When your vocalist sounds like a young Martin Van Drunen and you ask legendary designer Dan Seagrave to do the artwork for your debut album, the message is pretty clear, isn’t it? Try to tickle Rude’s guitarist and frontman Yusef Wallace by stating that their debut album ‘Soul Recall’ is “a classic death metal sounding record stuck in 1991” and he’ll answer: “I guess that’s a compliment. I’d have to say most anything from 1995 onward, until the last couple of years, sounds like crap, so I’d rather be on the good side of things.” Formed in 2008, initially Rude had a thrashier vibe and even switched monikers to suit their more straight-forward and primitive sound, calling themselves Forsaker. But after one self-titled demo, they turned back to both their initial name and a more death metal direction. “We still have that thrash aspect in our music but with a different second guitar player and we’re now tuned down half a step,” Yusef admits. “I like that genre still, not the corny stuff though, but I don’t think it’s what makes us different. I’m leaning more towards us playing death metal in E flat. I do like listening to bands in … Read More

With a bizarrely titled debut album on a hot label, a penchant for really bad puns, and eye-popping, Jesús Franco-referencing cover art, Salem’s Pot has made an immediate impression in early 2014, not the least of which is thanks to the actual music therein, a lysergic combination of hazy psychedelic rock and woozy, lumbering doom metal. When asked about what inspired the Swedes to venture down the path forged by Black Sabbath and Hawkwind, guitarist/singer Knate’s answer is succinct. “Blues and hallucinogens; the same thing that inspired those bands. For us it always feels like they were on to something and they wanted to tell the truth. Whatever the path we choose, in the end, for us it’s all about reality. We live in a small town where it’s really hard to find people to play with, but we found each other eventually. We were all lonesome riffers that just worshipped sleazy old slasher-movies before we came together. But we still don’t have a permanent drummer so we haven’t really come together completely just yet.” Released on California’s EasyRider, a record label that’s on a seriously impressive roll these days, ‘…Lurar Ut Dig På Prärien’ might be comprised of only three … Read More

It’s increasingly hard for this life-long psych-doom obsessive to get excited about new bands, but the new generation is starting to spin some interesting tales. One such act is Sussex space rock three-piece Riddles. There is a definite garage-psych vibe going on with catchy raw fuzz leads cutting through some very British vocal delivery. It’s refreshing stuff. “We are definitely influenced by our own sound,” fills in charismatic mainman Jimi Riddle. “But there are some key bands that brought us to find it, like Hawkwind, Stooges, Motörhead, early Sabbath, Pentagram and Orang-utan. But it doesn’t end there, there are so many great genres and powerful bands to come out of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, it’s almost impossible to list every band that made us create the vibe we have.” The broad range of influences seems to have allowed them to create a distinct sound thus far, but are they part-timers or ambitious chaps? “We all put a lot of time and effort into this band and I think we all believe in it as its own entity. You get back what you put in and so we’re putting a lot into it. It’s like a plant, we’re giving it … Read More

Drag yourself down into the lightless Vale of Pnath, into the eerie shadow of the fabled peaks of Throk and listen – what do you hear? Deranged howls of the denizens from the Plateau of Leng fill the air and you realise, it is the music of Innsmouth. From the looming fog appears three misshapen heads, likely held together by the turbans perched upon them, and you see it is the cursed ones; those whose rotted and mangled limbs made the sounds that haunted you so. Thick walls of noise, a complete disregard for compression and guitars so dense it makes the ears drip red. Says vocalist and guitarist Nightgaunt; “With tentacles clutching at our very throats and a quagmire in our hearts, how could we sound any other way?” Dwelling in the beautiful but dangerous Blue Mountains of Australia, theirs is a style of blackened death metal that honours not only the Great Old Ones but also those of this world such as Bolt Thrower, Armoured Angel and Grand Belial’s Key. Expect neither technical prowess nor showmanship from this music, rather a steady and hypnotic translation of the horrors found deep within the desolate recesses of consciousness; that ugly place … Read More

“Infant Death was formed by me and Knegge in October 2012. We both made songs and rehearsed them with me on drums and him on guitar, here in Trondheim, Norway. We got our bassist Udyr in spring last year, right after we had finished recording our debut ‘War’. He was the scariest guy we could think of and he plays a Rickenbacker. We rehearse nearly every day in a World War II-bunker.”

Whoa. A World War-II era bunker? Hellhammer/early Celtic Frost practiced in a bunker rehearsal room too. “Our basic influence is early stuff from old bands that play over ability: Venom, Exodus, Razor, etc,” Kim Kane muses. “An obscure influence might be Tina Turner. Chew on that.” What would Mrs Turner think of a moniker like Infant Death? “We needed something that we thought the common person would be disgusted by. None were though. It seems like people in general don’t know what Infant Death means here. An attitude with a naive madness is what it means to us.” This might explain Infant Death’s wonderfully antagonistic style that Kim describes as, “deadly thrash metal with black metal and grind influences. Right now we’re in the early stages of composing our third album. We will record … Read More

Those youngsters love to cover their tracks don’t they? Not only have they chosen an, erm, questionable moniker but despite their Mexican passport and young age, Question are playing an unpolished yet mournful form of death metal that seems to have crawled out of the Tico-Tico studio circa 1991. “Indeed, we have certain affinity for the Finnish rottenness,” admits their 24-year-old bass player, Héctor. “But you can easily find that element in many of the old Mexican bands so it’s all connected. We are big fans of metal in general, and I think lots of styles are present in our music, not only Finnish death metal. The early ’90s scene is special to us because of its naivety though. If later on, the genre became jaded, back then it was still young, fresh and dared exploring many different areas.”

