Destruction: Full Speed Thrash

There are not many thrashers left these days that can genuinely say they've been around to see the genre from its inception through to the present day. But Marcel Schirmer, better known to millions of metal heads around the world as Schmier, bassist and vocalist of seminal German thrash act Destruction, has been there from the beginning. Though the years and the miles keep adding up, Schmier has never allowed Destruction to let old age or the wear and tear of the road slow the band down. Quite the contrary, in fact, as the band, which also includes guitarist Mike Sifringer, the only member to stick with Destruction for its entire existence, and new edition Vaaver on the drums, has included some of its most consistently blistering material in its latest album, Day of Reckoning. Schmier points to the addition of Vaaver, a.k.a. Wawrzyniec Dramowicz, a classically trained musician from Poland who has also done time with the Wachau symphonic orchestra, as the reason behind Destruction's resurgence in the speed department.

Read more: Destruction: Full Speed Thrash

Interview: Abhor - On Esoteric Winds

For the past 15 years plus, Italian self-described “Esoteric Horror Black Metal” band Abhor has gone about maniacally splicing the unexplained elements of mankind's wayward path along the astral plane, occultism, witchcraft, and esotericism with an atmospheric, depressive, and darkly beguiling musical formula that drips from the many disparate branches of the black metal family tree. Though various forces have conspired in the past couple of years to keep Abhor off the stage, the band has nevertheless continued to compose, and has just released it's fifth full length album, the thought provoking and intriguing  Ab Luna Lucenti, Ab Noctua Protecti, a record that, while low on technicality, revels in its slow, simple brand of misanthropy and broad, heady exploration through minimalist but recognizable black metal progressions and layered keyboard atmospherics. Band founder, guitarist, and composer Domine Saevum Gravem spoke to Taipei Metal about the band's history, philosophy, and new album.

Read more: Interview: Abhor - On Esoteric Winds

Interview: Nocturnal Fear - War Metal

For over a decade, Detroit, Michigan  thrashers Nocturnal Fear have been dropping one bunker busting album of searing warfare-inspired Teutonic terror after another. Heavily inspired by the likes of legendary acts such as Sodom and Kreator, both lyrically and musically, Nocturnal Fear is a band that has known exactly what its message is from day one, and hasn't compromised its sound or values for one note or a single line. With a new album, Excessive Cruelty, the band's fifth full length, just released on Moribund Cult, founding member and guitarist Reverend Slavehunter talked to Taipei Metal about the new record, and Nocturnal Fear's unwavering and incendiary approach to true thrash metal.

Read more: Interview: Nocturnal Fear - War Metal

Interview: Amorphis - Lore, Legend, and Death Metal

For most metal fans, Amorphis is a band that needs little introduction. Just over two decades ago the Helsinki, Finland-based group got its start as a straight ahead death metal band before embarking on a more progressive path with its second album, the much lauded Tales from the Thousand Lakes. This was the album that first saw Amorphis incorporate clean vocals along with folk and quasi-psychedelic elements into a concept record focused on the Kalevala, a 19th century work of epic poetry centered on Finnish and Karelian folklore and mythology. Since that release, just over a decade and a half ago, Amorphis has forged its own way in the metal world, further exploring the ever blurring edge between folk and metal music, deftly treading between the two worlds on many an epic offering. Today, the band is touring in support of its tenth studio album, The Beginning of Times, which once again delves into the Kalevala for more musical and lyrical inspiration. The album capped off a busy past couple of years for Amorphis, which saw the band release a CD/DVD retrospective set called Forging the Land of Thousand Lakes in 2010 before hunkering down in the studio for The Beginning of Times sessions. Band founder and guitarist Esa Holopainen spoke to Taipei Metal about his band's new album, which was just released in May in Europe and June in North America, and his experiences in the metal scene over the past two decades plus when Amorphis played in Taipei alongside Children of Bodom in June.

Read more: Interview: Amorphis - Lore, Legend, and Death Metal

Interview: Almah - Second Life

Though it could be argued that the best metal bands of today aren't the young guns, but the old schoolers, metal is definitely kinder to the under thirty set than it is to those creeping towards the dark side of the hill. People age, mature, and inevitably wind up with a different set of priorities when they hit their thirties than they had when they were twenty. Such is the natural, and somewhat depressing order of things, for most, anyway. But then there are those musicians who hold onto that youthful vitality with such unshakable tenacity that, even as they see their band mates veering toward the road most traveled, they refuse to be drawn by its near overpowering gravitational pull

Read more: Interview: Almah - Second Life

Interview: Vains of Jenna

It's been quite a ride for Swedish rockers Vains of Jenna. On the strength of nothing more than a four-song demo, the Falkenberg four-piece was offered a spot on the bill of the Motley Crue-headlined Cruefest in Hollywood in January of 2005.  It was at that gig, at the infamous Whisky a Go-Go club on the even more infamous hive of scum, villainy, and depravity, the Sunset Strip, that the band caught the attention of former Tuff front man and current Metal Sludge proprietor Stevie Rachelle, who would become the band's manager. At the time, the band's two youngest members were just 18 years old, not even of legal age to set foot in the Whisky.

