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Sadistic Metal Reviews: Alien Invasion
If you want something done right, do it yourself. That also applies to being yourself. Metal has a commodity that the markets and social groups want, which is that it is untamed. Rebellious....
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Sadistic Metal Reviews: Crush the Skull
What does any band deserve? A fair review. If the band is good, it should be said so, to what degree. If it just sucks, it also needs to be said. And that’s why we’re here with the latest edition of...
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Interview with MM of Emit/Hammemit
Some years have passed since Emit was first featured in these pages, but the UK dark ambient/noise/black metal-influenced project returns in the coming year with the newest edition of its most recent...
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Black metal album titles illustrated like children’s books
These pictures were originally innocent illustrations for children’s books. They were drawn by well-known but now deceased Czech artist Helena Zmatlíková who illustrated numerous books for children. At...
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Sadistic Metal Reviews 11-24-13
What are Sadistic Metal Reviews? These reviews address the music itself, instead of the social impact of assembling a public persona out of bands you claim to like. Since almost all human endeavors...
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Sadistic Metal Reviews 11-27-13
What are Sadistic Metal Reviews? We write about the artistic and musical side of metal, not how many teenyboppers or bloated old guys think it’s “fresh.” In the holiday spirit, we call metal’s turkeys...
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Cosmic Church – Ylistys
Sometime after 1994, black metal lost its spark. Hvis Lyset Tar Oss had elevated black metal to its highest possible form and observers were left with nowhere to go. Thus began the ongoing...
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Profile: Codex Obscurum editor Kevin Ord
Photo: Aaron Pepelis. There’s a seismic disturbance in the metal world. As the power of the internet winds up, the flood of information has increased to the point where people are searching for ways...
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Sadistic Metal Reviews 12-05-13
What are Sadistic Metal Reviews? If you treat heavy metal like a form of art or culture, it suddenly reveals its inner depth. Labels want you to see the surface only. To separate the two, we must be...
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Dawn to re-issue entire back catalog through Century Media in 2014
Swedish black/death metal outfit Dawn returned from the chaos of the 2000s a year ago and have been steadily moving toward releasing new material since. In support of this, the band will be re-issuing...
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The Heaviest Encyclopedia of Swedish Hard Rock and Heavy Metal Ever! by Janne...
Since the popularization age of search engines began, some have wondered if this spelled the impending doom of paper encyclopedias. If heavy metal is any indication, traditional methods of distributing...
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Sadistic Metal Reviews 12-12-13
What are Sadistic Metal Reviews? Heavy metal is either art, or like the rest it’s a product to make sad people feel better about their empty and pointless lives. Brutal honesty is all that separates...
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Sammath – Godless Arrogance
Sammath combines the dark melodic understructure of black metal with the type of charging full-ahead death metal that Fallen Christ or Angelcorpse pioneered (which might descend from Morbid Angel’s...
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Sadistic Metal Reviews 12-21-13
What are Sadistic Metal Reviews? We think heavy metal has artistic value. Advertisers want heavy metal to be the token rebellion of future generations of consumers. We have truth and cruelty on our...
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Best of 2013
I used to loathe end-of-year lists. They struck me as a pointless chance to advertise what should have been obvious before. Over the years they have risen in my estimation as a way not only to mark...
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Aosoth – IV: An Arrow in Heart
Formed in 2002, Aosoth launched themselves down an intellectual path blazed by the Order of Nine Angles, a theological Satanist outfit whose ideology differs greatly from the usual atheistic,...
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Instrumental metal: an idea whose time has come
When Burzum released Hvis Lyset Tar Oss in 1994, underground metal was forever split. This album featured longer songs where concept was closely intertwined with song structure, and riff shape defined...
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Profile: Nicole of Sinister Path Promotions
One of the great questions facing metal at this time is how it will propagate itself in a rapidly-changing record industry. Some have gone old school, and there’s evidence suggesting this is the most...
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Interview with Janne Stark, author of The Heaviest Encyclopedia of Swedish...
As far as books about metal go, there’s nothing more hardcore than an encyclopedic reference because by nature these attempt to include everything. Janne Stark wrote The Heaviest Encyclopedia of...
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— / Dawning – Split
Preposterous Creations put out a split between reclusive act — and by their own description, long-standing but frequently interrupted American band Dawning, who re-recorded their signature song...
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