FOR THE LOVE OF METAL
Grief doesn’t quite capture the emotional atmosphere soaking this debut from Dutch/Swedish duo The 11th Hour. Burden, yes – the album is tormented, weighed down. But grief sounds too frail to describe songs laden with so much heavy gloom.
There are very few bands which can inspire relentless, reckless hedonism in the same way Destroyer 666 can; their very essence screams out the wild whirlwind in all of us. Owning the stage from first note to last, guitarist/vocalist KK Warslut and Co. pushed the rabid Providence crowd to the brink of the precipice and back, leaving no head un-banged, no fist un-pounded and no soul un-reaped by the maniacal, merciless onslaught.
MetalGeorge recaps the recent Providence stop on Destroyer 666’s recent (and very brief) North American tour, which also included Vital Remains, Baphomet’s Horns and Revocation.
Vocals are one area that doesn’t get enough attention and analysis across the broad pantheon of extreme music. So, let’s talk vocals and how they apply to the Brooklyn-based band Hull.
Satanic Blasphemies is a collection of tracks from nineties demos Slow Asphyxiation, Unholy Prophecies and the 7” EP The Call. Nine tracks of classic death metal that evoke much ‘grandfather’-esque influence on bands making their mark today.
I was tempted to start this review by simply saying, “This show was fucking awesome,” but it was much more than that. You had four top-notch musicians on that stage, including singer and leather aproned-wearing Corey Glover (whom if you haven’t heard this man sing, and sing so passionately yet so effortlessly, you are sorely missing out on a genius) and I wonder, why aren’t these dudes being recognized? If not in record sales, for their sheer genius? For actually knowing how to put a song together? But in some ways, it is the same sentiment when I heard the new albums from Suffocation, Lord Mantis and Kylesa this year.
Laina Dawes reviews the recent Toronto live performance by NYC outfit Living Colour.
After seven long years, my most anticipated release of 2009 has finally been unleashed and the big question is does it hold up to all the hype? Well… yes and no.
On the surface, the band is rooted in the same post-thrash groove that Lamb of God has dominated this decade, but unlike the otherwise likable Virginians, Revocation don’t dig themselves a safe little rut, instead using the sound as a launching pad for other, bolder musical excursions. The end result is their second album and Relapse debut Existence is Futile, an album undeniably accessible enough to draw in the Rockstar Energy™ Mayhem Fest crowd, yet clever enough to pull the rug from under everyone’s feet with sudden forays into progressive death metal and continue to command listeners’ attention while doing so.
My main problem with God & Guns is its lack of focus. It’s all over the place, almost a series of slow songs sketches loosely tied together rather than a classic 70’s-style Skynyrd southern rock album. I’m admittedly skeptical of anything from Lynyrd Skynyrd since that terrible Lynyrd Skynyrd 1991 record, but getting back to this one I would only recommend it to diehard Skynyrd fanatics or Johnny Van Zant Band fans.
While Adrien Begrand did a live review of DragonForce last week on Hellbound.ca of their recent Saskatoon show, here are some of the photos I shot of them at their Toronto show this past Friday.
If there’s one band that fully deserves a “victory lap” tour, it’s Children of Bodom, who after a good dozen years plying their distinct brand of melodic extreme metal, is finally experiencing some significant success in North America. For most fans who live in the smaller centres, they best they could manage before was to catch Alexi Laiho and his booze-fueled band of flashy Finns as part of a package tour, be it the Unholy Alliance or Gigantour, which usually meant a measly eight or nine songs, maximum, and when a band has six studio albums under their belts, it’s tough to get some variety. So the venue was packed with fans hoping to get a huge dose of the old stuff, and that’s exactly what Bodom gave them.
Adrien Begrand reviews the recent Saskatoon stop on the CoB/BDM/Skeletonwitch tour.