By Ben Apatoff

It's not the first thing you'll notice about Fed Through the Teeth Machine, but maybe the second or third time around you'll grasp how many riffs, solos and lyrics you recognize already. Few grindcore bands have instant sticking power like THE RED CHORD, and even fewer are capable of boundary-shattering albums like this one, which packs a cavalry of unexpected and enthralling twists into songs that rarely make it to the three-minute mark. Fed Through the Teeth Machine catches The Red Chord honing in on the best ideas of their first three albums, resulting in an admirably focused set of  face-grinders. (more…)

By Ben Apatoff

Call it "Deeper Colors." Approximately two years after BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME leapt into headliner status on Colors, they've plunged further into each direction they took on that album. The Great Misdirect raises the Colors bar in every way that BTBAM previously did in following up Alaska, showcasing a grasp of melody, brutality and tempo shifts that sounds both natural and idiosyncratic. Extended doses of death metal intensity? Check. Relaxed, lounge-rock detours that slip in and out like lucid dreams? Beautifully emotive shredding from guitarists who are clearly talented enough to show off but don't? Check. Genres? Never heard of them. (more…)

By Ben Apatoff

Like OZZY before them, RAMMSTEIN confirmed the lunacy of their would-be censors by being far too goofy for anyone who actually listened to their music to even think about inflicting harm. Unlike their self-serious Family Values tourmates (who acted like they were clamoring for the type of bad publicity Rammstein stumbled into,) the German sextet walked MANOWAR's "are-you-freaking-kidding-me" line into fundustrial madness, spectacularly over-the-top shows and most recently, a video that Ron Jeremy would be ashamed of. Call it a gimmick, but even without the video, "Pussy" and the rest of Liebe ist für alle da is catchier, funnier and more creative than anything MARILYN MANSON or ROB ZOMBIE have released in years. (more…)

By Ben Apatoff

Shame on anyone who pronounces thrash metal to be dead. Bands like MUNICIPAL WASTE and SKELETONWITCH are fanning the neo-thrash flame with strong albums and awesome live shows. MEGADETH and SLAYER are releasing some of their best music in years. A poll in the MI forum is currently deliberating over the best of the "Big Four," with post-1990 material banned from the debate. And oh yeah, every metal band formed after 1986 owes something to thrash, consciously or not. For everyone who wishes that "Enter Sandman" were a bad dream, Skeletonwitch's Breathing the Fire is likely to ignite your thrashing psyche. (more…)

By Ben Apatoff

UPDATE: You can now stream the entire disc on the band's MySpace page.

(Also, don't miss our epic live footage of a full set from CONVERGE we posted a few months ago, including 2 songs from this album! Click here to watch all 11 clips.)

Is it too soon to mention CONVERGE in the same breath as SLAYER and MOTORHEAD? The Boston foursome have perfected a formula which they've seldom deviated from over the years, but they're consistently fierce and exciting enough to make every album worthwhile. Their latest, Axe to Fall, continues Converge's habit of outperforming any metalcore band in listening distance, only this time they've thrown in more stylistic curveballs and mathier riffs than ever before. The payoff is 42 exhilarating minutes that fly by like an EP, plus a connecting force between MINOR THREAT and GREG-era DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN. Not to mention possibly the best album of Converge's career. (more…)

By Ben Apatoff

It may not be fair to compare DOOMRIDERS to guitarist/vocalist NATE NEWTON's better known day job, but Darkness Come Alive delivers on everything a side project should be. Almost none of the songs sound fit for the breakneck pace of CONVERGE's albums, but they're all strong enough to justify a separate band and tour.

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by James Greene, Jr.

The term "epic" has been bandied about with such regularity in recent years that it hardly has one drop of meaning left. Thanks, Internet. There was really no other way to caption that video of your dad's water-skiing accident on YouTube? "Fucking hilarious" would have done the trick. Now epic is on life support, its reputation tarnished and its power all but depleted. Using those four letters at this point to describe anything, let alone this Baroness album, seems like a lazy cop-out by any journalist too dumb to think harder.

Yet, The Blue Album, the sophomore release from Georgia prog/sludge metal outfit Baroness, truly is epic – crushingly, devastatingly, and beautifully so, a product worthy of that mantle if ever there was one. This is the kind of epic you only see in blockbuster summer movies or Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders or a boat load of Sasquatches fending off a giant attacking squid. If The Blue Album isn't epic, then the sky probably isn't blue and Sarah Palin must completely grasp foreign policy. (more…)

By Ben Apatoff Even without the high profile of a deservedly popular animated documentary series, it's easy to see why DETHKLOK have the highest-charting death metal album in U.S. history. Their progressions are as melodic as mid-'80s OZZY, with even funnier lyrics. Nearly every chorus is a shout-along, and no matter how much PICKLES inflicts GENE HOGLAN-worthy punishment on his kit, Dethalbum II sounds like power metal and hard rock songs being subjected to a death metal makeover. (more…)

