Four years ago this month, Jonas Åkerlund’s film, Lords of Chaos, made a brief but loud noise in cinemas. Inspired by the book of the same name, which chronicled the rise of the infamous Norwegian black metal scene of the 1990s, the film particularly focused mainly on the crimes of the band, Mayhem, and evoked […]
Perennial Motörhead frontman and co-founder Lemmy Kilmister seemed like a living contradiction. He played high-decibel, high-octane music, yet conversations with him were nuanced at a quieter volume. His band spurred the development of thrash metal, but he did not consider his band a metal outfit and disdained mosh pits. He once told me that he […]
Right from the outset, Birmingham, England’s own Black Sabbath proved themselves to be a very special musical entity. While various groups had started laying down the foundations for hard rock and metal on both sides of the Atlantic, Sabbath are considered to be the first true heavy metal band, and their self-titled debut from 1970 […]
Judas Priest’s Painkiller was more than just a comeback album for the iconic British group. It was a bold new statement of intent and a record that would prove to be highly influential on the European metal scene in the early 1990s. The quintet showed that they still had plenty of fire left and could […]
Article by Eduardo Rivadavia Deftones took a rather winding and deliberate path to greatness, almost sneaking up on music fans who prematurely pegged the Sacramento, California natives as just another nu metal band based on their 1995 debut album, Adrenaline, and overlooked the abundant signs of a singular vision emerging on 1997’s still somewhat inconsistent […]
Article by Eduardo Rivadavia When Megadeth unleashed their first LP, Killing Is My Business … and Business Is Good!, on June 12, 1985, they were the last of thrash metal’s Big Four — the platinum-selling pace-setters, completed by Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax — to debut. However, unlike other late arrivals to the thrash-metal mosh pit, […]
Article by Eduardo Rivadavia One of the most remarkable careers in heavy metal and, later, progressive rock, was launched 25 years ago with Opeth’s watershed debut album, Orchid, but of course, none of that was apparent, at the very start. In fact, Opeth’s chief architect, vocalist, guitarist and songwriter, Mikael Åkerfeldt, wasn’t even present when […]
Article by Eduardo Rivadavia Sweden’s Bathory wore many proverbial “hats” over their decades-long career: black metal precursors, speed metal merchants, extreme Euro-thrashers, and studio-bound, one-man-band innovators; but arguably their greatest iteration, responsible for leaving the biggest impact on heavy metal history, came as the de facto forefathers of the Viking metal subsect. It is arguably […]
Article by Eduardo Rivadavia When Judas Priest unveiled their sixth studio album, British Steel, on April 14, 1980 – hence 40 years ago, already! – heavy metal found itself at a true historical tipping point, or, if we take the album’s striking cover art at face value: on a razor’s edge. Judas Priest – British Steel […]
Article by Eduardo Rivadavia The question may seem academic all of 25 years later, but when White Zombie’s fourth full-length, the expansively-named Astro-Creep: 2000 – Songs of Love, Destruction and Other Synthetic Delusions of the Electric Head, arrived in record stores on April 11, 1995, one could only guess how critics and consumers would react. […]