The band is based in Querétaro, 200 km North-West of Mexico City and where Disgorge or Hacavitz are also from. It was put together in the spring of 2010 by Héctor and guitar player Rodrigo: “The scene over here got boring lately, the new generation doesn’t have any ideas, nor dedication besides being ‘cool’. At least we have some good punk gigs … Read More

Epic! That’s the word that kept creeping up for those few who knew about Ocean Chief. Sadly, for far too long, there wasn’t that many of ’em, as these Swedes were just too weird, with their repetitive brand of Viking-themed swampy doom, even though they featured former Dawn and Regurgitate drummer, Jocke Pettersson, on bass. To add insult to injury, besides minimal live activity, when their releases weren’t criminally limited nature would get in the way – such as hurricane Katrina, which destroyed most of the re-release copies of their ‘Oden Sessions’ demo back in 2004! But according to guitar player and founding member Björn Andersson, also of Vanhelgd, it’s all in the past now, as testified by the release of a new album (‘Universums Härd’) only a year after the previous one (‘Sten’). “The 2000s were different in the sense that we were a three piece that rehearsed frequently,” he admits. “In the early days, we used to smoke pot and just zone out without much thinking about arrangements or song length. But after the recording of our third full-length in 2009, we really felt something need to happen to keep the spirit alive, hence the addition of a … Read More

Having helped form Amon Amarth in 1992 and played on their debut EP and album, Anders Biazzi nevertheless chose to leave in ’98 to focus on his personal life. Only ten years later did the guitarist resurface, first with the gloriously old-school Blood Mortized and now with Just Before Dawn, a studio-project à la Probot. The formula is simple: first, a basic line-up – consisted of Biazzi, his BM compadre Gustav Myrin and Puteraeon’s Jonas Lindblood – record in his own studio what his creator calls with a wink “Streamroller death metal songs” about that immortal topic called war (“Mostly from the darkest times in the WWII but also from the future. We sometimes focus on a specific event, like the battle of the Bulge on the song ‘Bastogne’ or about the U-boats in the Atlantic with ‘As Death Breaks the Surface’ too.”) Then, various guest singers and drummers, “contacted through mutual friends or social networks”, pitch in, adding their own two cents to the recipe. With a total of twenty four (!) musicians involved, their second album ‘The Aftermath’ is an even more ambitious undertaking than its predecessor, ‘Precis Innan Gryningen’. It feels like a high-school reunion with Rick … Read More

Opinions always vary, which is why it’s difficult to say if metal is a festering domain of ageism or not. We’ll cheer Lemmy’s ability to defeat the Grim Reaper in a game of ‘Chicken’, collect mile-long discographies and excitedly praise reunions of ’80s favourites and obscurities. However, cynicism and scepticism rule when a bunch of kids come along who weren’t even born when Metallica was putting out good records. Finland’s Lost Society are one such youthful collective, but they’ve obviously studied thrash and crossover’s nuances and have poured those lessons into two furiously energetic and scorching albums – ‘Terror Hungry’ being their latest. Should it matter if they were the proverbial gleams in the eyes of two strangers during a bathroom tryst during a stop on the 1986 ‘Reign In Blood’ tour instead of actually at the show?

“The songs came the same way as usual, just jamming around riffs and so on,” explains guitarist/vocalist Samy Elbanna, sobering our conversation by discussing ‘Terror Hungry’s writing process. “The difference was the riffs became a bit more technical because we’ve progressed on our instruments. But we didn’t have any plans to make this-or-that kind of song; we just wrote 13 killer tracks that made … Read More

Without something of a misty-eyed perspective on metal in the ’80s, it’s quite possible this publication you hold in your hands wouldn’t exist. Yet even amidst the blizzard of tassles, battle-jackets and Nike hi-tops that oft constitutes a vision of the decade, it’s quite possible to lose sight of the original spirit – the true, bloody-minded essence of steel that battled against adversity throughout that often tricky era. At a time in which Bryan Adams’ ‘Reckless’ was voted Kerrang!’s album of the year, in which Bon Jovi headlined Donington, and in which Candlemass were dropped by Black Dragon Records due to lack of sales, the racket we now cherish often was forced to maintain its strident and overblown demeanour in the face of indifference and hostility. The indomitable elixir that led it to survive is a thing of vainglory, a thing of Cecil B. De Mille-esque grandeur (often on a tight budget) and frequently a thing of sheer foolhardy hubris. Moreover, true rivetheads wouldn’t have it any other way.

One suspects that Below, Nykoping, Sweden’s relatively fresh-faced troupe, understand all this only too well. Arriving in the wake of an EP that gained them considerable plaudits for their refreshingly epic take … Read More