It’s been such an incredible period for death metal’s expansion and proliferation over the past five years that one could be forgiven for just now entering the field and discovering bands that have long been held as legendary to those in the know, particularly since so many “household” names suffer…
Since their 2006 debut, Valkyrie have been something of a known commodity in the metal community. Some real what-you-see-is-what-you-get kinda shit, which is cool. Like many other proto-metallers, they have a penchant for the old-school sound. Bands like Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden, Mountain, Molly Hatchet and the ilk are all…
As I progress through this weird journey that is metal fandom, I’ve increasingly found my enthusiasm for lengthy records fading. Sure, every once in a while a two hour behemoth of an album will keep me enthralled from start to finish (go listen to Paysage d’Hiver’s latest revelation for a…
Some bands you keep coming back to because you know exactly what you’re going to get. And that’s great! Consistency is an important thing in life. But it’s important to keep a few bands in your rotation that can surprise you every single time, even if you’ve heard multiple albums…
After sleepmakeswaves, my all time favorite post-rock band, somehow followed Love of Cartography with the excellent Made of Breath Only, I thought I couldn’t love them anymore than I do. The follow-up was another energetic step into their sound, taking them away from the more somber beginnings of the various…
I’ve been doing a whole lot of thinking the last few weeks. As a straight white man in my mid-30s from the South, it’s been a pretty hard last few months of realizing just how bad life has gotten, or remained in the vast majority of cases, for people who…
This has been a notable year for veteran artists dropping excellent albums with barely any notice. Fiona Apple pushed up the release of her boldest album yet, X brought the band back together for their first album in 27 years, and now Hum have returned after a couple decades to…
Like 2019 and 2018 before it, 2020 is A Year of Death Metal. Obviously death metal isn’t the only metal subgenre seeing great releases at the moment – a cursory look at our Best-Of lists from the past couple years or our Reviews section will prove that – but the…
Washington’s Bell Witch released one of the seminal albums of the last decade in Mirror Reaper. Whether enamored or repulsed by the band’s one-track 83-minute opus, you’ll be hard pressed to find a metalhead who hasn’t interacted with it in some way. Outside of arguably launching a career in metal…
An already experimental band further raising the bar is one of the most impressive feats in modern death metal. We’ve experienced this with each new Pyrrhon release, and it looks like Imperial Triumphant is
