The “death of the album” has been declared many times in recent years – but nonetheless, musicians keep making them and are showing no signs of stopping (and thank God for that!). Almost a decade and a half into the twenty-first century, there still exist bands and artists capable of composing immersive, engaging, and fully satisfying collections of songs that stand up to repeated, unshuffled listens. Here are fifteen of them. Read more…
In the weeks leading up to Christmas, the metal side of the music business shuts down. Fans of heavy music across the world use the festive season to hibernate, nurse their bangovers, get drunk, and sharpen their skills on FIFA while the pop side of the music world excretes yet another warbling X Factor karaoke puppet and shoppers get smothered under a tidal wave of Now That’s What I Call Christmas! CDs. All goes quiet on the metal front until the new year hits.
Djent is many things to many people: The future of metal; the best thing since the first-ever palm mute; mechanical and boring; emotionally engaging and fascinating; and so on. For me, djent is (for the most part) pure awesomeness, and a great additional ingredient capable of spicing up a genre so often held back (ironically, considering its origins) by a craving for tradition and conservatism.
Slovenian metal titans Noctiferia are not conservative, to say the least. Thank fuck. Read more…