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Outside of the mighty Black Sabbath, there is no single band more impactful on doom metal than Candlemass, and no album more important than their debut Epicus Doomicus Metallicus. While they were not the first band to play slow, Black Sabbath-influenced metal, Candlemass perfected it, coining the term for the genre itself in the process. Read theContinue reading “35 Years of Midnight: Reflecting on Candlemass’s Genre-Defining Classic “Epicus Doomicus Metallicus” (Interview with Leif Edling)”

White Magician is undoubtedly one of the most special and interesting active bands in the blurry sphere that includes both hard-rocking heavy metal and metallic hard rock. Regressive almost to a fault, the band offers insight into an alternate timeline in which bands like UFO or Blue Öyster Cult happily swapped ideas with Mercyful Fate andContinue reading “Entering the Underground #10: White Magician’s Mesmerizing Heavy Metal”

As we talked about with Mike Scalzi the other week, the 1990s were a low point in the history of heavy metal. It was nearly dead, with only isolated bands still playing it in the United States, most of them unaware of anyone else doing it. One of the most-decimated styles was the musically impressiveContinue reading “Heavy Metal Everlasting: An Interview with Howie Bentley of Cauldron Born and Briton Rites”

It’s a rare band that starts off extreme, gets a chance to keep it going on a big label, and retains the things that made them special in the first place across the years. It’s even less common when you go all the way back to the beginning, to the earliest days of extreme metal;Continue reading ““Churches Without Saints” and Metal Without End: Desaster’s Black/Thrash Reign Continues (Interview)”