Sludge

Tearing half-empty venues apart with earnest vigor is all just part of the job when you’re KEN mode and opening a three-band bill on schoolnight. But y’know there are worse ways to working your ticket across Europe, spreading at-once fierce and reflective metal/hardcore/noise jams to crowds that might lack the numbers but not the appreciation….

You’ve got to love and admire the optimism of people in the UK. While limited releases are a staple practice in underground music, adding both that exclusivity/collector appeal and some fiscal security, British grind champs The Atrocity Exhibit took it to, uh, extremes and limited the supply of 2011 faceripper Grind Over Matter to a…

Spare a thought for all those hardy underground searchlights who’d been holding their breath waiting for Oakland, CA power-trio Brainoil to follow up the riff ‘n’ tumble of 2003’s superlative self-titled debut. They will have been dead and buried now, asphyxiated, gone purple in the cheek from the eight-year stretch when bassist/vocalist Greg Wilkinson, guitarist/vocalist…

In the hours before an Eyehategod show, finding people lucid enough to begin a sentence let alone finish it is a challenge that someone oughta reward with medals cast in gold, silver and bronze. It’s an Olympian feat to just negotiate past the bodies laying strewn across the dressing room, and this is on the…