Ian Cory

The Maine black metal band also have upcoming shows.

The New York sludge band takes a stroll through the void

With the majority of Agalooch splintering off to join members of Giant Squid in Khorada, lead singer John Haughm formed Pillorian with members of Uada, and now they debuted their first song.

The singer-songwriter talks about electric guitar, bad music writing, and her new album.

There is flexing in every genre of music if you know where to look, even black metal. Take Anicon, for instance. The classically Norwegian riff that opens and closes their new song “In Shadow And Amber” may not have much to do the rest of the material that it bookends, but...

Chelsea Wolfe is a musician that lives in a constant state of inbetweens. You wouldn’t call her chameleonic, because Wolfe’s color pallet has remained all black all the time, but she has been remarkably adept at finding new angles at which to stare at the void. Wolfe’s music walks the line between the worlds of folk, metal, and goth rock, but has never strayed far enough into any one territory to sound like anything other than itself...

A profile on Converge's recent 'Blood Moon' live show, which had an expanded lineup including Chelsea Wolfe, her bandmate Ben Chisholm, frequent Converge collaborator (and Cave In/Mutoid Man frontman) Stephen Brodsky, and Neurosis' Steve Von Till, and hit lots of deep cuts.

Neurosis have always held strong to the notion that their newest album is their best album. This hasn't always been true, of course; their career has gone through minor dips and peaks like anyone else's. But seeing them live you understand why they're so steadfast in this belief. While the quality of their songs has not always trended upwards, their newer material sounds significantly better live. The lows are lower, the textures denser, the samples pop more...

...Sometimes you don't want to answer big questions like that. Sometimes you just want to listen to rock music, loudly and in person. Despite disparaging the concept of a rock show twice in these recaps, it's important to remember that we're all here ostensibly because we enjoy guitars being played through amps over drums. Tau Cross reinforce the notion that good metal bands tend to be good rock bands...

Its hard to imagine a better locale for people watching than a metal festival. Any single metal show is sure to packed full of weirdos, but festivals have the added benefit of bringing together a wide array of different types of weirdos. Every variety of metalhead that you can imagine is on display on Roadburn's main avenue: Crust punks covered in patches, retro thrashers with high top Reeboks, old heads with comically long grey beards, goths in intricate lace dresses, recovering hardcore kids who dress like low budget hypebeasts (that'd be me), and short hairs in tight jeans that would fit right in at Chicago's Empty Bottle if they weren't speaking fluent Dutch. My personal favorite absurd fashion choice was the guy wearing a Game Of Thrones t-shirt with a leather trench coat draped over his shoulders like a cape...