What’s the deal with everyone wanting to be compared to Testament recently? I like Testament as much as anyone who grew up on ’80s thrash, but I must have gotten at least a half-dozen records in the last month with quotes like “This is Testament for a new generation of thrash,” etc. For a band […]

Ha-this is so awesome. Vancouver’s 3 Inches of Blood return for their anticipated 2nd album and the cursed Ozzfest appearances, and as second albums should be, everything is bigger, better and more METAL! The sheer, guiltless enjoyment that the band’s old school thrash meets NWBHM meets melodic death metal meets Robert E. Howard is as […]

Here’s a pleasant surprise. Yeah, I know a lot of people called Megadeth’s last record The System Has Failed a return to form, but personally I didn’t hear it. I thought that record had about three really good songs and a bunch of mediocre stuff that sounds like what Dave Mustaine’s been pushing for the […]

I assume if you actually clicked on this review, you are either a Killswitch Engage/metalcore fan, so will forgo the usual metalcore is saturated and KSE is the darlings of MTV 2 spiel and get too it.Despite plying basically the same sound as the previous record and an overall sense of metalcore cliche overload, As […]

Well folks, they have done it. One of my favorite bands has finally forced me to write the review that metal fans and COF detractors have been waiting for. While, there’s no question these arguably influential British shock rockers have been shedding the black metal guise of their fat Nick Barker, top hat wearing, precocious […]

Although last year’s Ascendancy was a near-masterpiece, breakthrough record for the young metal attack known as Trivium, heavy metal fans should consider The Crusade to be an indication of this future legendary band’s coming of age, a first true utterance of maturity. And in a year that has seen more stellar albums than most metalheads […]

I like Obituary, really I do. And I wanted to like their reunion album after an 8-year layoff, really I did. I happen to think that Cause of Death is arguably one of the top five death metal albums ever, but this album (as well as the subsequent albums) only serves to cement one fact; […]

I thought Trivium’s debut Ashes to Inferno held a lot of promise and so did Roadrunner apparently, snapping them up to try and reinvigorate their flagging metal roster, and they picked a good band to do it as Trivium seem while possibly herded under the vast metalcore banner, would actually seem to fit in with […]

I could take up half of this review discussing the viability of Cradle of Filth as a bonafide black metal act and their subsequent litany of either crazed fans or haters that pass them of as pop stars slithering under the banner of a more extreme exterior. But instead, let’s just talk about the album […]

METAL!!! I’ve got absolutely NO business liking this album. By all rights, due to the Rob Halford/King Diamond-like squeals of Cam Pipes alone I shouldn’t have even made it past the first song. However, a few things not only keep me listening but actually end up making this a damn fine METAL!!! album. First, to […]

Someone please give Killswitch Engage and All That Remains a hug-they’re having major heart issues. Anyhoo, I don’t know about you guys, but Alive? Or Just Breathing, was kind of my first heavy exposure to metalcore on a grand scale, despite other bands forging the way many years before and my quick souring on the […]

Do you want to “fuck shit up?” Or “jump the fuck up?” Or do something other “[insert verb and a curse here] up” for that matter, in the safety of your home? If so, then perhaps the new Machine Head live album, Hellalive, caters the goods for you. Recorded at Brixton Academy, London, England in […]

Their sixth studio album (seventh if you count 1993’s Amon: Feasting The Beast, which was basically their 1990 debut in demo form), In Torment surprisingly finds our wily God-hating antiheroes jumping on the rap-metal bandwagon to better reach their new audience on their upcoming world tour as openers for Korn and Kottonmouth Kings. First stop: […]

Progression, foresight and innovation are all words associated with Fear Factory’s debut album, Soul of a New Machine. The Californian space-metal outfit blended styles as diverse as Godflesh, Head Of David, Swans and Frontline Assembly with death metal sensibilities to forma musical expression far beyond the primitive brutality of Pitch Shifter and Ministry-isms of Skrew. […]

For me, any post-Chaos AD Sepultura lacks the pulse of the band’s neo-thrash/death metal. I’m not too sure if Sepultura has grown up and I haven’t, but whatever the case may be my heart isn’t where it used to be when Sepultura’s name came up in, “Best band discussions.” I hate to say the experience of […]

Brooklyn’s governors of gloom check in with the inevitable rarities comp that spans their entire career of misanthropic melancholy. Kicking off the grim festivities with yet another track of digital silence-this one is a “remix” of “The Misinterpretation Of Silence And Its Disastrous Consequences” from their 1991 Slow, Deep And Hard debut – the usual […]

The Deicide bio this time around flaunts a quote from Slipknot about how influential those death pioneers have been to the development of these masked neo-metallers. True rivetheads might interpret this ploy as sheer blasphemy, using sell-out rockers to market Deicide, of all bands! Truth is, Deicide doesn’t need anyone to tell fans how cool […]