Tagged: thrashmetal

Lamb of God's sixth studio album is big on aggression, which is to be expected, but it doesn't exactly bring enough ideas to the table to keep things interesting for me. WATCH THE REVIEW

Savage Messiah Plague of Conscience Earache Records 06 February 2012 by David Keevill Alterno-crossover bands swarm over metal like herpes over Tommy Lee's genitals. In fact, the genre has become so riddled with tributary offshoots and bastardised spawn that it's often easy to forget the birthing wails of metal; the riffs given by Black Sabbath, the vocal [...]

. . . Technical thrash—that is to say, thrash by musicians positioning their own instrumental skills as a musical focus—feels like a contradiction in terms. Of every extreme metal subgenre, thrash is most closely related to punk, therefore rock and—far enough back—dancehall music. Thrash is dance music: like swing, tango and salsa (music from before electronic disco beats turned all dancing into mindless bump 'n' grind), comes with a roster of traditional song structures and staple beats that correspond with certain dances—circle pit, push pit, skank, beat-down and wall-o-death. Thrash, the word itself, is a verb, one [...]

The press release that came along with this album says, " Maax can only be described as pure, old school, alcoholic heavy metal hellfire scathing the night with buzzsaw riffage of fist-banging, slutfucking black thrash n' roll to haunting passages of Luciferian menace." So I guess if that's the only way it can be described, my work here is done. Adios! Just kidding. Although there is a lot of truth in that press release, I can elaborate a little. This is definitely an album with an old school feel. The production [...]

Arizona's Vektor has issued the following announcement about appearing in a trash metal documentary now available online: "Some of you may know already... our friend Joe Coleman made a movie last year about the newer thrash bands called 'Thrash: A Living Legacy' which we did an interview for. Well now the whole thing is available to watch online... Read More/Discuss on Metal Underground.com

'Tis the season, right? Wrong! Call me a Grinch, but I hate Christmas. I have a huge family, and buying gifts for them stretches my budget. I hate giving gift cards, because it strikes me as lazy and disinterested. Just keeping track of my young cousins' changing interests pushes my memory to the redline, and that excludes all my siblings, grandparents, and so forth. For me, Christmas time is therefore the season in the abyss. Seasons in the Abyss is also Slayer's last good album, a melding of South of Heaven 's groove and heft with [...]

London-based thrashers, Savage Messiah , gave everyone an early Christmas present when they gave away their new album, Plague of Conscience, for free last month . But why do they want for Christmas? We caught up with their lead guitarist/singer , Dave Silver (he's second from the right) to find out. -- What is your favourite Christmas song? Christmas with Nat and Dean! All the classics What is your favourite Christmas movie? The original It's [...]

For the sake of this article, I'm going to define protest music as: songs whose lyrical content can be interpreted as political, and standing against some sort of established system of behavior, and which have been used to rally against said systems. People make political music into protest songs; artists do not write protest songs. Metallic adjectives grew like weeds in Zuccotti Park, formerly Liberty Plaza Park, when I visited. Loud stands out: one can (or could, as of November 6, 2011) hear Occupy's drum circle (I counted upwards of 50 individual drums) from two New [...]

. . . Blackened thrash is the perfect type of metal, for me. Don't get me wrong, I love the gross anatomical power of gore metal, and the sick spaciness of sludge, but the sweeping, diabolical sound of black thrash is what brought me to metal in the first place. I breathe early Slayer; I drink Bathory, and piss Venom. Which is why, when I first heard "Ravenous Wargod" from Mhorgl's Heresiarch , I knew I needed to review this Australian trio's new release. Thankfully, the rest of the album does not disappoint - Heresiarch [...]

Here is an awesome clip from the genius over at Scion A/V in which they sent hip-hop producer Prince Paul, known for his work with old-school rappers such as Slick Rick and De La Soul, as well as his own group Gravediggaz, out to explore other musical genres, in this clip specifically it's heavy metal. ...

. . . This exercise has had several purposes. It's a celebration of Metallica's music. It's a natural byproduct of my masochistic nature. And it's a project so crazy that, once spawned in my head, it couldn't not be done. Fitzcarraldo comes to mind. But one reason stands out above the others, even above Metallica themselves. It's the importance of songs. Metallica became the biggest metal band ever by having the best songs. They did so with remarkable consistency over four consecutive records. A few songs are arguably duds, but not only [...]

For more photos, visit Carmelo's flickr .

. . . Some are born into metal, but most enter it from outside. The before/after dynamic is so strong that as a subcultural initiation story, "when I became a metalhead" is, for many, as significant as religious conversion or coming out of the closet. But one brings one's past into metal; that's one of the ideals of folk metal. You don't become a metalhead and lose your identity, hopefully. Beneath that metal uniform is your own self, right? I was raised on classical music, including classical guitar. So when I discovered metal, I gravitated towards [...]

Two more bands are reviewed before I begin reviewing only the bands that follow me.

This month on YUNR, Anthony gives explanations as to why he's let new releases from Coldplay, Florence + the Machine, Noel Gallagher, Russian Circles, and the Beach Boys pass him by. Here's some short explanations of other albums worth checking out as well: Thee Oh Sees- Carrion Crawler / The Dream (In the Red) I've gotten quite a few requests for this one, and I can understand why. This album is noticeably better than the album the Oh Sees put out earlier this year. No doubt. The production on this album is [...]

Vektor's latest album continues further down the road the Arizona band set for itself on 20092s Black Future. It's certainly a more dynamic and melodic release, but I was ultimately hoping for a stronger difference between this album and its predecessor. Still, these tunes embrace Vektor's usual sound without feeling stale. WATCH THE REVIEW

The Needle Drop: "Serving up audio reviews like they're pizza slices or something." Eh, that's a really terrible slogan we're beta testing right now. Let it seep in. See what happens. Anyway, my friend Derek and I have another review for you this week, and we're taking on the new Skeletonwitch album, Forever Abomination . This album features a pretty potent combination of thrash metal and black metal. It's the kind of metal album that doesn't really need to be explored or thought about. This is more of a head-banging affair, for sure. Scope the audio review [...]

• MP3 » skeletonwitch- forever abomination.mp3

. . . Bassist Harald Oimoen spends the better part of his year touring with Dirty Rotten Imbeciles. Long before he joined the band, however, he was busy taking photographs of Bay Area thrash bands that eventually became legends. He shot the images for the back cover of Possessed's death metal classic Seven Churches , photographed Metallica bassist Cliff Burton on and off the stage, and sparred with English Metallica photographer Ross Halfin. His best work is included in the upcoming Bazillion Points book Murder In The Front Row: Shots From The Bay Area Thrash Metal [...]

. . . ...And Justice for All sounds like it looks: cold and gray. It's wall-to-wall grim, which didn't jive with the Metallica I read about as a kid. That Metallica wore shades and maniacal grins, and was sometimes called Alcoholica. James Hetfield's "More Beer" Gibson Explorer was often on display. Nuclear scientists on record, party animals in real life - it didn't quite compute. "The Frayed Ends of Sanity" is the closest AJFA gets to solving that equation. It's actually kind of fun. It makes me smile - not in [...]

. . . Wouldn't life be better with a soundtrack? Many of us connect memories with certain songs or albums we've heard and loved (or hated) over the years. Remember the teenage years when no one understood you? Life Of Agony's River Runs Red . There was the day you figured out who your real friends are; Neurosis' Through Silver In Blood . Then there was that one time you chugged a bottle of Jack, drove your Harley through the back door of a whorehouse and started a brawl with every patron inside. Speedwolf's debut full-length [...]