Last year, Torche was so stoked about the coming of summer that it passed along a “summer fun” mix. To help get ready for the warmer weather this year, we enlisted the assistance of Inter Arma guitarist Trey Dalton to tell us about some albums to spin once “spring has come and it’s time to…

Quick test: go check your music shelf or your iTunes. How many metal albums have some kind of mention of the Devil? A third? How did that symbolism get there in the first place? Why is it so powerful, and so enduring? In the second installment of blues into metal, we’re honored to have bluesman…

The last time HOD made album-related headlines was with 2009’s Serpent on the Ibex Moon label. Well, denizens of death, destruction, and ophidian-related apocalypse scenarios, San Antonio-based HOD have prepared the The Uncreated Demo, as a stop-gap EP between Serpent and as-yet-label-signed long-player, Book of the Worm. Self-described as “real fucking metal,” HOD—not to be…

As much as I swore I was never going to do a blog post about goddamn Metallica, when Bazillion Point Books contacted me about doing a spread celebrating the 30th anniversary of Cliff Burton’s first show with Metallica (March 5, 1983, for those of you who aren’t so good with math) – featuring actual photographs…

Bombay metal stalwarts Bhayanak Maut — “terrible death” in Hindi — are a groove n’ grind powerhouse. That much is beyond dispute. But listening to the band’s latest EP Metastasis, one nagging question did arise: Say Decibel gets all fired up and flies halfway around the world to see a Bhayanak Maut home country performance…

When Horror Pain Gore Death’s commander-in-chief sent through IMPALERS‘ debut LP Power Behind the Throne it really looked like the email concerned some band called Impalas. Swear to God. And how cool a band name would that be? Okay, when they’re leaping around the savanna Impalas come across too cutesy for old-school thrash metal, but…

5. Thou Art Lord – Thou Art Lord’s first logo was sort of a cross between the Mysticum and Mayhem’s logos. Not sure why they changed it—several times, in fact—to a dumb font or a hand-scrawled atrocity, but the Greek supagroup got it right. Just look at it! It’s Christ’s greatest foe. The symmetry and…

Welcome to Tales From the Metalnomicon, a twice-monthly column delving into the surprisingly vast world of heavy metal-tinged/inspired literature and metalhead authors… Though the teeming masses may not have caught on quite yet, Dark Discoveries has long been one of the absolute best magazines for lovers of horror fiction/culture, casting an aesthetic net wide enough…

Early in 2011, I was floored by a band I had never heard before making noise I never knew I always wanted to hear.  They’re from Finland, so, yeah.  Duh.  At this point I expect sweet Finnish lullabies to kick my ass and melt my face. The phrase “Wisdom through Agony into Illumination and Lunacy”…

Sometimes the circumstances surrounding an album are just as important to its status as a Hall of Fame inductee as the music itself. As you’ll read in the pages that follow, this is definitely one of those instances.