Matt Albers There are gimmick bands, there are joke bands, and then there are bands like Mac Sabbath. Formed in 2014, this American heavy metal quartet is a parody band, that only plays songs written by metal godfathers Black Sabbath, reworked to center around the theme of fast food giant McDonalds. You read that right. With songs…
Tag: hard rock
Band Interview: War Of Ages
Matt Albers, Nick Licata Music has always had a historical connotation to faith, spirituality, and religion in certain cases. Rock, metal, and hardcore are no exceptions. To the outside perspective, it has become stereotypically cliché to immediately associate forms of loud rock with Satanism. But in 2016, just about any subgenre of aggressive music can…
Photo Gallery: Clutch, Corrosion Of Conformity, and The Shrine at Pop’s (Sauget, IL)
Matt Albers In the year 2015 A.D., the average St. Louis, MO-area loud rock music fan can expect a couple of things: #1 – Most artists and tours will generally pass over this city. #2 – If you’re lucky, a band will stop here on a one-off date. #3 – There’s the unfortunate reality that, in the event that a band does stop to…
Album Review: Clutch – PSYCHIC WARFARE
Erik D. Harshman Clutch has always been a mixed bag for me. I first became aware of them after seeing them perform with Sevendust and (ugh) Limp Bizkit on the “Ladies Night in Cambodia Tour” in 1998 at Mississippi Nights in St. Louis. I loved what I heard and immediately ran out and bought Elephant…
Album Review: Motörhead – BAD MAGIC
Erik Harshman Well, the new Motörhead album is just that… A Motörhead album. Nothing less, nothing more. Which can be a good thing or a bad thing (like most things in life), depending on the situation and your perspective. See, for me Motörhead albums fall into one of three categories: those where the album is…
Photo Gallery: Motörhead, Saxon, and Crobot at The Pageant (St. Louis, MO)
Matt Albers In the world of heavy metal and hard rock, there are bands so iconic that simply saying their name conjures up their entire history and importance in one’s mind. Without question, London, England’s Motörhead is undoubtedly one of them. So when legendary front man Ian Fraser “Lemmy” Kilmister’s health began taking a turn…
Band Interview: 36 Crazyfists
Matt Albers On Monday, June 15, the Chicago Blackhawks won their sixth Stanley Cup, closing out the 2015 National Hockey League season with a victory over the Tampay Bay Lightning. Chicago got to the playoffs after beating out both the Minnesota Wild and the Anaheim Ducks, and Tampa Bay beat the New York Rangers to…
Band Interview: All That Remains
Matt Albers Say what you want about Massachusetts’ All That Remains, but the metalcore quintet has become an undeniable success story in the world of modern metal and hard rock. The band’s latest album and seventh total, The Order of Things, was released in February 2015 and earned several positive reviews and accolades, including peaking at…
Album Review: All That Remains – THE ORDER OF THINGS
Matt Albers There’s no question that we are in the midst of a metal music/loud rock paradigm shift. Within the past few years, we’ve seen a rise in popularity of subgenres like deathcore and djent, as well as the musical and demographical spanning out of contemporary, progressive stoner/sludge metal. But just as the wax and wane of musical…
Band Interview – Straight Line Stitch
Matt Albers It’s no secret that the metal and hard rock community has traditionally been populated mostly by white men. So when a band has members that don’t fit those race or gender roles, it naturally becomes one of the first things an audience or listener notices. Fortunately, any special treatment or perception in one…
