Don’t get me wrong, I like my sludge metal, but I’m more into bands that bring something palatable to the table. If I were to liken the genre to a Mexican restaurant—I also like me some Mexican food—Black Cobra would be the basket of plain tortilla chips they put out before the main course.

All in all, this is a solid sludge album (EP?) best suited to those who lean a little more towards the death metal side of things.

So, last weekend’s Sled Island festival was pretty solid. Sleep, The Sword, Dead Meadow, Bison B.C., Red Fang–I really can’t complain. Well, not about the lineup, anyways. But after defending Calgary as an affordable city to live in, I found out otherwise during my trip there last weekend…

One of the things we polled our writers on was to tell us what their Event of The Year was for 2010. Here is what they have sent us in response…

This Saturday and Sunday will see the city of Montreal play host to the second ever HEAVY MTL. As longtime Hellbound readers will remember, we ran a belated review of the 2008 edition last summer that featured photos by our own Adam Wills and a few write ups by me. This year Hellbound.ca has a group of our writers heading down yet again, including Albert Mansour, Adam Wills and Laura Wiebe Taylor. They’ll be able to tell you how great it was afterwards, but in the meantime here are my Top 10 reasons why you should head down to Montreal on Saturday if you are on the fence.

“By the time High on Fire hit the stage, the venue was thankfully almost at full capacity and despite not yet turning on the stage lights, when the crowd saw frontman Matt Pike stroll out in the darkness, bare chested, snaggle-toothed but still sexy as all hell, the crowd went nuts. While the trio had the least amount of members in comparison to the other bands, their sound was ten times more powerful and dense.”

Laina Dawes reviews the July 16th concert by HIGH ON FIRE, PRIESTESS, SKELETONWITCH at Toronto Ontario’s Opera House venue

A lot of bands attempting to pull off the same thing simply wind up sounding too eclectic to get anything of substance across. But Dark Ages, varied though it is in influence, is still a focused and precise monster, and it’s likely to be another one of those records that will wind up on many a Best-Of list come year’s end.

Kyle Harcott reviews Snakes For The Divine, the brand new studio album by High On Fire and their first for new label E1 Metal Records.