VMP Magazine

September 11, 2001, was a notable day in new metal releases, particularly for Rick Rubin’s American Recordings. In what can only be considered divine comic timing, Slayer’s ninth full-length God Hates Us All was on shelves when the Towers fell. They never passed up a chance to soak in blasphemy, and this was just handed to them on a bloody platter. Tom Araya screaming “GOD HATES US ALL” is doomer catharsis, finding joy in the utterly fucked. Other than that, it’s a standard issue Slayer record. (They would also release their final studio album Repentless on 9/11 – in 2015. The record’s OK, but they could not make the devil make lightning strike twice.)

Throughout his life, Townes Van Zandt claimed Houston, Austin, in and outside Nashville, Boulder and Crested Butte, Colorado, as residences, but his true homes were the stage and the road. Rarely was his itinerary not filled with dates, and this was especially (and alarmingly) true immediately before his death on New Year’s Day in 1997, after finding devoted followings in Western Europe and Australia. Some of his lifestyle stemmed from constantly moving as a child and never finding permanence — his lifelong ability to make new friends easily was only a slight balm — and some of it was a self-fulfilling prophecy as a wandering troubadour who put playing above everything else. Thus, his most defining text has to be a live recording of just him, “Mr. Guitar” and his audience, and Live at The Old Quarter, Houston, Texas is often — rightfully — cited as the highlight of his long, tumultuous career.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed, and every other metal type under the sun.

Roadburn, held every year in Tilburg, Netherlands, is the metal festival of your dreams, brought to reality. For one, it’s in the Netherlands, a paradise whether you’re a libertine or a sober naturalist. It celebrates metal’s creative spectrum, not focusing on one particular genre. What other festival would have Pentagram, Diamanda Galas, and Repulsion in a single day, much less a whole weekend? Roadburn commissions full-album sets from some of the more notable acts the play the fest, including Yob, Neurosis, and Wolves in the Throne Room.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed, and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column that considers the best releases in black, death, power, Swedish black, speed, and every other metal genre you can name.

After listening to all the best and some of the worst in metal this year, I only have one question remaining: Can I go back to watching Bon Appetit videos now?

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed, and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed, and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column. These are the 10 best metal albums of 2018.

We’re releasing a limited-edition version of the new album from Baton Rouge metal killers Thou, and you can grab that over here.

Below, you can read an interview Andy O’Connor — Vinyl Me, Please’s metal columnist — did with the band’s frontman, Bryan Funck, where they touch upon trying to challenge the standards of metal. You can stream Magus at NPR right now.

Every week, we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, the new album from Deafheaven.

Every month, our Deaf Forever column rounds up the best releases in metal, ranging from Swedish post-black and d-beat to Tunisian metalcore and post-power metal. Deaf Forever is also now a playlist: a collection of the month’s best metal, plus whatever our metal columnist, Andy O’Connor, feels like putting in here. It’s the most punishing, unrelenting Spotify playlist you’ll listen to every month. Turn up the volume and raise your second and fifth digits, this is Deaf Forever.

Every month, our Deaf Forever column rounds up the best releases in metal, ranging from Swedish post-black and d-beat to Tunisian metalcore and post-power metal. Deaf Forever is also now a playlist: a collection of the month’s best metal, plus whatever our metal columnist, Andy O’Connor, feels like putting in here. It’s the most punishing, unrelenting Spotify playlist you’ll listen to every month. Turn up the volume and raise your second and fifth digits, this is Deaf Forever.

Every month, our Deaf Forever column rounds up the best releases in metal, ranging from Swedish post-black and d-beat to Tunisian metalcore and post-power metal. Deaf Forever is also now a playlist: a collection of the month’s best metal, plus whatever our metal columnist, Andy O’Connor, feels like putting in here. It’s the most punishing, unrelenting Spotify playlist you’ll listen to every month. Turn up the volume and raise your second and fifth digits, this is Deaf Forever.

Every month, our Deaf Forever column rounds up the best releases in metal, ranging from Swedish post-black and d-beat to Tunisian metalcore and post-power metal. Deaf Forever is also now a playlist: a collection of the month’s best metal, plus whatever our metal columnist, Andy O’Connor, feels like putting in here. It’s the most punishing, unrelenting Spotify playlist you’ll listen to every month. Turn up the volume and raise your second and fifth digits, this is Deaf Forever. R.I.P. Vinnie Paul from Pantera.

