For Those About to Squawk: Waldo’s Pecks of the Week

January 17, 2014

Still a little slow around here, if you know what I’m pecking about. But let’s just dive into it, shall we? Culted release Oblique to All Paths on Relapse.  Culted are a file-sharing kind of group that never really all get into the same room. Amazingly, though, they’ve crafted an angry, nasty ambient drone/black metal/sludge…

Your Regional Openers for the 2014 Decibel Magazine Tour Are…

January 17, 2014

Carcass, the Black Dahlia Murder, Gorguts and Noisem aren’t nearly enough. Here are the regional openers who’ll kick off select dates of the 2014 Decibel Magazine Tour.   Maruta Tues, March 18 / Orlando, FL @ The Beacham Theater Founded in the swamplands of South Florida in 2005, Maruta have been blurring the lines between…

STREAMING: French sludge-metallers DRAWERS new self-titled album

January 17, 2014

Ladies and germs, courtesy of the good people of Kaotoxin Records, it is our great honor to host this online premiere of Drawer’s self-tilted sophomore album. Drawers are a five-piece outfit from Toulouse, France, who play sludge or a variant thereof; Drawers is really just big-riffed, amp-worshipping metal. This is sludgish metal. Indeed, calling Drawers…

BREWTAL TRUTH: Drink This Now!

January 17, 2014

Do not fear the can. The can is a beer drinker’s friend. Especially when the beer is coming all the way from Maui. It protects and helps keep the product inside cool (metal chills faster than glass) and fresh. The folks at Maui Brewing Co. would be foolish to package their product any other way,…

Did You See Them Live? Sam Black Church Documentarian Duncan Wilder Johnson Interviewed

January 16, 2014

The email came in from Ol’ Man Mudrian a few days ago and it went, in part, like this: “Have you ever heard Sam Black Church? People from the New England area like to blow them incessantly, but people like me who “never saw them live” just think they accidentally invented nu metal. Either way,…

Live Review: Clutch

January 16, 2014

The latest Clutch album may be the band’s best since 2005’s Robot Hive/Exodus, but the live setting is where these Marylanders have built their name over the years. So it was fitting that the quartet opened up its recent set in Port Chester, NY with “Earth Rocker”, a tune that in many ways sets forth…

STREAMING: Godhunter’s “Brushfires”

January 15, 2014

For your streaming pleasure today we are premiering the track “Brushfires” from Arizona’s Godhunter, a nasty hybrid of thrash and sludge. Preorder the album City Of Dust here from The Compound. Some details on the track follow the stream. Brushfires is an analogy for the divisiveness that embroils the political nature of mankind. In that…

EXCLUSIVE: Danny Lilker Elaborates on Departure from Brutal Truth

January 15, 2014

On Friday, January 10, Brutal Truth bassist Danny Lilker announced via Facebook that he “will be retiring from being a full time recording and touring musician” on his forthcoming 50th birthday, October 18, 2014. The news flash resonated throughout the entire online extreme community, who, in the process, appears to have disregarded Lilker’s commitment to…

Sucker For Punishment: The New Wave of Moose Molten Metal

January 15, 2014

I had an interesting conversation with a metal peer over coffee yesterday, and was asked what makes a “traditional” heavy metal album made in 2014 worth spending money on when all I have to do is listen to a Judas Priest album. I had to pause and consider that for a minute. For a writer…

TRACK PREMIERE: Soreption’s “Engineering the Void”

January 14, 2014

I’m pretty sure “Soreption” is a made up word. I think maybe it’s a phonetic transcription of vocalist Fredrik Söderberg’s shrieks. These dudes play seriously gnarly technical death metal to the level where you might need a physics degree just to headbang to it. You can hear them constructing the framework of the abyss as…