Interviews

Because every day another band records another song.  Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck.  Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm.  Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days)…

Not only does Rotten Sound have a new EP coming out later this month, but the Finnish quartet is also celebrating its vicennial. So when bassist Kristian Toivainen suggested putting together a playlist with picks from a certain year, it took us back to a feature we used to have in the magazine. Back in…

Often, there is a lot of left over content that doesn’t quite fit the narrative or direction of a story. Case in point #1: Converge for dB #96. Case in point #2: Throughout the interview process, the members of Converge had rad stories to tell, but somehow the quotes never quite made the cut. So,…

Anthrax main-man Scott Ian isn’t about to quit metal and hit the after-dinner speaking circuit or anything, at least not just yet. But following a successful one-off spoken word show in London last November he has booked a 16-date spoken word tour of the UK. He’s calling it Speaking Words, because a spoken word tour…

Because every day another band records another song.  Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck.  Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm.  Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days)…

To celebrate the Mayan apocalypse, last week Ancestors shared the first half of its end of the world playlist. Doomsday or not, we automatically scheduled the second half of the Los Angeles quintet’s picks to run this morning to help satiate this guy‘s voracious appetite for the written word. But, in the off-chance we manage…

Welcome to Tales From the Metalnomicon, a new twice-monthly column delving into the surprisingly vast world of heavy metal-tinged/inspired literature and metalhead authors… “We have to raise hell, man,” Jake Hamer chides his wavering rock n’ roll brethren early on in John Skipp and Craig Spector’s 1988 let’s-give-the-fucking-PRMC-something-to-really-fear barnburner The Scream. “It’s our sacred duty….

Vit kill.  Probably not literally, but who knows?  Their brand of grueling harshitude is just about my favorite kind of ear-hate:  a doomy churn filled with motion and eventful anarchy, a corpse-painted wretch that forgoes all amusical mopiness in favor of mounting, forboding horror.  Fans of genre-shunting black mood enhancement take heed.  Vit are shuffling bleakly…

On the surface, the name Phil Lawvere might not mean a whole lot. But if you take a root around your record collection, the importance of Lawvere’s contribution to the world of metal becomes pretty evident, pretty quickly. As the man who painted the covers to such classics as Endless Pain, Pleasure to Kill, Terrible…

While New Years Eve has never been one of my favorite holidays, Ancestors’ most recent effort, In Dreams And Time, was one of my top records of 2012. The previous sentence made more sense when the band was putting together a NYE playlist for us. Nevertheless, the Los Angeles quintet has assembled something even better…

First thing’s first: Before reading further, anyone who’s got their TiVo box or whatever all loaded up in preparation for some marathon catch-up TV over the holiday season, be warned that this is a spoiler-heavy review of TV drama in 2012. OK, so with the disclaimers out of the way, let’s get down to business…

Because every day another band records another song.  Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck.  Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm.  Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days)…

In honor of the recent release of Kowloon Walled City’s Container Ships, last week we presented Side A of the band’s tour van mixtape. Chock full of A.M. gold, it was the perfect driving music for vocalist/guitarist Scott Evans and bassist Ian Miller (not to mention, they clearly know their shit about it). Guitarist Jon…

You’re on your 25th year, your tenth album and your fourth record label, at this point. What keeps Tiamat humming?Johan Edlund: That’s never been a problem. We’ve decided to allow ourselves complete artistic freedom. We don’t do this for the money nor for pleasing anybody else. We still love doing it because it still excites…

Fight Amp’s Birth Control is the sort of super-cool genre non-specific releases that sounds like it was written in a week tops and thrashed out and tracked in a day. It sounds 100 per cent jam room live, heaping catchy riffs on top of awkward and dissonant hardcore punk and noise-rock. If it sounds unruly,…

Because every day another band records another song. Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck.