Every year I'm tempted to -- and sometimes do -- say "this has been a great year for metal." It's a toss-away idea: If you consume the genre obsessively, every year seems sort of great, the chaff…   Read Story »

The Massachusetts quartet's forthcoming seventh album -- one of the year's heaviest and best -- is streaming from start to finish at MySpace prior to its 10/19 release. Don't get whiplash.   Read Story »

When we posted "Dark Horse" I went into some detail (aka babbled) about how much I like Converge's seventh album Axe To Fall. It's easier to backup the enthusiasm with a second bullet in the chamber…   Read Story »

In its sixth year, Fuck Yeah Fest had the explicit intention of benefitting California's state parks, and implicit intention of scaring away media outlets afraid of things with "Fuck" in the title.…   Read Story »

Somewhere between releasing 2004's You Fail Me and No Heroes in 2006, I started seeing Kurt Ballou getting name-checked more as a producer at his Salem-based GodCity studios than as the guitarist of…   Read Story »