Jun 152010
 

The odds are probably slim that any of you who visit this site have never heard Heaven Shall Burn, and you’ve probably made up your minds already about whether to check out their new album, Invictus. But we’re writing about it anyway because it’s just so damned good that we’d feel guilty if we didn’t.

What has always been distinctive about Heaven Shall Burn’s music is on full display in the new album, except even more so: passionate, politically charged lyrics; a blistering instrumental assault delivered at a furious pace; bludgeoning percussion and headbanging rhythms; irresistible melodic hooks; and Marcus Bischoff’s distinctive, paint-peeling vocals.

Invictus includes a few surprises, too, plus some eye-catching album art. More about the music and the surprises, pictures of the album art, a song to hear, and an unusual video all come your way after the jump . . . . Continue reading »

Jan 042010
 

We metalheads call things “metal” even when what we’re talking about isn’t music.  Most of the time, it’s meant as a compliment (the ultimate compliment).  Sometimes it’s just a description. In either case, I don’t think I could come up with a definition of what “metal” means when it’s used this way.  It’s kind of like what Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said about porn in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964):

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it . . . .

Yesterday, while wasting my fucking time expanding my mind on the Internet, I came across one non-musical thing after another that made me think, “that’s metal” — from a cool New Zealand metal site, to abandoned buildings in Detroit, to rugby, to hakas, to Nelson Mandela, to poetry. Allow me to share (after the jump). Continue reading »