When you get a chance to speak to someone like Mike Howe, you simply don’t say no. His vocals on the three Metal Church albums from the eighties and early nineties are a huge part of my youth, and represented some sort of musikal awakening. Continue reading
“The Poisoner” is here, the follow up to the highly acclaimed “A Funeral For The World”, and it’s pretty natural to get in contact with the New York-based trio for a chat about the past as well as the new offering. All members of the band, Jeremy (guitar), Erica (vocals and bass) and Nathan (drums) that is, contributed to this feature. Continue reading
It’s still early days of course, but it will definitely be a good year for heavy metal if the new album from Germany’s Metal Inquistior doesn’t end up in my personal top ten list in December. “Panopticon” is the band’s best output since the modern day classic “Doomdsday For The Heretic”, packed with excellent songs delivered with real class. While Blumi (guitars) has always been the main songwriter in the band, and the natural guy to speak to, like we did here, the other guitarist T.P. has challenged Blumi as the main songwriter this time around. Continue reading
Traveler was featured here at Metal Squadron less than a year ago when their superb demo was released. Things have happened really fast for Matt Ries and Jean-Pierre Abboud since they recorded the demo tunes. A record deal is in place, the lineup completed and the band is already confirmed for some prestigous underground fests. Have Matt simply followed along with all the stuff happening to the band, or has he had to put on the brakes somewhere in the process? Continue reading
With the stellar first full length, “Illusions In Infinite Void”, Sacral Rage from Athens, Greece showed that they can provide competition for absolutely everyone out there. Their brand new album, “Beyond Celestial Echoes” is more or less of thee same sky high quality, and I needed to get in contact with singer Dimitris K. once again. I take for granted that you still have strong feeling for “Illusions In Infinite Void”, but do you sometimes go back and listen to your first EP, “Deadly Bits of Iron Fragments” as well? Continue reading
A lot has already been said about the Fifth Angel comeback album, “The Third Secret”. While I don’t share the view of the most euphoric ones out there speaking about album of the year, the Americans have produced a decent comeback album for sure. I got on the phone with bass player John Macko for a chat about the past, present and future.
This interview was conducted quite some time ago, but along with a couple of others it was never published. My apologies go out to Solstice, and especially Paul Kearns who was very enthusiastic and entertaining, even though he was heading off at 6 o clock in the morning to work on the Primordial-tour, selling merchandise. Continue reading
Norway isn’t exactly known for producing a lot of outstanding speed metal acts. In fact, we’re not known for producing bands performing speed metal at all. When Oslo-based Black Viper released their demo a couple of years ago, you got a sense that the number of outstanding releases within this genre was about to grow significantly. Now that the debut album, “Hellions Of Fire” has arrived, it is safe to conclude that Black Viper has produced a world class album inspired by the likes of Agent Steel and Holy Terror. Hail Norwegian speed metal! Hail Black Viper! Continue reading
A couple of weeks ago, at the Beyond The Gates-festival in Bergen, Norway, I met guitarist and song writer Tommi to get the latest on Chevalier who recently put out their second demo, “Chapitre II”, a release which has already made its way on to various physical formats. Continue reading
As we have already covered the early days in not only one, but two previous interviews, it felt natural to catch up with the happenings after the split Gatekeeper did with Eternal Champion in March 2015. To help us out, we got Geoff as usual, but new singer Jean-Pierre, who is also Geoff’s roommate, filled in on some of our questions. Continue reading
What better way to reintroduce Metal Squadron, than to do it with the act behind one of the best demos released in quite some time? Traveler is the band in question, and I got founder and songwriter Matt Ries to answer my questions about the Canadians. Some might know the guy from his work with acts like Hrom and Gatekrashör, but are there other things we should know about Matt? Continue reading
I admit it, it has taken way too long to finish this piece. When this interview took place, it was still a week or so until the release of “Doom Decimation”. Some reviews were already out there, does Procession’s main man Felipe care about what the reviewers think about the album? Continue reading
I had a pretty extensive chat with bass player Johnny Hagel around the release of “In The Shadow Of The Inverted Cross” back in 2015, so when the chance appeared to speak to singer Anders Engberg about the brand new offering, “The Crowning Of The Fire King”, I didn’t hesitate.
Even though “Point Of Impact”, was a letdown compared to both the EP “Danger Ahead” and especially the Swedes first full length releases, “Night Of The Axe”, I conducted an interview with bass player Robin Utbult. The bands new offering “Across The Line”, featuring new singer Fredrik Werner, sounds much more interesting again, and we once again hooked up with Robin to get the latest on the band.
After “Crossroads”, which we covered thoroughly when it was released back in April 2014, Sweden’s Portrait is back with yet another album filled with dark heavy metal. The big thing this time, is probably the fact that “Burn The World” was recorded as a trio, with my interview partner, Christian Lindell handling the bass along with his main instrument, guitars. Continue reading
Seemingly out of nowhere came Michigan’s The Swill and surprised both me and others with their excellent second EP “Master of Delusion”. As the CD-version of this EP, done by Dystopian Dogs, also included the band’s debut EP, “Thirst For Misery”, it became obvious that The Swill were certainly not newcomers. As I guess I am not the only one who didn’t follow the band from the very first steps, this interview with guitarist Dan McCormick tries to catch up with the history of the band as well as celebrating the release of the impressive,brand new EP. Continue reading
Metal Squadron was one of the first, if not the first, to feature Walpyrgus, back when their demo was first released on tape through Swords & Chains. Some time ago I was contacted by Sure Shot who does promotion for Cruz Del Sur, the band’s label nowadays, but as this happened around the time I had strong doubts about the future of this webzine, nothing came out of it. When I contacted Scott Waldrop some months later, I have to admit that I didn’t expect such an inspired feature as this one became. After all, he had already chatted to quite a few different medias when this interview materialized. As you can see for yourself, Scott did an excellent job answering my questions in an honest way, and I tried to get him to speak about some stuff that hasn’t already been covered to death in previous features. Enjoy! Continue reading
Sweden has a long and rich history when it comes to epic, melodic doom metal. I don’t have to educate you about Candlemass of course, but lesser known bands as Sorcerer and Memory Garden, amongst others, are also part of the tradition. Below are a newer band carrying the same torch, first with the release of “Across The Dark River” back in 2014, and following it up with “Upon A Pale Horse”, their second for Metal Blade, released back in May this year. Continue reading
With the release of “Darkness Remains”, Night Demon should be able to please most of those who enjoyed “Curse Of The Damned”, the band’s debut album from 2015. Jarvis Leatherby and his companions still deal in strongly NWOBHM-based metal performed with plenty of energy and enthusiasm. While the new album is the main talking point, Jarvis also lets us in on life on the road as well as his involvement in Jaguar and Cirith Ungol. Continue reading
After a long period of silence, it’s almost six years since “Invincible” was released, Holy Martyr cement their place as one of the most reliable Italian bands nowadays with the release of the concept album “Darkness Shall Prevail”. This particular feature, based on no less than four different interviews done with the band throughout the years, the first one back in 2002 and the last one in March this year, should be one of the very best sources of information on Holy Martyr out there. Grab a cup of coffee, and put everything aside while you let guitarist Ivano Spiga guide you through the history of Holy Martyr.
