Death Metal MusicMusic and Culture on the Edge

Critically acclaimed “True Heavy Metal” band THE GATES OF SLUMBER has completed work on its new studio album Hymns of Blood Thunder . The album is slated to drop in North America on September 13 via Rise Above Records . Judge the music for yourself . The final track listing for Hymns of Blood Thunder is as follows: 1. Chaos Calling 2. Death Dealer 3. Beneath the Eyes of Mars 4. The Doom of Aceldama 5. Age of Sorrow 6. The Bringer of War 7. Descent Into Madness

On paper, Dethklok should be unbearably lame. Fake bands from cartoons bring to mind tripe like Jem or Josie The Pussycats . But somehow, Metalocalypse creator Brendon Small got it right. Dethklok is more than just a “brutal” caricature. Judging by how Small crams in references to obscure bands and invites big names from the metal underground such as George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher and the members of Exodus to provide guest voices on most episodes, Small clearly gives a

The 2009 Nationwide Mercury Music prize shortlist has been announced, and once again Hugh Platt finds himself screaming at the sky, shaking his fist like an ineffectual cavemsn cursing the Gods for making it rain. Once again, the great and the good of the UK music media are hunched over, hands clasped around their critical appendages, and are furiously word-wanking their opinions onto betting slips. That’s right: the shortlist of albums fighting for the 2009 Mercury Prize have be anno

It takes a lot of balls to put the music you play right in your name: sometimes it works (see: Death) and sometimes it doesn’t (see: the Rockstar Mayhem Festival, which confusingly decides not to include the black metal band with whom they share a name in its roster year after year, or even Methods of Mayhem). Novembers Doom claim ownership of the necessary balls, though: they’re slow, menacing, classy doom metal with a well-integrated melodeth twist, managing to pique interest even in their mos

Kurt Cobain must have had a dream. Chris Cornell must have somehow shared the same vision. Eddie Vedder seems to have dipped into the vision as well. It was the early nineties and music had been in a state of disarray. The eighties, known as the “me generation” had ushered in the era of yuppies. The eighties was not a good decade for music. In the early part of the decade, the music buying public’s standards dropped to the point that anything and everything that was recorded by anybo