Kim Kelly

According to their bio, Slough Feg left the cultural wasteland of Central Pennsylvania about a decade ago and moved West in order to resurrect American heavy metal. Whether it was manifest destiny or never-ending sunshine that drew them there, the band -- formerly Lord Weird Slough Feg -- have built themselves a home and a dedicated following in California...

Satanic Warmaster are polarizing, even within the black-and-white world of black metal. On one hand, there is the music: cold, catchy, fiendishly-well-executed odes to Satan and darkness from the Finnish wilderness. On the other, there is the pervasive question about the project's rumored National Socialist political leanings...

Virginia's premier phantom power-abusing trio, Salome, are gearing up to drop their second full-length next month, and boy are drummer Aaron Deal's arms tired. When he's not pounding the skins or slyly heckling the crowds, Deal busies himself writing music, collecting guitars and loving the hell out of his kitty cats...

Maryland doom has become a hallowed institution within the international heavy music scene. Whether it's the crabs, the crime or the salty sea air, whatever the magic ingredient is that inspires so many sweet riffin' bands to form is alive and well within the hairy chests of Dave Sherman and his merry band of bikers...

Traditional metal can be a cruel mistress indeed; newer bands are painted with the 'poser' or 'retro' brush, while older acts fade away into obscurity. There is a right and a wrong way to do it, but Olympia, Ore.'s heavy metal cult Christian Mistress do it in the best way possible...

The U.S. black metal legends have returned! Spearheaded by main man Imperial, Krieg have been terrorizing audiences and throwing a defiant middle finger in the air to all that oppose their nihilistic, anti-human views and vicious take on the blackened art since 1995...

The Canadian music scene is a pretty intriguing beast. Whether you're banging your head to Woods of Ypres or choking down Alanis Morisette's jagged little pills, there's something for everyone in the Great White North. Heavy metal hell-raisers Cauldron are no exception...

Philadelphia probably isn't the first place you'd think of when you're talking about extreme metal, but bubbling beneath the City of Brotherly Love's grimy surface lies a viciously potent underground. It's spearheaded by the efforts of a small number of die-hard individuals -- many of whom spend time in the same bands and practice spaces, playing the same shows...

Stavros Giannapoulos of Chicago psychedelic sludge troupe the Atlas Moth is no stranger to the touring life, logging thousands of miles across the U.S. with his band at every opportunity and surviving the rigors of the road with positive attitude (and dapper facial hair) intact...

The indomitable Stavros Giannopoulos, throat and axeslinger for Chicago psychedelic sludge fiends the Atlas Moth, was recently named in the Chicago Reader as the Best Mustache in a Local Band, a category one might suspect was creatd entirely with him in mind...