What else does one do when grinding through an edit? Listen to DRI of course, the thrash band that back in 1982 kicked off a lot of what every other band since would be emulating. And not just bands, apparently, but video game soundtracks.
100 CommentsTags: doom, DRI, video game OST
Original proto-death/black metal act Hellhammer created a handful of demos and compilation tracks before vanishing into obscurity, but using what sounds like period equipment and the new Tryptikon lineup, founding member Thomas Gabriel Warriors gives these songs a new life as a live album.
24 CommentsTags: celtic frost, hellhammer, proto-death, thomas gabriel warrior
After spending years analyzing political propaganda and bad philosophy, you might think that manipulation reveals itself like flatus in an elevator, but it does not. You get lulled in, doze off in your inner critical faculty, and then suddenly wake up screaming once the horror becomes too real.
29 CommentsTags: documentary, movie
Searing martial black metal band Sammath introduced its “Texas is the Reason” Worldwide Texas Tour today, plotting dates across Texas early next year to terrify and delight audiences with its brand of technical but mystical metal.
48 CommentsTags: Black Metal, sammath, texas, War Metal
Death metal, like heavy metal itself, merged from murky origins that shoveled many influences into more of a classical style of through-composed music based on phrase and not harmony with vocals, basing the music around the guitar as a lead instrument, adding in lyrical tropes from Romantic poetry.
67 CommentsTags: death metal, slayer, Speed Metal
Higher-powered home computers drove the democratization of music production, then the internet allowed individuals to promote themselves. Many at the time wondered if this would be the death of record labels, which previously were the only way for bands to get known.
38 CommentsTags: bitcoin, home production, podcasting, rss, self-publishing, sir libre
Not many people appreciate the importance of Slayer. Along with other proto-death/black bands — Bathory, Master, Sarcofago, Hellhammer, Sodom, Possessed — Slayer stepped out of the speed metal sound to the tremolo sound and realized the possibilities of through-composed narrative songs based on the riff.
92 CommentsTags: metal, slayer, speedmetal, Thrash
Few bands inspired as much imaginative exploration of ideas as Manowar, which like Bathory looked toward the pre-medieval past for inspiration about the future, finding that humanity had not changed and our path is one of battle, honor, might, pride, death, blood, and victory instead of “progress.”
37 CommentsTags: borys shchuka, hurdy-gurdy, manowar
Coming from the part of the old school that focuses on producing dark cryptograms from the most basic robust and straightforward riffs it can conjecture, Cemetery Urn makes music that sets up a dominant rhythm trope like Immolation or Sinister and then spins contrasts until the theme gains a new weight.
57 CommentsTags: cemetery urn, death metal
Resurrecting the ancient style of early Death and Massacre, Gommorha utilize a contrast between pummeling rhythm and melody twisted out of flowing chromaticism to create a sensation of traveling through a violent and threatening landscape.
257 CommentsTags: death metal, gomorrha
