Into The Lungs Of Hell : Revisiting Megadeth’s ‘So Far, So Good…So What!’

If it weren’t for an older brother who was getting into thrash and speed metal in the mid-80s I may not have donned the mullet and devil horns until much later in my life. As it turned out I was probably 13-years old and I was spending the week after the last day of 7th […]

Free As A Bird

I was a pre-teen and teenager in the dark days of the mid-to-late 80s. For a kid that wanted his music loud, fast, and marginally offensive the powers that be wanted to make it as hard as possible for a 14-year old to get his slab of expletive-strewn metal. When I first started buying music […]

Kerry King : From Hell I Rise

In 2019 the speed/thrash metal world mourned the retirement of one of the best bands to come out of the California metal scene of the 80s, Slayer. With the passing of songwriter/guitarist Jeff Hanneman in 2013 and the band parting ways permanently with original drummer Dave Lombardo, guitarist Kerry King and bassist/vocalist Tom Araya were […]

Metallica : 72 Seasons

At this point Metallica have ascended to elder statesmen of rock and roll. 40 years into a career that’s seen the Bay area thrash band rewrite what it is to a be a metal band. Game-changing albums(Kill Em All through …And Justice For All) to remaking themselves as stadium filling rockers(The Black Album, Load), to […]

Deafheaven : 10 Years Gone

Deafheaven have reshaped what it is and what it can be to be a metal band over the last decade. Seamlessly combining elements of black metal, post-rock, thrash, shoegaze, and even dream pop throughout each of their releases, the California 5-piece somehow make switching gears from Burzum and Slayer to Wilco and Explosions in The […]

The Birds and the Blitzkriegs

It’s a conversation every father eventually has with his son. While it’s not something you look forward to it’s something that’s necessary. The young man needs to have this information in order to become a mature adult male, otherwise he’s set adrift into the world without all of life’s essential knowledge. It’s a rite of […]

Corrosion of Conformity :: IX

I didn’t start listening to Corrosion of Conformity till 1994. It was the next phase in their sound. Before the album Deliverance they were a hardcore punk band. They had street cred and lots of hardcore punk fans. But Deliverance saw the band head in more of a dirge-filled, Sabbath-oozing direction. Pepper Keenan as lead […]