What’s up, motherpeckers? The releases are coming fast and furious, but maybe your old pal Waldo is a little jaded and would like to review some stuff that I don’t need to birdshit all over. Well, anyway, let’s get to it. First off, we have the supergroup FULGORA from the frosty nether-regions of, well, Baltimore and…

Camping in the wooded wilderness; submitting to nature’s glories, mercies and otherwise; indulging in extreme metal.  We know what you’re thinking:  Time for another plane ticket to the Pacific Northwest.  Or to Norway. But no!  The Shadow Woods Metal Fest, planned for September 25-27 in beautiful (and probably seasonally chilly) Fannettsburg, Pennsylvania, will be held…

Here, we continue with the third of four weeks dedicated to Relapse-related interviews in celebration of the label’s 25th anniversary. Go check out the interview I did with founder and president, Matt Jacobson here and here. Beyond interviewing Matt himself, the next most obvious thing would have been to track down bands past and present…

Definitely a golden age for hard rock right there, capped off in fitting form in December 1971 by one of the ultimate “cult classics”: Bang’s self-titled debut.

It’s been busy times for Detroit’s Child Bite. The band has been writing new songs in anticipation of hitting the studio with Philip H. Anselmo down in NOLA later this year. Then there’s the fact that the group will appear on the upcoming musical “supplement” to the Morbid Tales! An Illustrated Tribute to Celtic Frost…

Long before guitarist Ryan Butler joined Landmine Marathon he played with the Phoenix hardcore band Unruh. During their five-year run (from 1995 to 2000) they released multiple demos, two albums and toured widely. In addition to seeding Landmine they birthed a rogue’s gallery of Arizona hardcore bands. Unruh recently celebrated their 20-year anniversary with a…

Sonically, Akhlys differs from Nightbringer, but what separates the two entities spiritually? Naas Alcameth: The subject matter of Akhlys is specific to certain dream and para-somnic experiences and their situation and importance within esotericism. All lyrics for The Dreaming I were inspired directly from my own dream experiences I have journaled over the last decade…

Having spent my teen years obsessing over thrash metal in Canada during the 1980s, the question’s come up 35 years later about what would Canada’s own Big Four of thrash be? For me, it’ll always be Sacrifice, Annihilator, Infernal Majesty, and the best of them all, Guelph, Ontario’s own Razor (sorry, Eudoxis). While Sacrifice is…

If you’re into heaviness and weirdness, you’ve come to the right place. No, not the Decibel blog, although there’s certainly no lack of weirdos here; I’m talking about Flummox. This power trio clearly digs Primus, Mr. Bungle, and Mastodon, and their first full length takes them to some unusual places. To their credit, despite some…

Toward the end of our conversation with Christopher Mazeika — proprietor and high priest of Philadelphia’s badass new temple of all that is extremely extreme, Vinyl Altar — we inquire how closely his life resembles what we saw/read in High Fidelity. It’s kind of an offhand, silly question, but what Mazeika gives us in response…