Interviews

The turning of the millennium felt like something of a sonic wasteland for heavy metal music for me. So much of it seemed uninspired. Then one day while wasting time on MySpace playing some insipid game called Vampire Wars, a foe I was…

Overkill is Batman. Dark, aggressive, and dangerous. They have no lofty superpowers. They can’t fly. They don’t sell out massive arenas, or have hit songs blowing up the airwaves. They just serve up good old blue-collar, kick your ass heavy…

After delivering one of 2016’s most exceptional metal albums in Avantasia’s Ghostlights, band mastermind Tobias Sammet planned to take some time off. He’s spent the last 27 years fronting Edguy, the power metal band he started at 14 with…

Like a Storm is a band of brothers, quite literally, based out Toronto by way of New Zealand. Matt, Chris, and Kent Brooks started Like a Storm, and  Zach Wood joined shortly after in 2014. They are set apart from most metal bands by Chris’…

When guitarist Marc Ferrari initially walked away from Keel in 1988, the wave of commercial metal still flourished. Little did anyone know that same flannel clad Seattle rockers were about to mud stomp the hard rock industry with a whole…

Few bands in metal have been as influential as they are underrated, and near the top of that list is Washington’s Metal Church. Founded initially by guitarist Kurdt Vanderhoof in 1980, the band unleashed its eponymous debut record in 1984.…

The metal life has been crazed and hectic for German metal stalwarts, Accept over the last two years. After coming off their stellar Blind Rage album, the band dropped the monster live assault, Restless and Live in 2017. It marked the…

November 9th saw the sophomore release of Winston-Salem, North Carolina's Stellar Circuits. Ways We Haunt  is an 11 track album full of depth and meaning. This quartet spares nothing when it comes to mixing melodic progressive metal with…

Guitarist and composer, Jason Ashcraft is the creative catalyst for Sacramento-based power metal contingents, Dire Peril and Helion Prime. A fan of science fiction, Ashcraft founded Dire Peril almost a decade ago, and immediately began…

From the moment Mike Lepond (Symphony X, Silent Assassins) told me about THEM, I became intrigued. The band’s debut record, Sweet Hollow hit like a sonic assault of over-the-top metal theatrics, with grandiose vocals, muscular guitars,…