It’s not often you get to cover Buddhist-inspired metal, much less Buddhist metal from Portugal. I was very impressed by The Firstborn’s fourth release, The Noble Search, back in 2009. It blended prog and melodic death with thick, roiling sludge, not unlike Mastodon or Gojira, and then blessed it all with a breeze of East […]

How many genres fold in other cultural sounds and themes as energetically and creatively as metal? We’ve got it all: Ancient Egyptian death metal (Nile) and Christian progressive black metal (Extol). Metal from both the Middle East (Melechesh) and Middle Earth (Summoning). An entire seagoing army of epic Viking folk bands (Thyrfing, Aes Dana, Moonsorrow, […]