With pseudonyms like Hand of Doom, Black String and Command, Sweden’s Vampire immediately evoke early ’80s heavy metal and early mid-’90s black metal. A non-coincidence, really. Vampire’s eponymous debut is the nexus of heavy metal and black metal, where Destruction and Motörhead meets Unanimated and Bewitched. Vampire, however, make the cross-generational/genre melange unique, menacing in…

Monday night. Hours after a severe weather incident. In most cases, a metal show in Philadelphia on such a weeknight after such a crippling storm would’ve kept longhairs and horn throwers home. A venue vacant, save its sadluck staff. Tonight, however, Philadelphians surprised. They came out in droves not just for the headliner, Amon Amarth,…

You know you’re in for some serious black metal destruction when the waveform is a solid block. Entartung have an unpronounceable name and a penchant for German efficiency, one that they put towards killing your eardrums. They’ve built a pretty impressive temple of evil in Peccata Mortalia, their second album. Most of you are snowed…

Athens, GA heavy hitters Woccon are relative newcomers to the metal scene, but they’ve already made an impressive splash with the material they’ve recorded thus far.  Existing at some perfectly logical intersection of prog-friendly melodicism and aggressive doom, Woccon released an EP last year – The Wither Fields – that perked up our ears and gave…

We had tons of juniper bushes in the area we grew up in Colorado, so the smell of gin was familiar to us long before we ever drank it. We used to squish the berries between our fingers and smell their pungent, spicy odor. Sure, not all gin is heavy on the juniper, but it…

It was day two of a recent KEN Mode tour across Canada on which I was acting as designated merch slinger and person-who-tries-to-make-sure-nothing-gets-lost-or-forgotten-because-he-doesn’t-drink. After piling into the van that afternoon, bassist Andrew LaCour whipped out a bag of tuna cuts that he and his father had smoked a couple days previously. For the next half-hour,…

We’re teaming up with Australian industrial metallers Our Last Enemy this morning to give away a few prize packs featuring an autographed poster and copy of the band’s latest CD Pariah. (U.S. residents only — sorry!) All you have to do is write a line or two in the comments section below explaining why you’d…

Few people have a professional circle that includes Chris Barnes and Alex Webster, sexy pop starlet Terri Nunn and global film star Jim Carrey. One of them is Decibel Hall Of Fame inductee Paul Masvidal (enshrined with his Cynic bandmates for Focus). When Cynic fell apart in the mid-90s, Masvidal relocated to Los Angeles, where…

It’s strange how the pieces have finally fallen into place for Behemoth. A decade after putting themselves on the extreme metal map with the revelatory Demigod, the Poles are poised for a different kind of breakthrough altogether, via extraordinary circumstances no one could possibly have written. Behemoth’s star has always been on the rise, but…

The last time death metal legends Massacre released an album, France was testing its last atomic bomb. Pretty amazing, to think of it. Fast forward a few years, and Rick Rozz (ex-Death), Terry Butler (ex-Death), Mike Mazzonetto (Pain Principle) and Edwin Webb (ex-Diabolic) emerge from the limestone graves of central Florida to release Back from…