Conjuring all things autumnal, vast and sorrowful, Skepticism’s 1995 funeral doom touchstone Stormcrowfleet was the vortex where death metal, black metal and earlier strains of doom metal all came to die in the late summer of 1995.

The hard road of Pentagram frontman Bobby Liebling, who has fought the real demons of addiction for decades, was well chronicled in the documentary Last Days Here as well as J. Bennett’s May 2011 cover story. While the film had a happy ending everyone knows that after the credits roll life continues. Hollywood doesn’t like…

Metal musicians quote Nietzsche far too much, almost as much as they quote H.P. Lovecraft. Sometimes it’s for blatant and misdirected political purposes; other times, to add a veneer of intellectual heft to mediocre material. But when you consider the short life of musician Selim Lemouchi, one of the German thinker’s best known quotes resonates:…

Three new albums stand out above the rest this week, and what makes it particularly fun is just how completely different from each other they all are. From happy Germans, to grim Swedes, to avant-garde Brooklynites, this week’s Sucker For Punishment has got you covered. Power metal is the one metal subgenre that’s the most…

Waldo wasn’t a big fan of the new Acheron album, Kult Des Hasses, but he’s a parrot – what does he know? They’ve been doing their death metal thing for 25 years now, and they sound just as putrid as the day they were first spawned. Lots of guest players, lots of Satan, lots of…

Just a quick listen to Cynic would reveal that Paul Masvidal and company probably have pretty eclectic musical tastes. Given that the band dropped its third full-length, Kindly Bent To Free Us, last month, the guitarist/vocalist was kind enough to pass along a medley of recent (and fairly nostalgic) listens. As he explains, “Playlists have…

Towers come from Portland, Oregon, and have this awesome sound that’s a strange brew concocted of low-end bass hum and psych-stoner doom, post-punk and krautrock. There is a lot more in there, too. Putatively, it’s metal all right, but with a center so dark and heavy it can pull in all manner of outré influences…

Savage Messiah frontman Dave Silver knows his thrash ABCs. Formerly of Brit thrashers Headless Cross, Silver’s built a veritable thrash empire around Savage Messiah, for which there are four neck-snapping full-lengths, the newest of which is the upcoming The Fateful Dark. Actually, on new album, The Fateful Dark, Silver and his fellow Messiahs embark on…

What up, beak freakz?  Notice the “z”? Yeah, I’m going nu-metal; a-parrot-ly it’s making a comeback. Nah, juzt kidding. Did you know there were two bandz named Portal? I did, and I’m going to review one of them. Oof. What time is it? Huh? PORTAL — no not that one, the one from Sweden — release…

Prepare yourselves, mortal ones, for a mighty slab of awesome to descend upon your unworthy skull.  First arising from the industrial haze of the mid-90s, France’s Dirge has shape-shifted through the past 16 years and (now) six albums to crush souls with music entirely in concert with their name. In two weeks, Dirge will see…