Interview: Michael LePond of Symphony X talks touring, songwriting and the robot revolution of “Iconoclast”

“High concept” metal can be pretentious crap. You know it’s true, because you’ve heard “high concept” metal, too. Think of all the times you’ve heard one of Yngwie J. Malmsteen’s attempts to classy-up his albums with a bit of classical noodling. Yes, he’s stellar at arpeggios and I like some of his more straight-forward songs (“I Am A Viking!” Yea!) [...]

Factory Damage to end career by opening for Anthrax Jan. 29 in Louisville

Every rock musician who picks up a guitar or set of drumsticks dreams of sharing a stage with their idols. Very few musicians and bands ever get that opportunity. But Owensboro’s Factory Damage have had a little more success than the average band; over the past seven years, the band has played shows with major-label [...]

Interview: Municipal Waste guitarist Ryan Waste ready to get back to band’s trademark punk-metal attack

Reviewing music is a pretentious business. Just look around the Web and you’ll find scads of half-educated, opinionated dolts like me trying to find something meaningful to say about every damn album that plops onto their desks. Thing is, most of our smart-guy opinions are 99 percent crap. “Oh yes, most people think ‘Deliverance’ is [...]

Interview: Wolves in the Throne Room bring three-album cycle to an end with “Celestial Lineage”

 This month, Washington State’s Wolves in the Throne Room will close a circle the band opened four years ago, with the release of “Celestial Lineage.” In a recent interview, drummer Aaron Weaver and he and his brother, vocalist/guitarist Nathan Weaver, embarked on what they envisioned as a mythic trilogy in 2007, with ”Two Hunters.” The second part of the trilogy, [...]

Interview: Soilwork vocalist “Speed” Strid talks about Peter Wilchers’ return to the band and flips the switch on “The Panic Broadcast”

When Soilwork guitarist Peter Wilchers decided to retire from touring and leave the band in 2005, vocalist Bjorn “Speed” Strid was determined to hold Soilwork together. So Strid, who had co-founded Soilwork with Wilchers in 1996, hired guitarist Daniel Antonsson to fill Wilcher’s spot. While the band’s first album without Wilchers, “Sworn To A Great Divide” was worthy of respect, Strid felt there was a void [...]

Interview: Exodus guitarist Gary Holt talks about his tribute to Paul Baloff, angry music and “Exhibit B: The Human Condition”

When Gary Holt – the founder, chief songwriter and co-lead guitarist for the perpetual motion machine that is Exodus – began writing material for the band’s new album, he decided to pay tribute to one of his biggest musical inspirations. That inspiration, of course, is Paul Baloff, the legendary singer who fronted Exodus when the band recorded its [...]

Interview: Mnemic’s Guillaume Bideau talks about “Sons of the System”

The members of Denmark’s Mnemic are in the middle of a big year. In January, the band released “Sons of the System,” a precise, punishing and shockingly melodic piece of staccato, mechanized Orwellian art, which is also the band’s first album in three years. In addition to a summer of playing festivals in Europe, the band will travel behind the bamboo [...]

Interview: Ihsahn discusses new solo album, his past with Emperor and black metal

Former Emperor frontman Ihsahn was never afraid of taking musical risks. At a time when the early Norwegian black metal movement was still lo-fi and jagged-edged, Ihsahn led Emperor into a fuller sound, paring classical arrangements, strings and – occasionally – clean vocals with the band’s blistering black metal. The music was both genre defining [...]

Interview: Nile guitarist Dallas Toler-Wade discusses “Those Whom The Gods Detest”

When drummer George Kollias joined the Egyptian-themed death metal band Nile in 2004, the band moved away from the intricate compositions that had categorized earlier albums and embraced a more traditional death metal style. The move was intentional, and made because Kollias was such a monumental death metal drummer. Mixing Middle Eastern instrumentation, chanting and sound effects into songs ”is something that [...]

Interview: Udo Dirkschneider of Accept and U.D.O.

Udo Dirkschneider is an icon in metal. As the frontman for Accept, Dirkschneider created a string of metal anthems, including the grinding “Balls To The Wall,” the mammoth “Metal Heart,” the mercilessly awesome “Fast As A Shark” and the pounding “Living For Tonight.” But let me be honest: After 1990, I had no idea Dirkschneider [...]