This is a great record to listen to loud over your speakers or even better, on vinyl with your headphones on.

Blowing Up The Lakehead Monday February 11th
11-11:30
Audrey Horne – Straight Into Your Grave (Youngblood)
Dead Lord – Onkalo (Goodbye Repentance)
Deville – The Knife (Hydra)
Gozu – Irish Dart Fight (The Fury Of A Patient Man)
Mother of God – Graenslandet (Anthropos)
Helker – No Chance To Be Reborn (Somewhere In The Circle)
11:30-12
Blodig Alvor – Mr. Molotow (Mørkets Frembrudd)
Disperse – Be Afraid of Nothing (Living Mirrors)
Coldsteel – Blood Secrets (American Idle)
CHOSEN – Diminishment (Resolution)
Ion Vein – Fools Parade (IV v2.0)
DEVOURMENT – Conceived In Sewage (Conceived in Sewage)
12-12:30
TSJUDER – Helvete (Desert Northern Hell)
Vreid – Black Waves …

Well, here we are with week two’s Iron Maple column. With any luck there won’t need to be a name change this week or anyone crying ‘conflict of interest’ with my reviews! It’s been an interesting week for me here in Iron Maple land, racking up plenty of interviews as well as a whole lot of listening. There hasn’t been a lot of new stuff coming in to Iron Maple headquarters the last two weeks, but that’s perfectly fine as I’m so back logged right now, it’s a little mind blowing.

Jason Wellwood kicks off his new Iron Maple column, focusing on Canadian independent metal bands, with reviews of new releases by Abriosis, Anciients and Chariots Of The Gods, plus an audio interview with Chris Friesen of Adrenechrome

As promised last week, here are the Top 10 metal albums of 2012 according to the writers of Hellbound.ca. You will notice that, in comparison to our previously published Top 10 Canadian albums of 2012 list, a few Canadian artists actually ended up charting higher here than on the Canuck top 10. The reason for this is simply because we had more writers submit top 10 lists here than did for the Canadian list.

Collected, compiled and edited by Sean Palmerston

Today we published the TOP 20 ALBUMS OF 2012 list, as voted by the writers of Hellbound.ca. Here are the individual Top 10s that were submitted by our writers for your personal enjoyment…

Since Hellbound.ca is a Canadian-owned and operated metal publication, we do things a little bit different than most. While 2012 was coming to a close we asked all of our contributors to pick their Top Canadian metal albums of the year. We then tabulated up their responses and have created our fourth annual Top 10 Canadian Metal Albums writers poll.

Please check out what our writers feel to be the best Canadian metal albums released in 2012.

Sylosis have just unleashed their latest masterpiece Monolith through Nuclear Blast on October 5th. On this, their third album, the band has taken their blend of progressive thrash and moved things forward. While still a complete ‘shred fest’, Monolith has more feel to it, more ambience if you will. Taking the band to record where giants have tread before (Monnow Valley Studio, which has housed Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Rush to name a few) seems to have given Sylosis the ability to convey mood a little more, and dial back on the technicality of their songs. Monolith is a fantastic achievement for this young band, and I had the pleasure of speaking with founding member/guitarist/vocalist Josh Middleton a few days after the North American release of the album.