Interview: Impending Doom - The Devil in Mister Settig (Hysteria Magazine)

Heavy metal is almost inseparably linked with … THE DEVIL. Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast hit #2 in 1982 (behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller) and was immediately mired in controversy. The trend continued with the Parent’s Musical Resource Centre witch-hunts of the 1980s (they caught Dee Snider, after all) to almost routine blaming of metal in the mainstream press for heinous murders and vicious crimes. In all instances, Beelzebub was held up in effigy and consumed by flames of reactionary hate. The Devil kind of sucks when it comes to performing acts of bloodcurdling evil. In the Bible, God kills upwards of 33 million people in his name.

The Devil? Ten.

Lift your game, Lucifer.

Read the rest at Australian Hysteria Magazine online.

Review: Disolvo Animus - Aphesis (Metal as Fuck)

Disolvo Animus are like a Hellenic answer to Behemoth and Dimmu Borgir. Funny thing is, we never really asked that question in the first place.

Heavy metal is forever. Period. But that's not to say we get bored with ourselves from time to time. Power metal seems naff until Blind Guardian releases a blinding record every few years or so. We largely ignore traditional NWOBHM until Iron Maiden drops some old school chops on us. We release a certain Norwegian neo-Nazi out of prison for arson and murder and people go apeshit with some kind of blind veneration for him. Disolvos Animus aren't bored with the spent-by-then late-90s second wave of black metal, even though the majority of metalheads are (save for one or two bands) and seem rather proud of that.

Read more at Metal As Fuck.

Interview: Murder in the Front Row: a visual journey through the Bay Area thrash scene (Metal as Fuck)

Crushtor chats to Brian Lew, co-author of a new book that captures the rivet-headed zeitgeist of the 80s San Francisco Bay Area thrash scene.

The San Francisco Bay Area thrash metal scene of the 80s – the same soil from which Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth grew is imbued with a certain drunken reverence. Hazily remembered details lend themselves to pages upon pages of ghostwritten annals by riff-weathered guitarists and frontmen. What remains are oft exaggerated tales of destitution, rose-tinted and booze drenched memoirs of a heady and volatile time in American heavy metal. One medium once told no lies to the face of rumors and fabrications; the humble photograph.

Read more at Metal as Fuck.