Interviews

Sometimes, what you see doesn’t always match up to what you initially expected. Take NYC’s brass/hip-hop/rock band Brass Against for example. Led by brainchild/guitarist Brad Hammonds, the nonet created several videos that went viral of various cover songs from bands such as Audioslave, Tool, and Rage Against the Machine.

The Hu is taking North America by storm, from the band’s headlining tour to their innovative style of “hunnu rock”—a captivating blend of modern heavy rock and Mongolian folk music sung in their native tongue and using traditional Eastern instruments. Gaining viral international success from their debut music videos, which are comparatively epic to a scene from Game of Thrones, The Hu was quickly scooped up by Eleven Seven Music and recently released their debut full-length album The Gereg.

It’s a great time to be a Testament fan. The band is arguably creating some of the most original and dynamic music of its career, taking aim at their classic material from the 1980s with a fresh ear and the willingness to go all in with modern technology. It hasn’t been an easy road, however, as break ups, roadblocks, and personal tragedies have all stood in Testament’s way.

With The Pizza EP still cooling on the racks and Full HD recently released, we tracked down perma-grinning guitarist Marc “B.B. Plaza” Busqué to chat about how pizza and thrash metal rule and run his world.

There are few bands as varied in sound and audience as Astronoid. Having spent the better part of the last two years opening for unholy metal champions Ghost and Zeal & Ardor, as well as prog heroes Periphery and Tesseract, the Lowell, Massachusetts quartet is gearing up to hit the road with Between the Buried and Me.

It’s been an eventful year for Southern California metalcore kings Of Mice & Men. Despite the departure of their founding vocalist Austin Carlile, the band has soldiered on as a quartet, with bassist and clean singer Aaron Pauley taking over full vocal duties.

With their latest album, Bleed the Future, Archspire has carved out breathing room within tech death’s confines by upping the melody and infectiousness. We caught up with bassist Jared Smith and guitarist Dean Lamb to talk about musical catchiness, the relationship between cooking shows and tech death, and how Jason Momoa makes them nervous.

Formed in 2013 in Boston, symphonic/power/black/melodic death metal band Seven Spires’ members met while attending the renowned Berklee College of Music. Featuring frontwoman Adrienne Cowan, guitarist Jack Kosto, bassist Peter de Reyna, and drummer Chris Dovas, the band has just released its sophomore affair, Emerald Seas, through Frontiers Music.

The bond that brings and keeps the members of Misery Index together is rooted as much in the music its four members create as in the message purveyed by the band’s lyrics. Heralded since the early 00s as one of the brighter lights shining from the netherworld of America’s death metal/grindcore scene…

After six successful studio albums, Xentrix shows off all of their technical and lyrical prowess on their new release, Seven Words. While the band has been one of the leading figures in the thrash metal movement, guitarist Kristian Havard says it all comes down to the love of the music that keeps them fueled creatively with each release.