Named after the iconic Slayer song, Great Britain’s Aggressive Perfector channel the same carnal energy found on Slayer’s early material. Aggressive Perfector originally formed back in 2014 and put out an aptly titled demo called Satan’s Heavy Metal just a couple of years later. Now the stage is finally set for their debut album – Havoc at the Midnight Hour.
With over a decade of high quality releases, Spain’s Iron Curtain have established themselves as one of their country’s finest traditional metal bands. From day one their no frills, zero prisoners approach to music has captivated the metal underground. With partnership from our friends over at NWOTHM Full and Dying Victims Productions, we are excited to present you the opening track to their upcoming fourth album – “Wildlife”!
The esoteric side of heavy metal has been around since the very start. The strange, the magical, and the fantastical have driven songwriters to great heights for the genre’s history, and one of the current masters of the weird is here right now to do an interview. The Great Kaiser, aka Derek DiBella, is perhaps best known for his years with Demon Bitch, but is also the driving force behind White Magician, Isenblåst, and more.
We are now half way through the year and what an incredible six months it has been. The bar has been raised for 2019 and there has been high quality album after high quality album. This quarter alone we to nearly 40 different releases across all types of traditional metal to highlight the best ones for you all. The winter 2019 wrap up was our first iteration of this, but we’ve changed things up this time around and involved all of RIG’s regular contributors!
One of the most perplexing and hotly debated topics in history (particularly economic) is the tragic descent of Argentina from one of the pillars of the world economy as late as the 1950s to just another South American country fraught with economic and political turmoil. To dive into the history of this country is a tiring task – one that would take multiple books just to cover certain epochs. Yet one period of time continues to scar the national collective – the military dictatorship of 1976 until 1983.
An unexpected wealth of rock bands formed all around Latin America during the 70s, laying potential blueprints for Heavy Metal in the early 80s. Nowadays, every country has seen an explosion of bands, but back then things were a lot harder to come by. These early Metal artists pioneered not only a sound in their respective countries, but a true counterculture as well.
Hailing from the cold north of Finland, Chevalier play a brand of uncompromising, dungeon-like speed metal inspired by acts such as ADX, Brocas Helm, Omen, and Savage Grace just to name a few. The band already has 2 EPs under their belt and is now finally ready to unleash their debut album, Destiny Calls, this week. You can find our review of that album here. We caught up with founding member and guitarist Tommi to discuss the upcoming album.
Keep it True is a German metal festival focused on the traditional side of things. Started in 2003, they have been keeping the flame alive for over 15 years now and during one of the lowest points in the genre. Over the years, Keep it True has grown to become the leading festival in the world for traditional heavy metal. The festival has been directly responsible for reuniting legions of older bands as well as highlighting and kickstarting the career for many of the new generation. This year’s Keep it True is no different in this regards and may be the very best iteration of the festival yet. The line up for Keep it True 2019 features highlights such as: a reunion of French legends Sortilège, Japanese band Anthem’s first European show, a tribute to the legendary Mark Shelton, and a big show by the originators of epic doom metal themselves, Candlemass.
It’s pretty widely agreed upon that traditional metal was in its prime during the 80s, with relatively massive, mainstream appeal. While traditional metal is most certainly no longer in its heyday, there has been a recent revival of the sound in the past decade that has led some to call it the “New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal”. There has been a huge influx of bands in this style and it seems like each year this is only growing. With the sheer density of high quality releases, 2019 is well on track to be perhaps the best year for traditional heavy metal since the 80s. Let’s hit pause and take a look at the best releases of the first 3 months!
The time period we call a year, that is entirely based on our small planet and our star, probably has no significance whatsoever in the grand scheme of the universe. However, it is a great interval to use as containers and compare the art that is crafted in one within itself and the popularity of end-of-the-year lists seems to support this approach. This helps human brain to catalogue and categorize experiences when people think back about the past. Sometimes schedules of the artists align and we end up with good release after good release in the span of a year. It is the reason we hear from people things such as “1984 was a great year for traditional heavy metal”, or “do you think 2016 was a better year than 2011 for heavy metal releases?”. I strongly believe that when looking back in ten years, 2019 similarly will be remembered as one of the strongest years of contemporary heavy metal history.