I recently realized that I’ve been having more and more discussions with people about how women are treated within the metal scene, and music in general. Turns out my knee-jerk reaction to throw jokes at the problem wasn’t the best way to address it.

German funeral doom-bringers Ahab are releasing their much-anticipated fourth opus, The Boats of the Glen Carrig, today.

Okay guys, my new schedule doesn’t allow me to keep up with every release, but you already know that the new Ghost is like, well, the old records. And don’t forget the new Hate Eternal, which is actually really good. 

Anxiety isn’t cool, but appropriately named Oakland-based trio Nervous totally are.

This morning, the Deciblog shines the unsigned band spotlight on Edmonton’s long-standing denizens of death metal, Display of Decay. 

We’re just glad they didn’t go with “A Skosh Morose.” 

You just got good at hauling off and hitting someone. I wasn’t born and raised to do this — I’m a guy from Northwest. I went to private school. This really isn’t part of my metabolism. But it became it…

So muses Henry Rollins in an particularly epiphanous scene amidst Scott Crawford and Jim Saah’s relentlessly edifying Salad Days: A Decade of Punk In Washington, DC (1980-90) — a documentary those of us who seemingly never tire of listening to Rollins and Ian MacKaye fondly recall Georgetown Haagan Dazs days and night street fights with punk hating meatheads were going to watch regardless, but which also happily proves to be an epic, smart, admiring-yet-not-uncritical and — above all — fresh exploration of a seminal moments in time packed with insights and anecdotes that will likely surprise even those who know both Dance of Days and Banned in DC chapter-and-verse.

The Bay Area is obviously a thrash mecca, but the nebulous art-metal influence of Neurosis looms just as large. It certainly hit poetically monikered Oakland duo Lament Cityscape.

Immortal Bird vocalist Rae Amitay talked to us about Eminem albums, music school and the difference between keeping the rhythm and fronting a band.

Up-and-coming Costa Rican technical death metal quartet Inhuman keeps the Death/Pestilence vibe alive on second full-length Conquerors of the New World.