"It's intriguing that so many of the best metal albums this year were the ones with no metal in them, by which I mean no guitars." I wrote that eight years ago, at the end of 2003, apparently impressed by certain gothic and/or ambient and/or keyboard-obsessed bands (whom I can no longer identify offhand) who'd taken their heaviness in a rather unexpected direction, to say the least. What I wrote then is certainly not true of metal albums now: my three favorite albums below are absolutely committed to overweight guitar riffs, as metal has been since the very dawn of time. Further down the list, though, there's still plenty of evidence of bands moving their music way beyond the genre's high-volume constrictions and into a territory that — on entire albums in some cases and just a few tracks in others — might make sense as relaxing background music on certain underworld elevators. So: a new age or an old one? Your choice.Listen now:
Metal Roundup, November 2011
1. The Gates of SlumberThe Wretch
This is the sort of Brobdingnagian power-plod you never imagined could come from Indianapolis: super-sized melodies set to wobbling walrus-blubber doom riffs straight out of Saint Vitus, with downcast vocal howls sometimes stumbling into La Brea Tar Pits of reverb or making way for strange Moog-y electronic breaks. Gates of Slumber have no problem going the hard-charging NWOBHM route ("Coven of Cain"), but more often prefer to keep things depressive and nocturnal, as in the 10-ton suicide note "Day of Farewell" and "Iron & Fire," an even heftier album closer that lasts almost 13 minutes. [Chuck Eddy]
Metal has been around for more than 40 years (or at the very least, since 
A few notable trends in this latest Metal Roundup: (1) More loud rock you might actually hear on the radio than usual, including a couple albums with songs you might even be able to dance to, other than moshing and banging your noggin even, if you were so inclined. (2) A few bands dead-set on reviving the speed-thrash of the '80s — and they all come from the U.S.A., of all places. (3) A few instances of screamo masquerading as anything but. (4) Two albums (by Saviours and Danava) that end with songs about walking into death's tunnel of light. And finally, and perhaps most intriguingly: (5) Releases from three-count-'em-three bands with the word "Earth" in their names. Talk about your global movements! Are heavy metal bands ecologically minded or what? Or maybe they just like that "Earth" was Black Sabbath's original name.
"Hipster metal" is not so much a style of music as a state of mind. And we're not necessarily talking about the minds of the musicians themselves, who in most cases will deny the classification entirely. The phrase has probably been around for only a few years, and like similar accusations in other genres ("hipster rap," for instance), it's at least partially a pejorative — implying, as it does, that these aren't Real Metal Bands Listened to by Genuine Honest-to-Satan Metalheads, but rather acts marketed to (and, in some cases, at least tentatively embraced by) theoretically gullible indie rock twerps. Who'll fall for anything, after all, right? And even if they don't, taking an end-run shortcut around metal's troo fan base seems rather unseemly. Or at least, that's what some metal magazines would say — though, to be honest, if those mags weren't at least a wee bit hip themselves, they might not know of such bands at all.
With Halloween fast approaching, it's hugely appropriate that Rocktober opens with a veritable harvest of scary new metal releases — by big names (Opeth, Mastodon, Alice Cooper, Anthrax) alongside bands you've probably never heard of; by veterans like Anvil taking stock of their hard-luck careers and coagulated upstarts like Elks trying to chart heavy new directions; by proggers and doom goths and boogie dogs and death worshippers and Satanic sailors and ironic cutters-and-pasters; by Swedes and Norwegians and Greeks and Italians and Poles and Canadians and Americans and even some old dudes from Ohio who were their own kind of alt-metal way back in the mid-'70s, when punk was still glam. If you can't find an album to pump your fist to among this high-decibel 15, you might just need a new fist.
Based in Atlanta, Georgia, 
More or less invented and/or exhumed (by a band called 
So anyway: the extremely sore arm came first. Was initially scared it might be carpal tunnel. Googling suggested otherwise. Was relieved to learn that it being on my right side was good news. (Left can be a sign of heart failure!) Doctor prescribed exercises and ointments and ice packs. Very weird, since I don't play tennis, but so be it. 
It's been one hell of a summer — tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, nonstop rain or nonstop drought, temperatures at or above the global warming range. Plus riots on several continents, wars that won't quit, and governments and media succumbing to scandal and ineptness and inertia. Really does feel like end times, sometimes. 
Born on August 20, 1966, "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott would have turned 45 this week if he hadn't been shot and killed while performing onstage with 
Obits for 
Some high school memories aren't so good.
Old heavy metal doesn't go away; it just bubbles back to the surface several years later. Well, OK, actually, some chemistry PhDs out there might well argue otherwise. But the recent releases below could certainly be used as supporting evidence for the hypothesis. All of these albums came out (or came out again) in 2011, but were almost entirely recorded anywhere from a few years to a few decades ago — onstage in about half the cases, in the studio in the other half. In the cases of both Ozzy Osbourne albums, all three Queen ones, and the Death one, original versions have been augmented with all sorts of bonus tracks and alternate renditions sure to induce further cranium-banging.
There aren't too many genres where you can pinpoint one particular album as the precise starting point, but with the extreme-metal sub-style long known as "grindcore," there's not much room for argument. 
One of the bands that defines the term New Wave of British Heavy Metal, 
Welcome to the final installment of 
Metal, as always, is detonating in several directions at once. But one encouraging trend seems to be a return to a certain songfulness — as if, after two decades-plus of metal mainly aiming to be "extreme" at the expense of musicality, the most forward-looking headbangers are suddenly beginning to realize that incomprehensibly thrown-up vocals (for instance) became a cliché eons ago, and having memorable songs doesn't automatically make you less heavy. 
