Despite teases here and there, it’s now been five long years since the last Irepress record (yes, I realize this is a Lazer/Wulf playlist–I’ll get there next sentence, I promise). Given that the group is one of my favorite acts around, it’s high praise that stumbling upon Lazer/Wulf has helped satiate my craving for new…

You want music that sounds (and looks) like one of the high-octane action scenes from the classic film The Road Warrior? Well, Children of Technology embrace the post apocalypse pretty enthusiastically with their dystopic D-beat punk attack. They even dress up like members of Lord Humongous’s gang of marauders, which is way more awesome than…

A few years back super-under-appreciated Minneapolis noise rockers Hammerhead reunited for Amphetamine Reptile’s twenty-fifth anniversary bash and released an EP dubbed Memory Hole…which for a long while seemed to describe the place where the band was destined to disappear down. Happily, it is not so, and today we have your first exclusive taste of the…

I was among those critics lavishing praise on Pallbearer’s debut album Sorrow & Extinction in February 2012, marveling at its surprisingly graceful take on doom metal. However, as the year went on, I felt I had to pull back from the praise of the critical hive mind, because the more I let that record settle,…

Since their debut When All Became None was released about four years ago critics have struggled to find a moniker that fits Coffinworm. Are they blackened crust? Doom punk? Blackened death? Blackened tilapia? After a while all of these phrases begin to sound a lot like the Applebee’s menu so we’ll settle with the trustworthy…

Think you’re having a bad day/life? Well, Stephen Tanner is pretty sure he’s got your ass beat, and then some: The bassist of experimental sludge-y noise rock auteurs Harvey Milk is about to release a unsettling-yet-mesmerizing, pitch-fucking-dark concept album about his life entitled Things Haven’t Gone Well under the apt moniker Music Blues and we’ve…

To co-opt/augment Riki Rachtman’s old Headbanger’s Ball sign-off, on Written in Blood Darkness Divided has one foot in the metalcore gutter, one fist in the Between the Buried and Me/Devin Townsend-y gold. And for those who don’t reflexively hate the former, the latter will be a very welcome development indeed. Anyway, here’s your chance to…

** Sólstafir have been roving the plains of Iceland for the better part of two decades. Though originally a black metal act, replete with corpsepaint, the Reykjavikians transformed into something else years later. We’re not entirely sure if Sólstafir are post-metal, post-rock, or post-themselves, but whatever genre of music they fall into, they’re entirely unique….

If you’ve been with us for a while, you surely remember our January 2008 issue, in which we not only bestowed Album of the Year honors on Pig Destroyer’s Phantom Limb, but talked to vocalist J.R. Hayes at length about major influence David Lynch. “With [Lynch], it’s like you’re watching paintings that move,” Hayes said…

Well, the editors of this told me “if you don’t have anything nice to squawk, don’t squawk anything at all.”So like you’re not going to be able to bear what I have to pecking say about this week’s major release, like can’t peck  it at all, Paul. What time is it? MIDNIGHT release No Mercy for…