Metal Blade Records

RIP Jeff Hanneman: Slayer Guitarist Is Dead

Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman has died. The cause was liver failure; he passed at an area hospital near his home this morning. He was 49. Hanneman has not been active in Slayer for the last few years, since suffering a flesh-eating bacteria from a spider bite. No word yet if that caused any c ... More >>

Random Notebook Dump: The Year In Metal 2012

A lot of monumental things in metal this year. Some of them involved actual music. Many did not. In honor of the year's end, we gave our notebook a good shaking to help us remember the most important stuff. Top 20 L.A. Metal Albums of All Time -Lamb of God vocalist Randy Blythe was jailed for a mo ... More >>

Metal Blade Records Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary

A look back at the little metal label that could

The Best L.A. Metal Concerts to See in November

Fri, Nov 9 Von The Black Castle On November 9 San Francisco's Von celebrates the release of their debut album Satanic Blood by headlining the Ritual of The Black Mass festival. The group was one of the earliest American bands to adopt a black metal sound in the early '90s. They broke up after recor ... More >>

Gypsyhawk Is Interested in Shit Like Quantum Physics

August 15th, 2008 was a tumultuous day for Eric Harris, who was then bassist for Ohio-based death-thrashers Skeletonwitch. Rising tensions with the rest of the band came to a head. Having just played a raucous show at the Troubadour, the group kicked Harris out and left him in Los Angeles. During ... More >>

Crate Digging With Z-Trip

Kelly Brown​Z-Trip is lost. We're standing in the middle of Rockaway Records in Silver Lake, in the rock section's "G-H" area, and the DJ -- born Zach Sciacca -- is in his own world. We were discussing the golden age of DJ culture when he got sidetracked, his fingers flipping madly through vin ... More >>

The Power Of The Riff: Skip The Smoke Break For These Five Bands

Nathaniel ShannonPentagram vocalist Bobby Liebling​Last year, The Power Of The Riff festival packed hundreds of metal kids, hardcore kids, and old geezers that remember the tape-trading days of the 1980s into the Echo and Echoplex, partly due to the ability to offer free admission thanks to a ... More >>

Slayer’s Bloody Template

More tales of serial murder and psychosis, state oppression, snuff films and endless war over oil

Dos Equis

The Dark Side of Cherry Red

Engine on a side spur