Something special is brewing with this Dutch black metal supergroup.

The second coming of Lycia wouldn’t have been possible if main songwriter Mike VanPortfleet didn’t possess the same spark that kicked things off in 1988. Older, wiser, yet still wandering the same lonely plane as all those years ago, VanPortfleet (along with vocalist Tara Vanflower and collaborator David Galas) has released a vibrantly glum album in A Line That Connects. The title is literal, actually. Musically, it’s a nod to all things past Lycia, including the groundbreaking and influential effort, Cold. Read on as the Cold lineup, reunited for posterity, discuss A Line That Connects.

No band that rose out of the Pacific Northwest music scene of the late ’80s was as committed to the idea of sonic punishment as TAD.

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.