Read more: Interview: Vains of Jenna

Interview: Satan's Host - Guided by the Hands of the Devil

Twenty-five years is a relative eternity for anything to endure in these modern times, let alone something as combustible and erratic as a metal band. But that’s exactly what so-called cult metal act Satan’s Host, an overtly Satanic power metal band which in its contemporary era has grown to incorporate more extreme tendencies into its sound, has managed to do. The band was founded in 1986 when vocalist Harry Conklin, a.k.a. Leviathan, left Jag Panzer, and would release the full length Metal from Hell that year, followed by the Midnight Wind EP in 1987, before the group was derailed by a 12-year hiatus. In the years following the break, Satan’s Host has kept a steady clip of productivity courtesy of guitarist and main songwriter Patrick Evil, and last year announced that Leviathan, who had not joined his band mates in their reunion, was in fact returning to the group to appear on their latest offering, the acclaimed By the Hands of the Devil, which was released in early May. Drummer Anthony “Evil Hobbit” Lopez recently spoke to Taipei Metal about Satanism and all things Satan’s Host—past, present, and devilish future.

Read more: Interview: Satan's Host - Guided by the Hands of the Devil

Interview: Death Angel - The Art of Thriving

Any recounting of the halcyon days of the Bay Area thrash scene worth its share of blood upon the stage would have to include the story of Death Angel. With Death Angel’s original lineup comprised of cousins, all in their early teens at the time of the band’s founding, it was a family affair forged in the fury of one of metal’s most oft-glorified movements. They would go on to release three classic albums between 1987 and 1990, The Ultra-Violence, Frolic Through the Park, and Act III, before a terrible van accident, which left drummer Andy Galeon critically injured, became the catalyst for the band’s demise. The members of Death Angel, long having been frustrated with their place in the metal pantheon of the time, walked away from the defining institution of their young lives, with singer Mark Osegueda moving to New York to go to college and pursue a life outside the music scene, and the founding members, guitarist Rob Cavestany, Galeon, bassist Dennis Pepa and guitarist Gus Pepa going on to form The Organization, a relatively short-lived project that released two albums, and toured the U.S. and Europe alongside such venerable acts as Motorhead and Fight. It wasn’t until 1998 that Osegueda, Galeon, and Cavestany reunited musically, not to resurrect Death Angel, but first to form a new band called Swarm. It was then that the seeds of a Death Angel reunion were sewn.

Read more: Interview: Death Angel - The Art of Thriving

Interview: Hrizg

Spanish misanthropic one-man black metal act Hrizg recently released its second full-length record, Anthems to Decrepitude, via Moribund Cult Records. Taipei Metal corresponded with the multi-instrumentalist and vocalist for whom the band is named.

Taipei Metal: Hrizg's new album, Anthems to Decrepitude, possesses a very raw sound with nods to the early Burzum and Mayhem releases. What drew you to this raw approach?

Hrizg: Ave! It is because this is the Black Metal I like and I usually hear. I mix this influences with some other southern Black Metal bands, and as I see it, Hrizg is a sum of those sounds.

Read more: Interview: Hrizg

Interview: Dodsferd

Athens, Greece-based nihilistic black metal band Dodsferd, the solo project spawned by the perpetually bleak and seemingly psychologically unstable Nikos Spanakis, better known by his stage name, Wrath, has maintained a blistering pace since the band was first formed in 2001. Since the release of its first demo in 2003, Dodsferd has cultivated a catalog of 10 more releases, from EPs to splits and compilations, to go along with six full length albums. The band’s latest full length release, Spitting With Hatred, The Insignificance of Life, which was put out by Moribund Records on March 21st, sees Wrath and Dodsferd at its misanthropic best. Dodsferd’s main man took a brief moment to humor Taipei Metal’s humble line of questioning with some bellicosely punctuated and often truncated responses.

Taipei Metal: What is the overall message behind your latest album, Spitting With Hatred, The Insignificance of Life?

Wrath: The key sentence is “debasement of humanity”!

Read more: Interview: Dodsferd