Into the Coven
Into the Coven: Occult Burial – “Burning Eerie Lore” Album Premiere with Interview
An interview and album premiere for Occult Burial’s sophomore album Burning Eerie Lore!
New Releases
Track Premiere: Possessed Steel – “Skeleton King” from their upcoming debut album Aedris
Possessed Steel are a four-piece traditional heavy metal band hailing from Toronto, Canada. They’ve been toiling away in the underground since 2010 and two EPs and one band break-up later, they are finally poised to release their highly anticipated debut album Aedris on Temple of Mystery Records!
Features
Feature: Lost Doom Recovered
Being a doom metal fanatic my taste for the heavy and doomy but definitely metallic has significant elasticity. I enjoy doom metal that more discerning ears might not have the time nor inclination for. I’ll leave the lower end of my listening spectrum out of my writing but over the years the shear amount of doom I’ve leant an ear to is significant. Amidst the boulders, forests, and rubble of that mountain of doom there are some quality bands that seem to have gotten lost and left off the radar of most doom fans. These are not the very top shelf, the legends of the genre, but they are really good and considerably enjoyable. It is this article’s intent to get a few more doom fans to discover them.
Into the Coven
Into the Coven: Draghkar – “At the Crossroads of Infinity” Album Premiere and Interview
Full album premiere for Draghkar’s At the Crossroads of Infinity, featuring an interview with primary songwriter Brandon Corsair.
Interviews
Up from the Depths: An Interview with Stygian Crown
Just two years ago Stygian Crown released their impressive demo and now they’ve released their debut album and they’re already being enlisted for international festivals! This relative success isn’t for nothing. Although it’s still early to tell, it’s pretty clear that Stygian Crown’s self-titled debut is something special and likely to be one of the best traditional heavy metal records of 2020 with its specific brand of crushing epic doom reminiscent of Solitude Aeturnus and Capilla Ardiente. We caught up with Rhett A. Davis for an interview that you can read below!
Classics Appreciation
Classics Appreciation: Saint Vitus – Saint Vitus (1984) Review
There aren’t a ton of doom metal bands more revered than Saint Vitus, and it is for good reason. Of Black Sabbath’s disciples in the 80’s, they are perhaps the most honest and soulful of the bunch, if not exactly a 1:1 copy of the original masters. Rather, what Vitus did is that they applied the atonality, loose song structure, and just pure griminess of American punk to the emerging doom metal format at a time in the 80’s when the early bands were forging their own styles and defining the subgenre on their own terms.
New Releases
New Release Highlight: Stygian Crown – Stygian Crown Review
After an impressive demo, Los Angeles’s epic doom juggernaut Stygian Crown is bringing the thunder on a new full-length album. And some high-class retro thunder is what they do indeed bring on their debut for a well-chosen label Cruz Del Sur. This seems to be the year and the season for top shelf female fronted doom.
New Releases
New Release Highlight: Cirith Ungol – Forever Black Review
So here is an album both well deserving of and well served by a bit of back story. A new Cirith Ungol album. The first one in 29 years.
Features
Four Reasons California Metal Still Matters
True Traditional metal, while never as hugely popular as hair or thrash, has been a field in which California has yielded an embarrassing amount of riches. While often not appreciated enough back in the day (much like Cali’s doom pioneers Saint Vitus, the number of people claiming attendance at early shows for many of these bands has inflated far beyond what the actual attendance was) names like Cirith Ungol, Brocas Helm and The Lord Weird Slough Feg are now rightly hallowed and revered in the metal underground. There is still a lot of good stuff happening.