Every month, our Deaf Forever column rounds up the best releases in metal, ranging from Swedish post-black and d-beat to Tunisian metalcore and post-power metal. Deaf Forever is also now a playlist: a collection of the month's best metal, plus whatever our metal columnist, Andy O'Connor, feels like putting in here. It's the most punishing, unrelenting Spotify playlist you'll listen to every month. Turn up the volume and raise your second and fifth digits, this is Deaf Forever.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed, and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed, and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed, and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed, and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed, and every other metal type under the sun.

In 1980, the Ramones asked us “Do You Remember Rock ’n’ Roll Radio?” For as fast, loud, and loose as they played rock ’n’ roll, the Ramones were also traditionalists pining for mono 45s and bubblegum pop. But they weren’t alone: screaming for rock to return to is former glory on the radio has been around as long as the music itself. Reactionary? It sure ain’t always forward-thinking. Songs for the Deaf, the third album from the California rock band Queens of the Stone Age, came out one year before the Darkness’ Permission to Land, a paean to ’70s glam rock built on an attractive, if unsustainable, foundation of cheekiness, and it also came out around the rise of the New New York, where the Strokes were trying their damnedest to get Max’s Kansas City a new lease. Andrew W.K. made the best hair metal album with I Get Wet in… 2001, a decade after grunge allegedly made rock good again. (Grunge revived metal, but that’s another piece.) Which is to say: There was a lot of “rock revival” going on in the early 2000s. Queens front man Josh Homme could rock a leather jacket better than most of the aforementioned rockers of varying substance, but that’s not exactly the point. They were a lot more aware that nostalgia is a world-builder than their peers, and in building Songs for the Deaf as a trip through a mythical rock radio ecosystem, Queens created a rollicking journey that radio could only dream of providing.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed, and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed, and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column. These are the 20 best metal albums of 2017.

Usually, Deaf Forever highlights the best metal (and metalish) records every month. For October’s edition, we’ll dive deep into a record so massive, it needs its whole column: Bell Witch’s Mirror Reaper, which came out last month on Profound Lore.

Every week, we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week’s album is The Dusk In Us, the ninth album from Converge.

We’re releasing a special, limited to 300 swamp green vinyl edition of High on Fire’s Blessed Black Wings. Here, our metal columnist Andy O’Connor writes a Liner Notes essay about the album.

Every week, we tell you about an album we think you need to spend time with. This week's album is Queens of the Stone Age's seventh album, Villains.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column, where we review the best in doom, black, speed, and every other metal type under the sun.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column that considers the best releases in black, death, power, Swedish black, speed, and every other metal genre you can name.

You’ve likely heard saxophonist Colin Stetson through his work with Bon Iver and Arcade Fire, among numerous other indie bands. He’s not a name you’d associate with metal, even with New York’s fertile experimental metal scene. With Ex Eye, he’s made an entrance to that world, and what an entrance it is. Their self-titled debut full-length on Relapse is the jazz-black metal slammer of the summer, with four pieces that travel through anger, ecstasy, mystery and dreamlike horror. Black metal’s hypnotic repetition meets free jazz’s curiosity and rage; this record feels more at home with the two seperate forms than previous jazz-metal fusions, excavating its own possibilities. Even at an already brisk 37 minutes, it flies by like Reign in Blood, making open space feel more tightly contained than it looks. Ex Eye are methodical and cerebral without dousing that natural fire, a common link between the best metal and jazz.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column that considers the best releases in black, death, power, Swedish black, speed, and every other metal genre you can name.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column that considers the best releases in black, death, power, Swedish black, speed, and every other metal genre you can name.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column that considers the best releases in black, death, power, Swedish black, speed, and every other metal genre you can name.

Every month, Andy O'Connor breaks down the best in thrash, death, black, Norwegian black, speed, and every other kind of metal that exists on the internet, on tapes, or in your nightmares. We call it DEAF FOREVER.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column.