Death metal has a penchant for being fairly on the nose with its band names. Hate Eternal, Carcass, Autopsy, and, you know… Death. Pretty fitting for the type of music and lyrical content these bands so emphatically espouse. Spain’s Come Back from the Dead continue this age-old tradition with music…
Oregon trio Vitriol make some of the most violent music on the planet. Kyle Rasmussen and co. are in the business of dealing absolutely ferocious death metal without any compromises, and their upcoming debut record To Bathe from the Throat of Cowardice delivers on the promise of their earliest material…
Some things just get better with age. Wine, whiskey, cheese, and my dad’s jokes all receive a qualitative helping hand by good ol’ father time’s unending march toward oblivion. Yes, it’s a tired maxim, but like the best of them it’s based in a fairly hefty dose of truth. At…
Welcome, my hellions, to Death’s Door. Wipe your feet on the mat and pull up a bone throne, for old time’s sake. We’ve finally come to it. The auspicious end to one of the best years for death metal in recent memory. It’s close to unfathomable, upon reflection, how absolutely…
Friends. Ingrates. Gutter rats. Welcome once more to Death’s Door. Wipe your feet on the mat and pull up a bone throne. The gore runneth over, and there seems no end to it. How has 2018 been this damn good for death metal? The sheer volume of quality records in…
Each month, we always seem to come to the same conclusion when it comes to our Editors’ Picks column: Friday release days open the floodgates and unleash a seemingly endless stream of quality new music. But while some of our Editors and Contributors sit down gleefully each week to dive into this newly stocked treasure…
I think most people dread holiday music. A fair conclusion. Typically signalling hectic retail environments, financial stress and an overall abundance of responsibility in the years most treacherous season. For many people, Christmas is eclipsed by this. It’s easy to resent the holidays when there’s so many people counting on…
Way back in 2012, Paul Mazurkiewicz (drummer for Cannibal Corpse) sat down with Billboard (via Metal Injection) and was posed an interesting question: who are death metal’s Big 4? Now, boiling any genre down to a definitive group of four is realistically impossible – as important as the Big 4 of thrash are to the genre, bands like Sepultura, Overkill, Kreator and Destruction deserve just as significant a portion of credit. So too was the case with Mazurkiewicz’s naming of Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Deicide and Suffocation as the Big 4 of death metal, which leaves out a whole slew of bands seminal to the genre’s evolution (Death, Bolt Thrower, Obituary, Autopsy, Carcass and innumerable others). Yet, in terms of balancing popularity, influence and an active status, it’s hard to argue with Mazurkiewicz’s picks; all four bands are nothing short of genre pioneers who played pivotal roles in defining death metal from its post-thrash transitional stage. However, when we fast forward to the genre’s current landscape, it’s clear time hasn’t been as kind to the infamous blasphemers from the Sunshine State as it has for the rest of DM’s Big 4. Despite being near the top of the pack in terms of influence and album sales, Deicide has experienced a noticeable fall from grace from their prime in the early-nineties. But the question is – why? What caused these luminaries to become lost?
Now that they’ve been around for three decades, it’s safe to say that Florida’s Morbid Angel have seen quite a lot of changes as far as critical reception is concerned. Sure, they’re always listed as one of the progenitors of death metal and albums like Altars of Madness and Covenant…
Welcome to Half-Life, a feature that gives us the chance to celebrate a selection of work from a particular artist’s discography. These acts are still alive and kicking, continuing to provide us with more material to write about and more music to spend our time gushing over. For more installments,…
