For me, the weakest aspect of most progressive metal is the vocals. While there are certainly exceptions—Russell Allen of Symphony X immediately comes to mid—I find most prog vocalists either overly–dramatic, horribly [...]
Of all of Kevin Hufnagel’s higher profile projects—which include Gorguts, Dysrhythmia, and Vaura—I have paid the least amount of attention to Sabbath Assembly. I don’t know that I have a particularly good explanation [...]
I generally don’t write much about sludge bands, probably because I don’t listen to all that many of them. Of all the various sub-genres of metal, it’s probably the hardest to do well. In fact, most of the sludge [...]
2017 has seen plenty of newcomer death metal bands that break the mold. Artificial Brain, Aeternam, Sunless, The Ominous Circle, and Tomb Mold have all given some grizzly and forward-thinking offerings. Venenum joins [...]
A genre is lucky if it exists long enough to look back on itself. Metal has spent the last decade or so cranking out throwback acts, and while most of them fall on the spectrum from “passable” to “absolutely boring,” [...]
With each successive release, Pallbearer seems to get better at being Pallbearer. They’ve been remarkably consistent over the course of their three full-lengths, tweaking and refining their formula only slightly from [...]
Progressive metal, as it’s very name suggests, can and should be taken in any direction imaginable. While the overarching genre has stagnated to a point that there is a definitive “progressive” [...]
This year has already seen some unique metal in the power/prog/traditional world. Last week, Battle Beast dropped their 80s metal throwback record with an anti-Trump hit single and Sanctuary re-issused some old demos. [...]