By Ben Apatoff

New PEARL JAM sounding too soft? Still too soon to discuss the latest CHRIS CORNELL debacle? Fear not, grungeheads, because ALICE IN CHAINS are back with a record that's hard and bleak enough to earn the AIC moniker, no matter if only two guys who played on Dirt are showing up. It's called Black Gives Way to Blue, which could be describing the skin of moshers at recent Alice in Chains shows or SULLY ERNA's ego upon hearing this. (more…)

by Ben Apatoff

Like recent SLAYER or IRON MAIDEN, every new MEGADETH release comes an inevitable wave of "return to form" and "best since the classic era" hype. Only this time, you'll be sorry if you don't believe it. Endgame is Megadeth's first album in years to be more entertaining than a DAVE MUSTAINE feud, and it's the band's heaviest, most consistent and finest hour since Countdown to Extinction. (more…)

Review by James Greene, Jr.

Dictionary.com defines the word “deflorate” as “past the flowering state; having shed its pollen.” That seems wickedly apropos for the Black Dahlia Murder, who have indeed just past their flowering state as the “it” band of death metal. Their last album, 2007’s Nocturnal, was praised to the sky, and for good reason – it was a nimble, invigorating exercise that proved blast beats and Cookie Monster vocals could almost be populist. Such frightening musical elements never sounded quite as accessible before the Black Dahlia came along (at least not without losing their menace and/or becoming parody). I would hazard a guess that hailing from Detroit has something to do with BDM’s ear for melody. Barry Gordy, your precious juice runs through Trevor Strnad’s “voculars.” (more…)

Well, I've been back for about a day now and of all the places I definitely miss Amsterdam the most. Yes, the weed is legal, and it's everywhere and it's pretty cheap and delicious. But beyond that there is also an incredibly beautiful city with tons of canals and ancient epic castles.

There are also a lot of bars. Being a metalhead, I hate regular people bars. The music usually sucks, the people are usually phony and I just get bored. Which is why I thank Buddah that the EXCALIBUR exists! Billed as the only biker/rock bar in Amsterdam, this place rules! I wish something this cool existed in Brooklyn. (more…)

Kicking off with a gargled bellow (that sounds like the Polish equivalent of "You wanted the best, you got the best!"), BEHEMOTH return with an undeniably awesome album ov deathly epic proportions. It's a natural move into more technical territory, although NERGAL's maintained the thrash-inspired riffs and the self-aware satanism that made Demigod and The Apostasy a blast to listen to. Rather than deliver their odes to Satan and depravity with the self-seriousness of countless Lords of Chaos throwaways, Behemoth make every second of Evangelion sound like a party. If any death metal band in the world is worthy of saluting Dionysus, it's these guys, who chant their praises over the brain-slaughtering opener "Daimamos." (more…)

JOB FOR A COWBOY may be death metal's answer to MATISYAHU. Both victims and beneficiaries of an overwhelming amount of hype, JFAC have roped in a inordinately large audience for a death metal band. Like the world's most famous Hasidic reggae act, Job for a Cowboy's music is authentic but average. It never sounds as watered down or polished as one'd expect for a metal band on the charts, but also never distinct or exciting enough to be more than a passable metal band. (more…)

Two years after releasing the catchiest sludge metal album in history, BIG BUSINESS are back, this time with a guitarist. For whatever distinction they've lost from being a bass-and-drums duo until now, they've kept their knack for facelifting infectiousness out of a heavy low end. Noob TOSHI KASAI rarely plays anything resembling JARED WARREN's bass progressions, but both musicians somehow sound organized under the charge of COADY WILLIS, who proves that creativity in metal drumming needn't come with blast beats. (more…)

(Full disclosure: HULL are bros of the MI crew. Unfortunately, their music also happens to rule.)

Hullking (sorry) out of Brooklyn onto The End Records' roster of shitkickers, Hull have a post-metal sound that will rope in fans of ISIS and NEUROSIS, as well as those who find the former too ambient and the latter too jumbled. Sole Lord is an exercise in grandiosity that never feels drawn out, and one of the most promising debuts of the year so far. (more…)

DAATH's newest album, The Concealers, has several good songs, impeccable musicianship and enough variety to consistently hold interest. It won't change your life, but good metal doesn't always need to, and for a heavy, catchy American death metal album, you could do a lot worse. (more…)

I love seeing how bands act offstage. It's one of the reasons we started Metal Injection. We were tired of mundane interviews where the bands sit around talking about their influences and "the songwriting process" and other questions that have been answered in dozens of other interviews in magazines. I want to see the band goofing off!

That's why when I heard the BLACK DAHLIA MURDER were putting out a DVD, I was mega-stoked. These guys have always been hilarious when we've hung out with them so having somebody with a camera around was quite possibly the best idea the band ever had. (more…)