Alice Cooper

To celebrate the release of Eyehategod‘s A History of Nomadic Behavior, we caught up with vocalist Mike Williams to find out what five heavy albums changed his life.

New Hampshire horror novelist Gregory Bastianelli reveals the extremely extreme sonic foundations of his latest blood-soaked supernatural opus “Snowball.”

From Alice Cooper’s face paint and Iron Maiden’s elaborate stage sets to Watain’s demon-summoning rituals and Ghost’s hooded robes, heavy metal has always had a close relationship with “performance.” Substance comes first, without a doubt, but performance ain’t far behind. Dimmu Borgir dress up like Satanic carnival barkers. Glen Benton branded an upside-down crucifix into his forehead. Robb Flynn had that Insane Clown Posse hair during The Burning Red days. Simply put, the spectacle of creating extreme music seems to be one of its most potent aspects, and countless bands have used it to their advantage.

Alice Cooper famously refuses to even broach the idea of maybe someday retiring and if there’s one thing the ridiculously epic mash-up of career-spanning fist-in-the-air anthems and grandiose dark carnival theatrics so exquisitely captured on Raise The Dead — Live From Wacken makes clear it’s that there’s abso-fucking-lutely no reason on earth he should pull…

Welcome to Tales From the Metalnomicon, a new twice-monthly column delving into the surprisingly vast world of heavy metal-tinged/inspired literature and metalhead authors… In her exquisitely rendered, frequently disquieting, always edifying new book House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films well-respected critic, festival programmer and King Diamond…

Yeah, the real world sure does suck. The bottom line is forever letting the wolves off the leash and if they don’t end up clawing at your door they’ll sure as hell shit on your lawn. The only way out is money. And in this business, the uncomfortable truth is that, ultimately, in a roundabout…

Yep, no denying it: Danava loves Sabbath. To its immense credit, however, the band chooses to kick it on the Vol. 4 tip rather than open another franchise in the cottage industry of Master of Reality riff reheating. Hemisphere of Shadows, the follow-up to Danava’s much-acclaimed 2008 effort UnonoU, also throws a wonderfully off-kilter early…