Metal playlists from the underground
Conceived by members of Dimmu Borgir as a retreat of sorts from the corpsepaint community, the toothy biker rock touted on Booze, Broads, and Beelzebub fits perfectly between your Motorhead and Lordi albums. Chrome Division firmly stows tongue in cheek, completed with hot blonde stripper in the album artwork and topped off featuring an amped-up […]
“That Was Just Your Life” opens up Death Magnetic with a heartbeat and clean guitars. When the heavy guitars come in, the listener is entranced with a slow groove similar to a Type-O-Negative riff…but that is only very temporary. The song suddenly thrashes out with James Hetfield barking. You can definitely hear the …And Justice […]
Kingston Falls’ Armada On Mercury displays the good ideas that Grade used back in the day with the bad ideas of every unlistenable metalcore troupe you can muster. Exhibiting vocals that annoyingly jump genres from screamo to punk to bad metal, this band boasts some meaty riffs and niftily lifted Maiden by way of Avenged […]
Featuring a very-different sounding Jonah Jenkins (Only Living Witness, Millgram) at the microphone, the abrasive quintet Raw Radar War must have traveled through their record collections and stopped at the early ’90s for inspiration when comprising the crushingly heavy underground sounds audible on their curiously titled 15-track = = [Double Equals]. Piecing remnants of Bolt […]
Made in a basement bedroom by the male-female tandem One Small Step, Another Shelter combines indie rock twilight guitar loops with rave-esque keyboard fills and programmed drums for a synthetically-induced listen. Power-pop with electronic beats aplenty adorn this nine-track affair that would sound best at breakfast time after a neon-filled night. www.myspace.com/onesmallstep -Mike SOS 30 […]
Shame Club is a gritty rock ‘n roll band whose 12-track release Come On bursts with a wide array of ’70s hard rock flavor from Southern fried to guitar-hero. Humungous hooks, monstrous sounds, solid musicanship, and a true sense of danger all assist this disc in taking you outside and promptly giving you the ass-kicking […]
The 14-track Retronomicon can best be described as a scattershot composite of death metal band After Death. Led by early Morbid Angel member Mike Browning, After Death’s metallic style varies across this disc due to the material being taken from different eras with different band lineups, most notably with a Deep Purple-esque organ found on […]
Spastic dance-rock with an underlying anger issue applies to the sounds which come from the 12-track Energy Czar by UK act Hunting Lodge. This tripped-out trio take bits of Jesus Lizard, Butthole Surfers, Sonic Youth, and The Birthday Party to make sublime music whose sound echoes like the brilliance of a four-year old covered in […]
Kassin+2 play the kind of music suited best on a resort while sipping from a drink dressed up with little pink umbrellas…if the resort were on another planet, that is on their 17-track endeavor Futurismo. Laid back with traditional sounds at the forefront at times (“Futurismo,” “Pra Lembrar”), this Brazilian three-musician collective find solace in […]
A low-key, lo-fi vibe is cast from the 10-track release by Californian and former Thrasher photographer Nik Freitas entitled Sundown. Perfect for the day lounging around the house with not much to do, tracks like the title track and “See Me There” transcend from the coffee house to your stereo with the subtle charm and […]