Metallica turns up the volume, turns off fans.
Mike Meyer
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Keep on Doomin’
The New Voice of Trouble
Doom Metal Icons Trouble Get New Singer, T-Shirts
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The Invisible Band
A Toast to Russian Circles
“Who are Russian Circles?” asked Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan during an interview last September. We were supposed to be talking about Puscifer, his bizarre industrial-dance side project, but I couldn’t resist reverting to Tool, for whom Chicago instrumentalists Russian Circles opened three concerts not a month before. Remember, Maynard? Three shows last month? Inconceivably, […]
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Made in Sweden
Meshuggah’s Technical Export
Americans who grew up watching MTV commonly think of two things when they think of death metal: Florida and the 1980s. Mainstream successes Morbid Angel, Obituary, and Deicide have roots in both, and trying to get people to look past a photo of Deicide frontman Glen Benton with an inverted cross burned into his forehead […]
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Home Sweet Home?
Agalloch Return for More
The four members of Agalloch live in four separate states now, but at one time they were Portland’s own. Remember? You’re forgiven if you don’t. The internationally beloved dark-metal act didn’t play live shows for their first several years. And as recently as 2006, they only had 20 minutes to open an overbooked metal show […]
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True or False
The Question of Danava
The storied rise of Portland’s hippest metal band is by now so familiar to indie rockers and headbangers alike, it might as well be in book form: Young malcontents escape the cornfields of rural Illinois, form a band in psychedelic Portland, discover doom in the last days of disco punk, and score a big-label contract […]
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From the Past
Blue Cheer’s Backward Messenger
The Clinton years weren’t especially kind to psychedelic hard rock or proto-metal, but when I think of Blue Cheer, I think of 1994. It was the year a fellow college student forced me to listen to the San Francisco trio’s watershed 1968 debut, Vincebus Eruptum. I had probably heard their fuzzed-out cover of Eddie Cochran’s […]
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Cue Ball-Smashed Face
Zoroaster’s Guide to Bar Fighting
Two guys walk into an Atlanta bar. One of them—bassist/vocalist Brent Anderson of doom-metal trio Zoroaster—has long hair, a scraggly goatee, and is covered in fading tattoos. His face is gaunt, hollow, one step from the grave. And his friend looks even worse. At least, that’s what a drunken patron tells them. “He was trying […]
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Defrosting Death Metal
The Black Dahlia Murder’s Warming Trend
A heavy snow is blanketing the Black Dahlia Murder’s home state of Michigan, but lead vocalist Trevor Strnad is wearing shorts. Fortunately for him, he’s in Tampa, Florida, where it’s a balmy 78 degrees. “I’m loving it,” he says by cell phone, “because it’s been a frozen-ass tour so far.” Still, though—shorts? Not exactly a […]
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Bitter Sweet Leaf
Om: Death to Fake Stoners
Al Cisneros is declaring an end to the term “stoner rock.” For starters, the singer/bassist of San Francisco’s Om claims most bands in the indie metal underground aren’t really stoners at all. Users, yes, but not stoners. “It’s a lot of alcohol. It’s a lot of cocaine,” he sneers. “I mean, most of those people […]
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Gang Violence
Street Crime with a Beat
Under the east end of the Morrison Bridge and past a row of tents sheltering many homeless people, 15 militants spill out of cars and piece together an assault. Clenching sticks, mallets, and plates of alloy, the invaders form a circle in a rare dry spot. And then: BOOM, a deafening, controlled explosion. The Last […]