy Metal, natural laws, Philosophy, the metal philosophy
The task before a reviewer varies widely. If you want to be a big shot, you need to write about what the labels want, since they are the only source of top-down money coming into the genre. They will then reward your publication with advertising, it will then reward you with a promotion, and eighteen months later, you can ditch it and move up to the big leagues.
25 CommentsTags: 2018, Angantyr, archgoat, best of, black funeral, Black Metal, condemner, death metal, deceased, Drawn and Quartered, Grindcore, Heavy Metal, internal bleeding, iskandr, judas priest, kever, master, monstrosity, nachtlieder, phosphore blanc, progressive metal, retortion terror, Satan, slam metal, sludge, Speed Metal, Summoning, Therion, trenchant, underground metal
Progressive rock came out of jazz jams in which the goal was to see how long you could keep a song going by inventing variations on its internal structures. Having had high school education in classical music, European rock musicians threw those structures into the mix and tried to see how long they could keep the song together, or coherent.
9 CommentsTags: condor, folk music, Heavy Metal, progressive rock
Perhaps the best way to describe this album would be as traditional heavy metal crafted with a death metal approach. Monotone vocals accompany a changing tapestry of guitar riffs that relocate melody to the guitar and force the use of a compelling rhythm to unite each song, giving them an anthemic but unstable quality, creating an air of mystery to the album.
3 CommentsTags: death metal, deceased, Heavy Metal
At a time when most of the worthy metal was being produced in England with a few exceptions in Europe and America as most bands emerging were straddling the line between Hard Rock and Heavy metal or resorting to recreating the dirty rock of the early 70s in order to achieve mainstream success as there was much more to be gained financially from such endeavors. Iron Maiden had dazzled the world with Killers, Melissa and Kill ‘Em All were just around the corner and metal would proceed through a very sudden transformation with these releases. In between all this former heroes like Judas Priest,Motorhead and Scorpions were embracing the stadiums. In such a frantic period, in a country where music had never been a cultural strength. Sortilège, after studying their cousins from across the pond would release one of the greatest Heavy metal EPs of all time only for the aforementioned bands to overshadow them and relegate them to cult favorite;
Tags: classic, france, Heavy Metal, NWOBHM, Sortilège
Monstrosity – The Passage Of Existence
Metal Blade Records, 2015
Working within an establishment genre presents a challenge to the musician: the major patterns are known, and the audience has been inundated with an abundance of bands who can play the style of the classics note-perfectly, meaning that musicians have to either add new aesthetics to attract a lot of fans, or play a subtle take on the older for those with some knowledge.
5 CommentsTags: death metal, Heavy Metal, metalcore, monstrosity
