Unless you’re heavy metalluminati Pagan Altar, perhaps like stateside and posi-message alter-ego Glass Harp, is an unknown entity. Now, most of the time, unheralded music from the ’70s is unheralded because it sucks. Or, the group never toured and the label folded upon release. Probably a few of those out there, right?  Well, UK’s Pagan…

Despite the exhortations of much extreme metal that life isn’t worth living there are things left to get excited about. One of them is the upcoming album from Pig Destroyer, their first since dB’s 2007 album of the year Phantom Limb. News flash: the new album from Relapse is called Book Burner and we’ve secured…

Although you might remember him from such Neurosis albums as Souls at Zero, Enemy of the Sun and Through Silver in Blood, let’s not forget that guitarist/vocalist Scott Kelly has staked out quite a nice little solo career outside of the band. His latest release, which “streets,” as the kids say, on August 14 (Neurot),…

This morning we’re premiering a supremely nasty slice of doomed out Mexican death metal from Gutwrench entitled “Meeting with the Dead.” The track is culled from the upcoming Razorback Records debut Mausoleum…To Dwell & Rot In and if it strikes your fancy lurch on over to the band’s Reverb Nation page where other abominations with…

All right, so metal has always elicited a strong emotional response but rarely (shit, never) has it inspired the abandonment of a sedentary lifestyle in favor of 20 push-ups and a 10km run.It’s like, disco has long had an association with that whole workout gym culture; Lycra, protein shakes, glutes, quads and aerobic dance for…

If lazy journalism persists in music, it’d be easy to say Austrians Dragony are like the umpteenth band to use the word “dragon” as part of their moniker. Well, that’s just not true. Umpteenth implies like 1 in 5 bands use “dragon”. Like System of a Dragon, Dragon Corpse, Dragon of God, Dragonatonia, or My…

Harrowing, multi-dimensional enlightenment is a fickle beast.  You expect it in extreme locales under strikingly improbable circumstances, perhaps while ingesting mind-altering substances… not so much in a well-lit library crowded with suits, police officers, and raggedy internet-moochers.  Yet here I am getting a hit of pure dark French terror-bliss, and my mind can’t manage to…

Welcome to The Lazarus Pit, a biweekly look at should-be classic metal records that don’t get nearly enough love; stuff that’s essential listening that you’ve probably never heard of; stuff that we’re too lazy to track down the band members to do a Hall Of Fame for.  This week, Girlschool gets sent to the principal’s…

Out of New Mexico’s oft-speculated desert sky flies the darkly evocative Night Terrain. The band members describe their particular style of racket as “equal parts space rock, doom metal, and stoner rock… riffs go from slow, sludgy and droning to uplifting, manic…” On July 24th, Night Terrain self-released their debut album, American Dream, which manages…

Alright, doodz…get your flat-brimmed ball caps out and your buttoned-down plaid shirts to the ready