Music

For as much flack as I got about my interest in heavy metal as a youth, it has done more to expand my intellectual horizons than any teacher I've ever had. Were it not for Metallica's "For Whom The Bell Tolls" I would probably not have discovered the work of Ernest Hemmingway.

Blues Traveler's career has been one that can easily be divided into two halves. Starting out, they were a through-and-through rock band that managed to score critical and chart success. They did what they did, and scored a multi-platinum album and hit singles.

I am by no means a movie buff, but one of the things I recognize about movies, especially those in the horror genre, is that the music plays a bigger role in setting the mood than most casual viewers will ever notice.

Anytime someone from the West is engaging Japanese media, there’s an intrinsic sense that anything and everything could happen.  Music from Japan in particular tends to not bend to the conventions of Western genre labels, so that implies that a single band can be a lot of things to a lot of

The word of the day is "eclectic" and the band that brings this word to mind is Von Hertzen Brothers. Regular readers of the Bloody Good Horror metal reviews know that my fellow reviewers and I delight in bringing you, the reader, the very best new metal bands from around the world.

Retro movie fan Videogram, usually a conspirator of re-made horror soundtracks, has instead turned his attentions to the world of action, putting together a three-song EP teasing his upcoming debut album for Cineploit records.  The above video is just one of the three cuts, focusing on the 1986 Sly Stallone classic "Cobra."  The video combines the reimagined theme with a bevy of cleverly placed movie footage and is a pretty fun watch.

I've noticed a trend in power metal recently, where the genre is getting fractured in a way that does no one any favors.  On the one hand, there is a group of bands that are taking power metal in a darker, heavier, more modern direction.  While I like some of these bands, they largely s

One of the most elusive of finds as a music journalist is Something Different.  Now, that’s similar to Something Unique, but they’re not the same thing.  Something Unique is still rare, but you encounter it every so often – somebody has a novel guitar tone

This week we have another band that is not new but is new to me. It's California's own experimental-alternative-progressive metal band Chrysalis.

We’ve had this discussion several times over the years, but it bears repeating in this instance – metal will always provide a home for a band that indulges in the dingiest, sludgy depths of overdriven distortion and no holds-marred mayhem making.  For clarity’s sake, we’re not talking about