I’m trying to put a finger on The Formulas of Death, but I can’t. Was the intention to make an album that’s hard to fit into one easy category?Adam Zaars: No, that wasn’t the intention, but I’m not surprised to hear the question. The intention was just to create flowing music. It would have been…

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… In her exquisitely rendered, frequently disquieting, always edifying new book House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films well-respected critic, festival programmer and King Diamond…

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)…

Hmm. How did we miss this one? Did we miss this one? Was it only I who wasn’t paying attention and missed it? Either way, Arizona’s North has a “new” album out. It’s a wall of crushing, psychedelia-tinged post-Neur-Isis mania entitled The Great Silence, though “new” is a bit of a misnomer as it was…

The dudes in Anciients will release their debut album, Heart Of Oak, on Tuesday. Just in case Jeff Treppel’s lead review in our April issue or Kevin Stewart-Panko’s profile the following month weren’t enough to convince you of the Vancouver quartet’s awesomeness, guitarist/vocalists Chris Dyck and Kenny Cook passed along some of the records they’ll…

We’re certainly entering strange space when a band like Purson is beloved by metalheads of sundry stripes and sick permutations. Self-described as “Vaudeville Carny Psych,” Purson—if lines between music styles, genres, and eras mean anything—could be the missing link between Mellow Candle and Black Sabbath. Or, Fairport Convention mixed with iconoclasts Coven. However, you want…

Black metal has seen more than its share of weirdos. It’s a genre that seems to attract idiosyncratic loners, especially since Varg proved back in the 90s that you really don’t need more than one person in the band.  The French cabaret black metal act Pensées Nocturnes consists entirely of the single-monitored Vaerohn. And to…

Decibel‘s coverage of the debut LP from Richmond, Virginia dark thrash stalwarts Iron Reagan has been fairly comprehensive — last month Chris premiered a stand-out track off Worse Than Dead in this space and there is a short profile of the band in the print issue on stands now — but one aspect of the…

That Satan were one of the most slept-on bands of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal because of their name is a cruel irony. For a genre that adopted the devil as chief muse and aesthetic patriarch, Satan should have fitted right in; acceptance should have been instant. But while Satan, too, were a…

5. Carcass – Carcass has had a few logos over their storied and infamous career, but none of them evinces the manic, electric quality of the group’s music quite like this iteration. Its angular, slightly italicized letters, the long stems of the two “c”s and “r,” and the near interlocking of the double “s” imparts…