Before there was “atmospheric black metal,” black metal was atmospheric. As the genre emerged from the Norwegian fjords in the

HIRS is a collective, but onstage there are only two members. Esem plays a severely distorted guitar and does it quite well; JP screams

Although it was invented in the ‘70s, Dungeons & Dragons emerged as a national phenomenon in the early to mid-80s. This is when I helped form the

John Sharkey III came to some prominence fronting Clockcleaner. The band’s noisy art-punk got less dissonant as they went

Spiny Normen didn’t know what they were doing; just one listen to the band’s self-titled album will confound and stupefy anyone trying to make sense of it all. This

There are probably several hundred sludge metal bands right now churning out charcoal-soot-encrusted streams on Bandcamp and playing tiny basement bars

Starcrawler went straight from high school to a record deal in an era when kids their age play rock star video games and there no longer are record deals. This

When Tribulation burst upon the scene in 2009 with The Horror, the group seemed like it would be another in a long line of solid Swedish death metal

It was a bit surreal to see Chuck Treece open the show at 7pm sharp still wearing his coat and Eagles toboggan hat like he was

A quick look at the geopolitical landscape in 2017 shows that things were not exactly tranquil. It was similarly a time of discontent for the dark arts. The very soul of the genre was debated more fiercely than ever before and often parallel to global events. The nebulous Antifa was not just the liberal boogieman for followers of Fox News, but also readers of Metal …