Even if you took a group of the most scholarly sludge punks and fed them a steady diet of Lightning Bolt, Neurosis, and Sonic Youth for years and years, it’s not likely they’d produce anything as unconventional as Wizard Rifle. Their tone and style is the connective tissue that convincingly…
Following our mailbag post last week, Pete and I thought we’d get further antiquated with a good old-fashioned Heavy Blog is Heavy playlist swap. We each put together a list of the songs that we thought best defined our personal thrash metal tastes and where we think the genre is…
There are two things I know about power metal: that all the best power metal bands are Australian, and that all the best power metal is simply thrash metal in disguise. If there’s any doubt concerning either of these axioms, one listen to Fallen Idols—the fifth full-length from Sydney’s Lord—should…
Many bands would like to claim to be wild. There’s something inherently attractive about savageness, especially in metal. But very few bands actually feel unleashed, regardless of the states of mind that might have possessed the members as they were writing/recording the music. Wildness is more than just being experimental…
Bay Area thrash legends Death Angel have returned bringing us Humanicide, an album endeavoring to lay out a portrait of a decaying world in all its forms. The band are one of those veteran groups who once stood hopefully alongside Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer, and Metallica until circumstances took them in…
Power metal! Love it or hate it, it’s easy to agree that there are very few bands who can justify its sound in 2019 without adding some sort of embellishment to it. For some, this addition comes in the form of progressive ideas and flourishes, making the music more complex.…
It’s probably been said on this blog only a million times, but it deserves to be said once again. Traditional sounding metal is having a heyday in 2019. But when we’ve been talking about that, it’s usually under the guise of something 70s sounding or power metal that’s somehow not…
As with many other folks, I love metal because of the sweet emotional releases it gives me. Despite the loud and chaotic nature of the genre, I feel a great catharsis after a good metal song. Even scientific studies have shown that metal fans feel the release of tension, anger,…
Maybe more than any modern thrash album, Omicida’s Defrauded Reign sounds like a lost ‘80s underground classic. The LA-come-UK outfit’s debut full-length is pure Bay Area worship done to the highest degree, and an early standout in a year already jam packed with quality thrash metal. Omicida themselves might be…
No band have waved the flag for traditional thrash metal harder and higher than Overkill. Whether they invented the genre or not is debatable, but the New Yorkers appear assured in their position its single greatest producers. The band have steadily been putting out records every two-to-three years since 1985,…
