Jason Roche

One of the year's more relentless metal festivals will lay waste to downtown this weekend. California Discord Fest invades The Vortex for two days of whiplash-inducing death metal, brutal grindcore, and mosh-friendly hardcore. Acoustic interludes, good cop/bad cop vocal tradeoffs, and shouts to the crowd to "Jump the fuck up!"......

We recently told you about how Norwegian metal giant Indie Recordings was partnering with Inglewood-based label Prosthetic Records. Now there's more news on the Prosthetic front. The imprint has revealed to West Coast Sound that they are in the process of pulling their catalog from Spotify. (Turns out we're not......

See also: Top Five Metal Guest Vocalists That Make You Say "WTF" When it comes to our musical preferences, we pretend that we value artistic integrity, strong musicianship, and meaningful lyrics above all else. But in truth we often fall for a good gimmick. Whether it's a made-up back-story, bizarre......

At the end of August, Pennsylvania hardcore/metalcore outfit Century released its third album, Red Giant. The group's emotionally-charged lyrics are given a fiery delivery via the combined efforts of vocalist Carson Slovak and bassist/vocalist Ricky Armellino. On this album they recruited some back-up to help on vocals. That back-up came......

Back in February Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett cryptically commented to Rolling Stone that the band was crafting something that was "not really 100 percent a Metallica record." Indeed, it turned out that the band was working with Lou Reed on a full album; a collaboration with Ke$ha would have been......

Those that missed Motley Crue at last week's Sunset Strip Music Festival will not have to wait long to get another chance to relive the swagger of 1980s hair-rock. On Saturday night, '80s glam-rockers Odin will return to the Whisky A Go-Go. Odin released several EPs and one full-length album......

Oakland gore-grinders Impaled clocked in at number one on our recent list of the ten bloodiest metal album covers with their 2001 EP, Choice Cuts. The album cover has become almost mythical over the years, and West Coast Sound got the low-down on it from the band's bassist/vocalist Ross Sewage......

Who: GridLink, Phobia, and Maruta Where: The Roxy When: Sunday, August 14, 2011 The Crowd: Dozens of metalheads shaking off a hangover from Saturday, including some familiar faces braving this show after spending all of the previous day at The Power Of The Riff. Better Than: Being hyped for pre-season......

(Check out our review of the Power of the Riff festival here.) Last year, The Power Of The Riff 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......

Makh Daniels, lead singer of S.F. hardcore group Early Graves, passed away last August after a van accident during the tour for their latest album, Goner. The accident came at a pivotal point in the young band's career, as many heavy metal/punk journalists had them pegged as ready to break......