J. Andrew

Sure, you probably know about Infest, Charles Bronson, Spazz and Despise You, but not everyone is well versed enough to know about Apartment 213 (or wasn’t old enough to be into them when they were putting out material).

It’s nice to have bands like Khandra around. The Belorussian duo has been quiet on personal details, but loud on creating quality, memorable black metal.

If the glorious new track, “Betrayer” is any indication, Trivium’s new album should be a chance for metalheads to revisit Florida’s metal heroes.

There’s a lot of great music coming out this fall. If you’re into solid, blistering black metal, Asagraum is one band you should not overlook.

In 2014, Gridlink unleashed one of the most ferocious, innovative and refreshing grindcore albums of all time, Longhena. However, the well-deserved fanfare and critical accolades were severely tempered by the news that guitarist Takafumi Matsubara was suffering from severe inflammation and infection of the brain. This rendered him unable to play guitar, and it seemed…

While we may not want to admit it to each other when engaged in the fruitless exercise of maintaining our street cred, we metalheads sometimes need to listen to something other than metal. At the same time, however, we may want to maintain a similar mood or feel to our usual death, black and doom…

Death metal upstarts Bloodstrike issued an impressive debut. We discuss what to expect on the follow up, Execution of Violence.

Ex-Mayhem vocalist Maniac collaborates with Cult Never Dies’ Dayal Patterson.

Chelsea Wolfe is further exploring what it means to be metal on her forthcoming Hiss Spun, out September 22.

Ides of Gemini shed light on the women who inspired Women.

Being a progressive band worth listening to brings two challenges. First, the band must be willing to explore and weave different styles together in a compelling way. Second and perhaps most importantly, the sound should still be tethered to some recognizable form that audiences can use to relate to the music. The music can’t just…

Eminence is a band from Brazil that plays a distinctly modern form of metal. As you can see from their latest video below for “Minds Apart,” (the song was produced by Tue Madsen, who has worked with bands like Heaven Shall Burn, Meshuggah and Halford), they mix groove, metalcore, some electronic influences, and deep vocals…

Music journalism’s relationship to economic reality has always been shaky. Here are some ideas of where that relationship might need to go.

Metal has many well-established musical traits: the distortion, heavy riffs, epic or screaming vocals, and ruthless rhythm arrangements. But what purpose do these elements serve? What sort of images come to mind through the lyrical and sonic qualities of the music? In this sense, perhaps we can derive a non-musical aesthetic from metal that puts…

“I learned a long time ago to embrace change and really work with it. So we have been lucky enough to weather all the storms in the business by being adaptable I think. Also sticking to our guns on the type of music we do.

“It has been 30 years since we released our first publicly available demo, so this time around for our 30th anniversary, we wanted to screw with that process and make it a year-long event.”

An all-consuming journey through the swamps and caves of the human psyche.

Spin into the whispering darkness with a new track from the masters of death-doom brutality.

Intriguing and insightful reading for black metal enthusiasts.

Delve into a cavernous atmosphere of riffs and growls on the latest installment of Desecresy’s forward-looking approach to death metal.

Your new favorite, and totally absurd, Twitter feed about metal!

As we remember the life of Chris Cornell, here are 10 heavy songs from his career that even extreme metalheads can get into.

“This is something you can’t really control, you must draw, draw and draw again.”

An introduction to the world of James Brown, the master of tweaking metal guitar tone!

Tyrannosorceress: the combination of sorcery, black metal and the most legendary dinosaur.

if you’re like me, you’re sympathetic to the idea that the 2000s metalcore sound had some real artistic value to it and deserves to be recreated in a meaningful way by future bands. I think 156/Silence are off to a good start.

The latest in the proud tradition of Swedish crust!

A year is just a year. But oh what a year it was: Death, Napalm Death, Mayhem, Bathory, Sodom, Anthrax and more!

A nice fireside chat about metal, hardcore, the early-to-mid 2000s, and the future of extreme music.

A creative and innovative life cut short.