Music

Guitarist Phil Demmel of reunited San Francisco Bay Area thrashers VIO-LENCE spoke to Portugal’s Underground’s Voice about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the band’s new EP, tentatively due in 2021 via Metal Blade Records. “We are recording a five-song EP,” he said. “And we just finished song number four last night, and I’m pretty excited about it. It’s fast. The songs are hard to play. Sean [Killian, vocals] sounds great, man — his vocals sound so great. Perry‘s [Strickland, drums] playing crazy, like [‘Muppets’ character] Animal, back there. And the riffs are hard — I’m pushing myself with the riffs. I don’t want you to just be able to pick up a guitar and play the riff; I want it to be pretty toug...

RATING: 8/10 Following hot on the heels of last year’s welcome remix and reissue of 2013 debut album “Interstice”, KNEEL mastermind Pedro Mau has wasted no time conjuring a blistering follow-up. For those unfamiliar with this project, we are firmly in ultra-modern extreme metal territory here, with elements of death and thrash metal, brutal hardcore and even industrial and math rock swirling around in the Portuguese soloist’s sonic cauldron. The result is, in essence, an unpredictable but gloriously precise new strain of groove metal, with all the syncopated violence and techy flair that such an endeavor necessarily entails these days. But Mau is a great songwriter too, and there’s enough diversity on “Ailment” to belie its relatively straightforwa...

Sammy Hagar has spoken out in more detail about his renewed friendship with Eddie Van Halen in the months leading up to the legendary guitarist’s death. Hagar, who previously said he hadn’t talked to Eddie since since the conclusion of VAN HALEN‘s 2004 reunion tour, discussed his former bandmate in a new interview with Rock 105.5‘s “The Angi Taylor Show”. Hagar said (hear audio below): “I think that the word is pretty much out that Eddie and I buried the hatchet earlier on this year. We didn’t go around talking about it. He asked me not to talk about it, and I did not talk about it. But now, looking back, if we wouldn’t have come to terms with that feud we were having after the reunion tour, I wouldn’t have been able to come to gr...

RATING: 8/10 There’s a lot to be said for some old-fashioned, wholesome fun. At this point in history, however, I would argue that there’s slightly more to be said for screaming “Fuck it!” and listening to GORATORY instead. Always one of the most disgusting bands in death metal, the Boston four piece set the lyrical bar as low as possible, with early bursts of grotesque brutality like “Fisting The Elderly” and “Severed Fuck Stump”, all of which could easily detract from the fact that GORATORY are also one of the most dazzling and singular bands operating at the extreme end of the deathly realm. Admittedly, fans have been made to wait: “Sour Grapes” arrives a full 16 years after its immediate predecessor, “Rice On Suede”...