Gotta love those living legends! We cover a lot of ground—from his new album “Punctuated Equilibrium” (his first solo effort) and stories behind his songs, to his attitude toward drugs and past experiences … this will be 15 minutes of your time well spent!

Warpath – “Damnation” [self-released] … There’s a lot of amazing notable things about this band/album:  they’re 21st century British thrash metal that doesn’t suck, with big names like James Murphy (Testament, Death) behind the mastering, yet are not signed to a label.  The only thing that needs work are the vocals, which are delivered nearly identically throughout the album, similar in tone to Anthrax. But that’s a minor point, cuz you don’t often get an end product of this caliber so early in a band’s career (their only other proper release is 2005’s Cataclysm EP).  FCC OK … Try [...read more]

Obscura – “Cosmogenesis” released February 17, 2009 on Relapse When a band has ex-members of Necrophagist (Grossmann and Muenzner) & Pestilence (Jeroen Thesseling) in their ranks and takes their name from a Gorguts album, one should expect some high caliber technical death metal. On their Relapse debut, the German quartet expertly delivers with the kind of virtuosity that makes one reflexively kowtow.  Cynic is channelled as well, from the space themes right down to use of vocoder (2, 7, 8). There’s even use of folk rhythms in places (3), and occasionally unfurl a truly elastic bass (4) amidst the [...read more]

Tombs – “Winter Hours” released February 10, 2009 on Relapse This is the album you’d want to create if you dropped acid while standing on a frozen lake and stared at the sun until your eyes burned black. Frenetic tremolo picking and blast beats imported from corpse-painted inhabitants of Norwegian fjords coexist comfortably with the post-hardcore elements of American bands like Isis, and a certain kindred spirit in the psychedelic sludge of Seattle’s Lesbian.  This Brooklyn trio is a formidable new force in Relapse’s roster with this impressive full length debut that also boasts mastering by Alan Douches and [...read more]

Castrofate – “Cataclysmic Insanity” released February 4, 2009 by Cataclysmic Metal Records Often regarded as a solo project by Dan Castro (who still writes the lion’s share of material), the NY/Jersey group is now a solid quartet, and ambitiously attempt a concept album for their sophomore release. It’s lyrically quite straightforward, not leaving much to the imagination, but their riffs and melodies can be quite memorable (see 1, 4). The vocals aren’t bad either–a good formula with a little Dave Mustaine and a lot of Chuck Billy. The second half gets kinda odd, with a bluesy track (appropriately titled [...read more]