Reviews: Twingiant "Sin Nombre"

By: Garviel Loken

Following closely on the heals of their recently released debut album "Mass Driver", the new extended play from Twingiant is pretty much business as usual for this Phoenix area band. All five tracks on "Sin Nombre" drink from the bluesy waters of some backwoods bayou and personify the Clutch/Melvins school of rock and roll. The rusty, iron encrusted vocals still roar much like on the debut record, the thick atmosphere of groove is still prevalent, but there seems to be something missing all the same.

Reviews: Swamp Wolf "The Brilliance Of A Feral Mind"

By: Garviel Loken

Hailing from Flagstaff, Swamp Wolf delivers one hell of a potent composition on "The Brilliance of a Feral Mind". Three parts venom and one part bile, these guys are adept practitioners in the art of genre bending. Call it blackened thrash and hardcore or any other clever conjunction of titles, the only thing that matters is whether the material is good or not. In the matter of Swamp Wolf, the material is not only good, it is great.

Reviews: Unfortunate Sircumstances "2012 EP"

By: Garviel Loken

Gritty and completely unpolished, this three song introduction to Unfortunate Sircumstances unleashes a deluge of crusty hardcore punk in under four minutes. The brevity of the material certainly fits the style that the band plays, but leaves the listener wanting more of it. However, there is fortunately just enough substance on this EP to give a satisfying taste of what Unfortunate Sircumstances has to offer for future efforts.

Reviews: Black Orchid "Where This Life Is Leading"

By: Garviel Loken

Hailing from way up north in Flagstaff, Black Orchid plays a mixed bag style of metal that many listeners may identify with. On their album "Where This Life Is Leading", the band certainly lets you know what the deal is as there are quite a few stylistic influences that are immediately apparent as they happen each time over the course of the nine songs. Intentional or not, these sounds are pretty glaring and obvious.

Reviews: Blister Unit "Christ Ape"

By: Garviel Loken

Do you like chaos? Well, you'll be going to the right place when you press play on "Christ Ape", the new full length album from Blister Unit. Across thirteen tracks and thirty six minutes, Blister Unit earns their band name with flying colors. The music is utterly relentless and dense like the imploding plutonium core of a thermonuclear weapon at the moment of detonation.

Driving Force: Wayne Rudell (Powered Wig Machine)

By: Salvia Hex

In this edition of Driving Force, we journey south to Americas' borderlands to track down the mysterious leader of Powered Wig Machine, the infamous Dr. Wayne Van Halen Rudell Esq. Our good friend Wayne is not only the driving force behind heavy Western rockers Powered Wig Machine, but he has also recently started to establish Sierra Vista as a regular tour stop for traveling bands by reaching out to a local bar named JR's Pub and enticing them to open the doors to bearded, vest wearing rockers from across this continent. We tracked Wayne down as he was attempting to sell some nu-metal kids a BOSS Metal Zone pedal (no mods) outside the local Hastings and forced him at donut-point to answer some questions for us.

Reviews: 500 Cunts/Stab/Bloody Corpse Dismemberment/Blister Unit "Four Way Split"

By: Garviel Loken

Four bands and a total of forty-five tracks may seem ridiculous at first glance, but like the intensity one might experience during a micro burst, the experience is over all too abruptly. The guilty parties named in this indictment (500 Cunts, Bloody Corpse Dismemberment, Stab, and Blister Unit) have committed numerous and glorious audio atrocities across the breadth of the recording and must now be called to account for them. Some are steeped in the chaos of grindcore, while others wear the crusty outer garments of punk and death metal.