Before I knew anything much about music, my older brother George was religiously reading Melody Maker in the early 2000s. Out of the many purchases he made as a result one album caught my attention at the age of 11 or 12. ‘Rated R’ perfectly encapsulates all of Josh and Nick’s strengths as musicians. Their... Continue Reading →

For early grindcore artists, after album number two, there seemed to be but two choices, start playing death metal, or breakup. Carcass have all but disowned their first effort, 1988's ‘Reek of Putrefaction’. This is largely because the sound one finds herein is a messy wall of noise, even by the standards of artists who... Continue Reading →

These are the metalheads that wear trainers and tracksuit bottoms, not spikes and leather. These are the metalheads that smile. These are the metalheads that run from one side of the stage to the other when launching into a guitar solo. And these are the metalheads whose drummers spin their sticks around in their hands.... Continue Reading →

Considering these two artists approach technical thrash from very different backgrounds, they ended up playing a remarkably similar style by 1989. Montreal’s DBC were a thrash/crossover band, who only managed to release two albums in their career, but still left a lasting impression on the scene. After releasing their self-titled ‘Dead Brain Cells’ of 1987,... Continue Reading →

Grindcore is another funny one in metal circles. Much like thrash, the rise of grindcore was either championed by punks playing death metal, or by death metallers playing punk. In both cases the results were simplistic extreme music taken to its most absurd conclusion: micro songs playing at lightning fast tempos. The lyrics, again, reflected... Continue Reading →

And so we finally turn our attentions to artists who were directly influenced by the pedigree of the early and mid -1980s. Although the two releases we will be looking at here are pretty much contemporary to the classic works of Slayer, Celtic Frost, Bathory and, Sodom, this was now a younger generation of artists,... Continue Reading →

Thrash can be a funny one. In one respect it was a harder, faster, heavier version of its heavy metal forbears. The lyrics covered heavier subjects. References to love and relationships were ditched. This urgent music stood on a soap box and assumed the coming apocalypse was nigh. A certain level of musicianship was demanded... Continue Reading →

By the late 1980s the homogenous blob that was known as extreme metal was slowly coming apart, with journalists and commentators forming and moulding the separate camps that were to define the following decades. There were artists however, that still resisted this trend, and played a form of hard thrash still lacking certain features that... Continue Reading →

Thrash is probably one of the heaviest forms of music to penetrate the mainstream psyche in any significant way. But this has so coloured the history of thrash that it tends to overstate the significance of artists like Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and yes, even Slayer at times. The lesser known Teutonic scene defined by the... Continue Reading →

In order to build something new, sometimes it is necessary to destroy that which is old. If black metal destroyed the mores of production values, song structures, crumbs of appeal for the listener, then the work of Ildjarn was undoubtedly the logical conclusion to this project. Talentless hack to some, misunderstood genius to others (me),... Continue Reading →