Look, you guys know by now what my deal is with death metal. I love that shit. Cannot get enough, ever. In many ways, it’s the perfect genre of metal: unusually tight stylistic constraints in terms of instrumentation, vocal style, production, and theme come together to form a musical, tonal,…
Welcome, Hellions, to Death’s Door. It seems that the fog of mediocrity has finally begun to lift from Satan’s most prized genre. Spring is here, and with it a slew of fantastic records that bury the rest of the year in a deep grave of magnificence. So pull up a…
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…
One of the principal challenges bands with stellar debut records face is simply having to make another record. The magical element of surprise and general exemptions given by listeners for unmet potential due to relative youth have long been discarded, replaced instead by impossibly high expectations and the audience’s/label’s manic need for new material. Some bands, like Finland’s death metal legends Demilich, make one excellent full length record and call it a career. Good for them. Many others have opted for a more content-rich approach. While not necessarily the most consistently amazing record in a band’s discography, the sophomore album may be the most important because it gives the audience their first real taste of a band’s long term potential. For a band to thrive, it needs to do it right.
Welcome back to our ongoing series of best-of lists for 2016, where we give some of the bands we covered (or just adored) in 2016 a chance to publish their own lists regarding their favorite albums of this past year. It may be officially 2017, but we’ve got one more list…
