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Pilgrim
Misery Wizard (Metal Blade) by Phil Freeman Buy it from Amazon Doom might be metal’s most polarizing subgenre. From a strictly musical angle, it can be tough to take—the slowness always risks making it...
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Manowar
The Lord of Steel (Magic Circle Music) Buy it from Amazon by Phil Freeman It’s been 30 years since Manowar‘s debut album, Battle Hymns, was released in August 1982. When they first appeared, led by...
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Down
Down IV Part I – The Purple EP (Independent Label Group) by Phil Freeman Buy it from Amazon It’s been five years since Down‘s last studio record, Down III: Over the Under, which itself arrived five...
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A Taxonomy Of Extreme Metal Vocals
Since its inception in the 1970s, metal has been a proving ground for vocalists. First there were the operatic screams of genre pioneers like Ronnie James Dio (of Rainbow, Black Sabbath and a lengthy...
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Black Sabbath
by Phil Freeman It’s 2013, and there’s a new Black Sabbath studio album. That’s surprising. It’s not the massive shock it was sold as being, when it was announced last year, of course. They’d been...
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The Best Metal Albums Of 2013: #5-1
Here they are: the top five entries in the Burning Ambulance countdown of the 25 best metal albums of 2013. (Click here to see #s 25-21; click here to see #s 20-16; click here to see #s 15-11; click...
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Huntress
Huntress is a relatively young band, having been around for just over five years. Vocalist Jill Janus, then going by the name Penelope Tuesdae, hired the Los Angeles-based band Professor to perform at...
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Best Metal Of 2015: 25-21
It’s time for our annual countdown of the 25 best metal albums of the year. In 2015, the Big Story in metal seemed to revolve around mortality. Motörhead leader Lemmy suffered health problems which...
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Interview: Craig Goldy
The first six albums by legendary rock and metal vocalist Ronnie James Dio‘s band, Dio, are being released in a remastered box set, A Decade of Dio: 1983-1993, this week. (Get it from Amazon.) These...
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Attacker
Power metal is commonly regarded as a European style. Bands like Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody, Freedom Call, Sonata Arctica, HammerFall and Blind Guardian are from Italy, Germany, Finland, Sweden, and...
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Elf
Ronnie James Dio, a tiny man with a gigantic voice, was one of rock’s great lifers. He got his start in the late 1950s, fronting bands for which he played trumpet and bass in addition to singing....
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Tokyo Blade
by Phil Freeman Tokyo Blade were part of the flood tide of British metal acts making their debut in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the “New Wave of British Heavy Metal” that also gave the world Iron...
View ArticleLucifer
Discogs is not a perfectly accurate reflection of music history. Because its data is user-generated, it reflects those users’ preferences and the limitations of their knowledge. So, for example, while...
View ArticleChristian Muenzner
Christian Muenzner is an amazingly skilled guitarist. A former member of the German progressive death metal band Obscura, he’s currently part of the DragonForce-ish power metal act Eternity’s End. He’s...
View ArticleSpirit Adrift
Spirit Adrift, a duo from Phoenix, Arizona, play traditional metal: loud, not too fast, catchy and headbang-worthy at once, aiming for operatic grandeur but settling for fist-pumping grit. This is not...
View ArticleSunbomb
It’s good to have your preconceptions upended. It’s good to be surprised. But it doesn’t actually happen that often, especially as you age and the boundaries around your taste solidify. After a few...
View ArticleMarta Gabriel
Metal is in many ways unrecognizable to people who’ve been listening to it since its earliest days. A brief history lesson: heavy metal, as it was originally called, evolved out of the bluesy hard...
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