Author John Skibeat
I was reading some beer tasting notes the other day (similar to a wine tasting list only more socially acceptable) and came to the conclusion that what I was reading was mini-reviews. I wondered if I could get away with… Continue Reading →
Meshuggah-worship comes in many forms. Front of the queue, bowl in hand, was a young Misha Mansoor. Naturally, he went on to start his personal project, Bulb, and form the band Periphery and the kind of math-heavy, palm-muted power chords… Continue Reading →
It was I that hailed Under Black Skies, Purified In Blood’s sophomore album, as 2010’s best, calling it “crepuscular, bellicose, demented, swaggering, invasive” but, ultimately, “consummate”. In my mind, it blew away the competition that year, and I’ll stand by… Continue Reading →
The moments when man places his own needs above those of the natural world might be described as blots on our historical landscape. César Marquez, a conceptual artist, master of multi-instrumentalism and the man behind Bauda from Santiago in Chile,… Continue Reading →
Ole Petter Andreassen is El Doom, Norwegian artist, producer and founding member of death n’ rollers The Cumshots and stoner poptarts Thulsa Doom, two wildly different-sounding bands. I must admit I was intrigued then, when his Born Electric project plopped… Continue Reading →
Hailing from Norway, Tombstones refer to their music as Norweedian Doom which doesn’t give you much of a clue to quite how dark and dirty they are actually prepared to get. They are purveyors of chillingly doomy, stoner-riddled sludge. They… Continue Reading →
If this album really is pyrophoric it could, as I understand it, spontaneously ignite, so I’d better be pretty sharpish writing this review, hadn’t I? Straight down to business then. Greece’s Mencea are the death metal tipping point where complex… Continue Reading →
As a late arrival at the Meshuggah table I find, at times, that I can be driven nuts by their overbearing attack and often flat, uneven grind. Their music may be bulging with slap-in-the-face aggression, something that is overwhelmingly exciting… Continue Reading →
The sheer volume of music out there, divided into a plethora of disparate genres and subgenres, never ceases to amaze me. As lovers of the art form we are all sweeping our musical metal detectors across these heaving, sonic haystacks,… Continue Reading →
I first became aware of Russia’s Fading Waves when I heard their impressive contribution to Slowburn Records’ split-EP with Starchitect. With the band’s brainchild, Alexey Maximuk, working his magic, both behind the production desk and in front of it, it… Continue Reading →