Interview with Goatcraft Like guitar, the piano is a highly versatile instrument. It can serve in a pure rhythm role, or apply melody, and can easily chord and shape an atmosphere out of harmony. However, it can do one thing the guitar cannot: stand on its own while amplified and be a credible one-person band. Solitary musician Lonegoat, who has recorded intros for Druid Lord and Demonic Christ, mounts the stage in isolation to create singular pieces of piano music that reflect the infinite loneliness and emptiness of existence. From this nihilistic background, the music branches to a dark storming Nietzschean vibe balanced by a sense of demonic playfulness. Read more of... Interview with Goatcraft
A Short History of Underground Punk and Metal Music Three threads ran alongside each other: punk, proto-metal and progressive rock. All three are on the edge of being metal, since the type of progressive rock in question is raw and disturbing and not of the “everybody be happy love friends” hippie style. This is music that thinks our society is disturbed, and that therefore many of the values we reject are worth a closer look. Read A Short History of Underground Punk and Metal Music
Interview with Ara Whatever the changes that have been wrought in metal over the past 20 years, Ara roll back some of the tendencies toward excessive form and pointless technicality, and return the focus to songwriting. Ara presents a challenge to what metal has become and to what many conceive of as metal. We figured we would go deeper for the whole story, and were fortunate to speak with guitarist and band cofounder Jerry Hauppa, who helped clarify the situation and told us about the inspiration and musical vision behind Ara’s latest, The Blessed Sleep. Read more of... Interview with Ara
Chris Reifert of Autopsy reveals details of The Headless Ritual Famed for their contributions to late-1980s death metal and its continued guidance through the 1990s, Autopsy arose as a band playing a chaotic, filthy, organic sounding form of death metal, which was in contrast to the more rigidly technical “Morbid Angel” inspired bands of the day. In many ways, Autopsy was a bridge between the more structured death metal and the more chaotic but more melodic bands from the grindcore world like Carcass and Bolt Thrower. Fresh from the studio, Chris Reifert (drums) was able to give us a few words on the nature of the new album, its style and the future for Autopsy. Read more of... Chris Reifert of Autopsy reveals details of “The Headless Ritual”
Slayer Most of us just “attend” to things, like jobs and families, and hope for the best. The giants among us are driven onward by some belief in something larger than themselves or than the social group at large. They are animated by ideas. For Jeff Hanneman, the idea was both musical and a vision of what that music should represent. He peered into the dystopia of modern times with one eye in the anarchistic zone of the punks, and the other in the swords ‘n’ sorcery vision of a metalhead. When he put the two together, he came up with something that makes Blade Runner and Neuromancer seem gentle. Read more of... Slayer
Põhjast – Matused Unlike most entries in this sub-genre, Matused is not campy hard rock with metal licks and prolonged droning riffs. Instead, it cuts back to the core of what made heavy metal great, with the amazingly adept vocals of Eric Syre guiding a guitar-driven, riff-based band with a sense of how to create and nurture mood like a doom metal band. Syre’s vocals highlight these riffs with melodies but do not merely duplicate the notes, but instead serve as a separate instrument, winding around the progressions that guide the song and by carefully choosing where to go in that space, both accentuating consistency and foreshadowing change. Like serpents in the trees of an enchanted garden, vocal melodies slowly enwrap each riff and then merge with it, urging the song on to new dimensions. Read More Of... http://www.deathmetal.org/news/pohjast-matused/
Hate to burst your bubble, but I don't think many people here listen to heavy metal :/ I used to , but that faded away.
Interview: Varg Vikernes After creating in the course of four early albums an impressive body of art that essentially ended black metal as it was by raising the bar beyond what others could easily participate in, Vikernes was imprisoned for sixteen years for his alleged role in church arson and murder. During the time he was in prison, he put out two more impressive keyboard-based albums and several books’ worth of writings before falling silent around the turn of the millennium. Upon his release, he didn’t slack off, either, but pushed out two new albums influenced by the rising drone-Narrow Squirting Bowel Movement trend from Eastern Europe, and has released a film, is currently working on a role-playing game, and continues to produce numerous writings and a new theory of history. Since he is an object of interest as well as such a strong personality that he cannot escape notice, he has continued to use interviews and other public talking points to advance his ideas. Read more of... Interview: Varg Vikernes
