One On One With The GRIM 1

Trivium are like the Kardashians of heavy metal. One is certain to see their name a lot, whether you love 'em or hate 'em. They're just a successful band with quite a few sales and scores of iconic tours under their belt. And then there's the ever-present personality of frontman and prolific Twitch stream Matt Heafy, whose musical résumé is only growing. So for all the success and accolades, Trivium has accrued, how does their latest full length measure up? Trivium 's In The Court Of The Dragon is sure to excite a good portion of the metal world, despite my personal aversion to many of their of stylistic choices. Of those fans, many might even award it "Album Of The Year." It is objectively a fine album.  In The Court Of The Dragon galvanizes its metalcore foundation with thrash metal speeds, plenty of extreme metal detours, and gratuitous guitar solos. Vocalist and virtuoso Matt Heafy leaves few notes unturned, both on his fretboard and vocal register. ...

Jason Dost is a Philadelphia-area rocker who hits harder than Satan's bong rips. His doom band Moros recently released a crushing EP, entitled  High As Fuck And Ready To Die. He's a conspirator in the new black metal band  ANTIHÆLIX , who released their debut demo in early August 2021 on Dost's own business enterprise, Putrid Hammer Conspiracies . He's also played a role in bands like Sunburster and Krieg . So many riffs, so little time!   I recently spoke with Mr. Dost via email about his various acts of debauchery in the Philadelphia and east coast metal scene at large. Read on if you dare! What was the creative process like for High As Fuck And Ready To Die ? Or does the title explain it all? With   Moros , John or I will often come to practice with a song skeleton or what ends up being half of a song and we sorta fill in the gaps together and refine the music as a band. The two original jams on the cassette were two songs from a larger group of songs we intend t...

At The Gates return with their new album The Nightmare Of Being, a heavy dose of their iconic Swedish death metal melodies, with neurotic intensity, and several surprising progressive detours. Vocalist and lyricist Tomas Lindberg remains a key part of At The Gates' sound since their formation in 1990. His throaty attack lends the perfect balance of levity and delirium for At The Gates, with lyrics about society, philosophy and all sorts of anger and depression.  Finally, Tomas Lindberg goes one on one with the GRIM-1: HELL-O Tomas!   What's your favorite song on The Nightmare Of Being and why? It's so very hard to pick out songs in that way. We're old men now. We write albums. All the songs are sequenced meticulously to fit in the song order. But of course, the things we haven't done before is pretty rewarding to be able to do that and get a good reaction from that. With that i'm talking about Songs like “The fall Into Time,” “Garden of Cyrus,” “Cosmic Pessimis...

The UK's Wallowing  crash through sonic boundaries, as they merge music with print media. Their 2019 album  Planet Loss  is a 30-minute song of harsh noise, fat tones and spacey passages, paired with a graphic novel illustrating their lyrics - the story of a dystopian planet ruled by reptilian overlords and a worker's revolt. Wallowing's Tom and Ruari go one on one with the GRIM-1 in this interview:  HELL-O folks What was the creative process like, both for the comic book and its source material? Tom:  It was a lot of fun to write PLANET LOSS as a record and then revisit it in an entirely new format. When writing the music for the album we had to think about how we could effectively represent different scenarios, scenes and locations with sound that reinforced the lyrics/story. It was a similar process in creating the comic I feel, as we had the story/text good to go in the form of the lyrics - so it was a case of then reinforcing the content we already had wit...

Nashville's Yautja attack with an unorthodox amalgamation of punk, grindcore and sludge on their new album The Lurch. These dudes have diligently shredded and toured throughout the last decade, and their recent music video for their heavy single "Tethered" totally sold me. Yautja bassist and vocalist Kayhan goes One On One With The GRIM-1 in this phone interview, transcribed below.  HELL-O))) Kayhan! What's one song everyone should listen to off The Lurch? I would say "The Wait." It's like the third single video we put out for the record.  Your new music video "Tethered" is like a backyard recreation of Tetsuo: The Iron Man . What was your inspiration? I had an idea that was based off the lyrics to the song. I kind of like...this would either look really sick with high production value and practical effects and nice camera work and editing and all that stuff. Or it would look really cool, super lo-fi, straight to VHS, and getting a group of our...

Photo by Deidra King Terry Butler is one of the death metal bassists who has held it the fuck down since the eighties. His resume is a roadmap through Florida's most horrific death metal misadventures. He played on and co-wrote the classic Death albums  Leprosy (1988) and Spiritual Healing (1990) -  both Necrosexual favorites - then rejoined   Massacre for their albums From Beyond (19 91) and The Inhuman Condition (1992) . In the mid-nineties, Butler joined Six Feet Under , with barbaric stoner Chris Barnes, where he remained for fifteen years. Butler has since played with Obituary since their 2014 album Inked In Blood. His newest project, Inhuman Condition is a throwback to Massacre, in everything from the logo to the album title, and justly so - his Inhuman Condition bandmates are recently expatriated Massacre members Jeremy Kling and Taylor Nordberg. Their new album Rat God looks and sounds like vintage Massacre in all the ways that are sure to thr...

From Denmark, with riffs! Terminalist pushes the speedometer with their new album The Great Acceleration. Terminalist bring a frantic fusion of thrash metal and philosophy in their sound, and lots of quicky riffs too. Terminalist guitarist and vocalist Emil Hansen goes One On One With The GRIM-1 in this email interview.   What's your favorite song off the new album, and why?   Well, all of the songs are favourites but if I am to choose one, it would be ‘Terminal Dispatch’ which I believe is a total thrash banger. Or our progressive, blackened death/thrash opus, ‘The Invention of the Shipwreck’ with lyrics based directly on the philosophy of French thinker Paul Virilio who says that the invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck. It’s a magnificent quote highlighting the destruction of our technological bearings and I think the track delivers a similar sense of grandiosity.   The Great Acceleration by Terminalist Was there a moment when you decided to...

We're all Wyrm food in the end, or something. Whatever. Until then, Richmond's Book Of Wyrms is here to indulge you with a mind-expanding new album, Occult New Age . GRIM fact: Necrosexual and friends were set to play a show with Book Of Wyrms in May of 2020, but the great menopause shut everything down before we could announce it. The one that got away! Book Of Wyrms new album soars across a galaxy of sounds, with bass-line driven hooks, and synthesizer heavy psych rock. "Hollergoblin," for example, rollicks with a catchy bass part that sounds like Blur or Radiohead at their most potent.   The power couple at the core of this four piece is bassist Jake "Jay" Lindsey  and vocalist Sarah Moore Lindsay, whose ethereal vocals sing the cosmic sonnets of Occult New Age  like the second coming of Kate Bush.  Jake Lindsey from Book Of Wyrms goes One On One with the GRIM-1 in this email interview below.  What's one song everyone should drop their shit to list...