"NASA Proves Space Has The Best Ambient Metal

NASA Proves Space Has The Best Ambient Metal  Metal Injection by Greg Kennelty  Let's just tip the sacred cow here.

"Edguy Interview

Edguy Interview  About.com Heavy Metal

"Best Death Metal Album Covers

Best Death Metal Album Covers

 About.com Heavy Metal

Perhaps nowhere is a striking cover image more important than in death metal. Countless metal musicians say that what drew them to death metal - or what initially repelled them but piqued their curiosity - was the cover art for bands like Cannibal Corpse and Deicide. Death metal bands are still trying to one-up each other with explicit and grisly images from slaughterhouses or crime scenes. Check out Justin M. Norton's gallery of the goriest and most memorable death metal album covers. Warning, this one is not for the faint of heart!

"Top 10 One Man Black Metal Bands

Top 10 One Man Black Metal Bands

In a genre as insular and niche as black metal is, it stands to reason that the eschewing of live performance and interviews in favor of reclusive mystique leaves the door wide open - almost insists upon - recordings created entirely by the efforts of a single person

"Best Hair Metal Ballads

Best Hair Metal Ballads

Heavy metal isn't the most romantic of genres.  There's a lot of brutality, violence, death and destruction in the music.  However, on this Valentine's Day, we feature the softer side of metal, namely hair bands.  And nearly every hair metal band in the '80s and early '90s had at least one power ballad when fans at concerts would fire up their lighters (that was before cell phones, kids).  So break out the acid-washed jeans and the hairspray and enjoy a guilty Valentine's Day pleasure of  some of the best hair metal ballads

"Best Helloween Albums

Best Helloween Albums

Once a month we delve into an iconic metal band's catalog and rank their five best albums. This month we shine the spotlight on Helloween. The legendary German band helped popularize power metal, and have released a ton of great records over their long career. Check out our picks for their top five, and post in the comments below what your choice is for their best album.

"100 Years of Rock in Less Than a Minute: From Gospel to Grunge

100 Years of Rock in Less Than a Minute: From Gospel to Grunge

"Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock Today I am pleased to bring you samplings of a handful of my favorite bands. It so happens they are all mostly-female or female-fronted punk bands. This fact to me seems almost incidental to my enjoyment—these are all fantastic musicians, songwriters, and/or personalities. And yet their commonalities are highly remarkable all the same. Punk introduced aggressive, all-female bands like The Slits and frontwomen like Siouxie Siouxwho never had to play vulnerable objects, desperate seductresses, jilted lovers, femme fatales, etc. and yet still manifested their power in their sexuality as well as in their fierce intelligence and fury. In the late ’70s, women strode out in front as leaders in punk scenes in the UK and US, and helped to change the gender politics of rock and roll.

"Essential Progressive Metal Albums

Essential Progressive Metal Albums

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Progressive metal has evolved from its '70s/'80s rock roots to a wide-ranging and established genre.   It has also infiltrated other genres, with many bands in death, black, folk and other styles incorporating elements of progressive metal.    Veterans like Dream Theater and Fates Warning set the bar high, with modern bands such as Between The Buried And Me carrying the mantle for the younger generation.  We've put together a list of progressive metal albums that give a good overview for those exploring the genre.  It is not meant to be a comprehensive and all-inclusive list, just a starting point to delve into the genre.

"Black Metal School Desk Drawings Now Considered Art

Black Metal School Desk Drawings Now Considered Art Remember all the shitty things you used to draw on your desk at school? We've all done it, and there always used to be that one kid that was really good at it. You were jealous of him too. Now we've got Artist Humberto Casas Junca taking his love of black metal and artistic representation

"Heavy Metal Music and the Communal Experience Conference

Heavy Metal Music and the Communal Experience Conference

It is common to hear metal fans and musicians talk about the "metal community". This concept, which is widely used when referencing metal music, encompasses multiple levels of complexity that are seldom addressed in academic endeavors. When examined in detail, it raises more questions than answers. 

"Orson Welles Records Two Songs with the 1980s Heavy-Metal Band Manowar

Orson Welles Records Two Songs with the 1980s Heavy-Metal Band Manowar

Heavy metal music enjoyed the pleasures of excess in the 1980s, an era when, if you believe certain biographers, writer-actor-auteur Orson Welles did the very same. Though some describe the life of the man who made Citizen Kane as having by then fallen into a final period of great decadence...

"Hellfest Basically Confirms The Best Lineup Ever

Hellfest Basically Confirms The Best Lineup Ever

This guy’s just the start…

France’s premier metal festival, Hellfest, has announced a stunner of a lineup for next yea

"Five Finger Death Punch Interview

Five Finger Death Punch Interview

Having one top 5 album in a year is quite an accomplishment. Five Finger Death Punch have had two in 2013: The Wrong Side of Heaven and the Righteous Side of Hell volumes 1 and 2. Drummer Jeremy Spencer fills us in on the selection process of the songs for the two albums, his favorite collaboration onVolume 1, their current European tour with Avenged Sevenfold, putting together a setlist, dealing with their increasing popularity and other topics.

"25 Songs to Thrash to on National Metal Da

25 Songs to Thrash to on National Metal Day

While there's a time and place for moving ballads and soothing soft rock, sometimes you just need to thrash like a maniac to blister-inducing guitar shredding
Today is that day.
In honor of National Metal Day,

"Ereb Altor Interview

Ereb Altor Interview

Ereb Altor are the Swedish band made up of members of Isole. The Bathory-influenced group's latest album is Fire Meets Ice.We caught up with the band's vocalist/guitarist/bassist/keyboardist Mats, who tells us about the new album, the response to it so far, upcoming tour plans and other subjects.

"Metal Music Studies - call for papers

Metal Music Studies - call for papers

Metal Music Studies is explicitly multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary: embracing both musicological research and music theory about metal music, and social scientific and humanistic research about metal music as a genre.  We are interested in original papers on metal music. We aim to receive contributions from researchers and theorists aligned with the subject field of metal music studies, but also researchers and theorists from other disciplines who feel that their interest in a form of popular music marginalizes them from the core debates in their discipline.

"Sirenia Interview

Sirenia Interview

Sirenia have been around for more than a decade, and recently released their sixth full-length album Perils of the Deep Blue. We caught up with Morten Veland, who writes the band's songs, sings, produces and plays several instruments. He gives us the scoop on the writing and recording of the album, the use of Norwegian lyrics for the first time, the video shoot for the first single, tour plans,the status of his other band Mortemia and other subjects

"Dark Tranquillity Interview

Dark Tranquillity Interview

For the past two decades, Sweden's Dark Tranquillity have been at the forefront of melodic death metal. One of the pioneers of the Gothenburg sound, they are still going strong with their latest album Construct. I spoke with vocalist Mikael Stanne, who talked about a change in their songwriting process that made this album much less stressful, the departure of bassist Daniel Antonsson, upcoming tour plans, new music he's been listening to and other subjects.