Happy holidays, fellow moshers! Once again, we find ourselves at the end of the year. A calendar is about to get thrown out just to be replaced by another one with a new number on it. But what a year it was! 2019 has been one of the strongest years…
Good day to you all, fellow thrashers! Have you missed me? I’ve certainly missed all of you. However, there are only so many topics to discuss with thrash metal these days still. That being said, we are getting a lot of what I would call solid gold releases. This quarter…
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…
So far on this column, I’ve referred to a lot of the heavy hitters of the subgenre. I personally have a lot more thoughts about them because there’s just a lot more material to go through with them. It’s the same for people who are really into Shakespeare. There’s just…
There are very few bands in extreme metal that can be rightly considered significant influencers in the formation and development of multiple subgenres. Napalm Death are one of them. From their inception in Birmingham, England in 1981 through their most recent full-length output in 2015, the band have explored the…
Editor’s Note: Pete has a simple goal with this column – keep thrash metal alive. He’ll explore key bands. albums and movements in the scene every month. To kick things off, he’ll take a look back at thrash’s history and his own journey with the genre. … When I first got…
If the story of 1980 to 1984 was how NWOBHM (and more specifically, Iron Maiden) awoke metal from its dormancy to tear the boundaries of popular music, then 1985 – 1987 is about the coronation of thrash metal atop the metal throne, and the subsequent underground rumblings of a closely linked cousin, a blood brother faster, more brutal, and more astonishing — death metal.
Welcome to the latest installment of Kvlt Kolvmn! Another amazing month, another installment attempting to capture it all. Our apologies for most assuredly failing in this regard. Nevertheless, a fairly large amount of black metal blasted through our ear holes since our last installment, and we are here to share our favorites with you. Believe you me, there were some good ones.
Metal, like any current history, is a neverending story — a songbook perpetually revising its denouement in the storm of new releases shattering our ears and expectations by the month. But as exciting as it is to experience the history unfolding before us, that work is already done by listeners and blogs like this one on a daily basis. Vitally important and critically overlooked, I think, is the history of metal — the first chapters yellowing in the forty-odd years since they were bound in black and leather. This post, then, will serve as a continuation of this article detailing the early days of metal, and particularly the incredible importance of Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast to the fledgling genre.