Author Archives: Guido

Interview: Allen West

Allen West was one of the most important people in the early Death Metal scene. As a founding member of Massacre, Obituary, and Six Feet Under, West cemented his place in the history of Death Metal.

In the past couple of years West seemingly dropped out of the public eye when he was imprisoned for 18 months, but he has gotten his life back on track and is back with his new band SouthWicked.

Make the jump to read my interview with Allen West, where we talked about the imprisonment, his departures from Obituary and Six Feet Under, and more.

Review: Rising Pain – War Of Souls

Arizona has brought quite a few great bands to us over the years. For example Nuclear Death, Atrophy and most recently Job For A Cowboy. Rising Pain is a relatively new act (formed in 2002) from Phoenix, AZ and I’m sure they would like to be named among the best metal bands from said state.

To be perfectly honest with you, I have heard of the band before but never got around to check them out. They’ve released two full-lenght records (Existence Is Futile in 2007 and The Essence Of Decay in 2009) so far and this year marks the release of their most recent work, the EP War Of Souls.

I’m going to review that very EP right after the jump, to find out if they are indeed one of Arizona’s finest.

Review: Thinning The Herd – Oceans Rise

You know what I like the most about writing for Dose of Metal? I get tons of music for free, and legally too. Most of the bands I’m covering for reviews, I didn’t even know of before. In some cases, as with The Cleansing, Die, Reckless Manslaughter, Nephrolith, Colonel Blast and more, I’m really happy to be in a place where those bands — or people who do promotion for those bands — want me to write about their music. Simply because I also really, really enjoy that music.

In some other cases — and I’m not going to name bands now — I’d rather not write about them. I like to make fun of a band here and there but I really don’t enjoy bashing unknown bands, even if they do deserve it. But sometimes I just can’t help myself, like it happened in the Spotlight (R.I.P.) collumn a bunch of times.

You might just now be wondering why the hell I’m rambling so much. Well, it’s simple. I’ve never heard anything by Thinning The Herd before, and I don’t know anything about these three dudes either. I’d like to listen to their album, Oceans Rise, with a fresh and clean mind. I honestly don’t know what I’m getting into with this band, but I would like to find out if they’re going to end up in a section with the bands mentioned in the first paragraph or with the bands not mentioned in the second paragraph. Make the jump to find out.

Friday Top 26: Heavy Metal Alphabet

We’ve done so many Top 10’s already, but this time we’ve decided to top it all with a Top 26. 26? There was something with 26, right? You got it! The Latin alphabet, that is used in most countries on this planet, has 26 letters.

So what are we going to do with these 26 letters? Well, every band has a bandname, and every bandname consists of letters. Can you follow me so far? We’re going to list the best band for each letter of the Latin alphabet (including their best song and album).

Ain’t that cool, now? It sure is. Make the jump for 26 letters and 26 ear-shattering Metal bands!

One more time: Up the Irons!

I was just thinking of a headline for this particular news post about Iron Maiden, and ‘one more time’ sprung into my mind. And then I had the above song by Daft Punk stuck in my head. The mind works in mysterious ways.

So let’s get on topic: We’re in for, at least, one more Iron Maiden album! That’s right, The Last Sucker Final Frontier was not Maiden’s last album, according to Bruce Dickinson:

“The singer (…) believes Maiden will make “at least one more album” to follow last year’s chart-topping 15th record The Final Frontier.”

That’s what he said to the Daily Star, and he added:

“Things have been going a bit more prog-rock on our recent albums and the fans seem to love that.”

You know, I’m actually a bit split on that now. I’m happy that Iron Maiden put their retirement on hold (for, what seems like, the 1.000th time), but I was not a big fan of The Final Frontier, nor A Matter Of Life And Death. I don’t dislike Matter… but I do dislike Frontier. Let’s put it some other way, because you simply can’t dislike any Iron Maiden album: I don’t care for The Final Frontier.

So I would have liked the band to go back to their Brave New World sound but, I guess, we’re in for another snoozefest. Oh well, yay either way.