Back in their early days, 
Heavy metal may well be the Viking soundtrack to an endless tundra of ice and snow and darkness, but the genre's also obviously always been obsessed with interminable conflagration amid Dante's nine steamin'-hot circles of Hell. Seriously: if you want a really excellent suntan all year 'round, metal's where to go. Google "kneecap burning sensation," as this writer did recently, and the No. 3 possible cause (right behind "patellar bursitis" and "peripheral neuropathy") is "heavy metal exposure" — true fact! So in honor of metal's "Eternal Summer" (as apparent 
Truth be told, heavy metal and prog rock have been intertwined since both genres were born. My friend Frank, who is a few years older than me, remembers confusing 
The difficult thing about trying to parse humor in metal is that, intentionally or not, lots of metal is really funny, and really often that's what makes it good. Well actually, that happened more back before the extreme/thrash/death/black/grind revolution, when you could actually laugh out loud at the lyrics, which were more discernible in days of yore. But even now, bands can look hilarious — think, for instance, of evil Norwegian black metal bunch 
We must admit that Tuesday is our favorite day of the week here at Rhapsody: that's when new releases come out. Thankfully, the next three months of Tuesdays look absolutely glorious, full of fresh music from ukulele-brandishing rockers, electronic pioneers, strident country hit makers, unabashed pop divas, unrepentant metalheads, CCM luminaries, contenders for Best Rapper Alive honors, soul superstars and, of course, Lady Gaga. Here's the best of what's to come.
Heavy metal was always about technology (as in 
Whether the genre is still evolving in any significant way remains to be seen — and may not be clear until we can look back with decades of hindsight, truth be told — but 2011 is certainly already shaping up as a productive year for heavy metal. Below, with three months down, behold a lucky 13 of the year’s more visible releases so far, ranging from hardcore crossovers to hair-metal holdovers to Satanic ambiance to Gothic atmosphere to numerous dark and diverse shades of heaviness and metallurgy in between.
A major influence on a broad range of extreme-metal styles (though most felt in the metalcore moves of such bands as 
Heavy metal is, in many ways, a music of tradition — it has by now accumulated more than 40 years of baggage, after all. So artists and fans alike have always been eager to pay homage to giants and dinosaurs who trod the earth in days of yore. In recent years, bands from all geographic and stylistic corners of the metal universe have taken to recording albums consisting entirely or primarily of cover versions, presumably as a way to highlight their inspirations — i.e., artists whose vinyl they wore holes through before becoming stars themselves. It's also an easy way to get new product on the streets, without having to bother writing new songs. So here's a stack of such albums — many with selections that may well surprise you. 
Heavy metal, descended as it was from the deep and dark despair of mid-'60s garage-verging-on-psych bands like 
"Alternative metal" is an awfully nebulous genre tag, one that first emerged in the early 1990s. Looking back on those heady days, it was more or less slapped on any quasi-metal outfit that didn't fit nicely into an already established genre, be it thrash, groove metal, industrial metal, grunge, death metal, hardcore, progressive metal or even alternative rock. In fact, what united groups as disparate as Helmet, Jane's Addiction, Deftones and Life of Agony was how they blurred the lines between said genres, and in the process helped lay the groundwork for the rise of nu metal. Of course, this is either a good or bad thing depending what you think of Korn and 
The drone. It's a sustained note that hangs, while music happens (or doesn't happen) around it ... and when you start digging, you can find it everywhere: in 
Hair metal, if memory serves, wasn't particularly called "hair metal" much during most of its heyday. Even circa 1987-88, when mascara and eyeliner dominated MTV, if you'd picked up a rock magazine you likely would've seen "pop-metal," "glam-metal," "false-metal," "shag-metal" or "Nerf-metal" at least as often. In retrospect, of course, the genre didn't seem to have much to do with "metal" at all. Even early on, the '70s acts it took as inspiration -- 
The past several weeks have seen a veritable blood orgy of heavy metal from hell hit the shelves, as well as go live on our little service. There's an entire EP devoted solely to the positively enchanting world of flesh-eating zombies courtesy of metalcore big shots The Devil Wears Prada (don't skip "
The release of a new Shonen Knife album (Free Time, possibly their 17th) got us thinking. First of all, when the all-female trio appeared on the scene circa 1989, their perfectly tight punk-pop guitars and incredibly cute voices were revelatory, to say the least. Plus, they sang about Barbie, possibly without irony. Weird. 
Thirty some-odd years ago, when 
Welcome to another edition of Classic Rock Crate Digger, a (near) weekly column wherein Rhapsody nerd Justin Farrar wanders the never-ending maze that is our catalog in search of classic rock's forgotten gems. If you're new 'round these parts, then also check out the 
Born Petrus T. Ratajczyk, musician Peter Steele died of heart failure at the age of 48 on April 14, 2010. Steele was the singer, bass player and main composer of the long-running goth-metal band 
Angry times call for angry measures, so rock 'n' roll's Angriest Old White Man of all — 
Heavy metal has dominated other decades, both commercially and stylistically, with the 1980s being its big decade thanks to the rise of hair metal and the birth of thrash. The '90s saw a major flowering of ideas with black metal, death metal and grindcore all emerging/maturing. The first decade of the new millennium, however, has seen an unprecedented growth in commercial and critical (!) success and in a machine-gun spray of variations, from highly experimental combinations of extreme metal (deathgrind), to a reaffirming of the ancient arts (modern power/fantasy metal). There is even a sort of hipsterization happening (post-metal). To some, this is a golden age of metal, seeing their beloved genre get the recognition it has traditionally been denied. For others, it appears as the unmistakable watering down of what they once held dear. Then there are people who really, really like Eyehategod. Anyway, here is our list of the best metal albums from the past decade. Have fun getting angry at it because 
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