Silence Is Arson online music magazine

Now Overkill may be an elderly bunch, but their music is far from geriatric. While their past efforts saw the band slow down a bit (namely on 2007’s by-the-numbers “Immortalis”), this 2010 the wrecking crew have upped their game to stay competitive in a genre that’s gotten a new lease on life these past coupla [...]

Son of Aurelius are a ticking time bomb in the U.S. extreme metal scene. Come April 13th their first album “The Farthest Reaches” (Good Fight Music) is gonna explode across the musical landscape and anyone caught in its blast radius can expect to be jarred from their comfort zone. Combining death metal’s brutal-technical bent with [...]

Pussy. Wiener Blut. Backstabu. Song titles that prove Rammstein are quite the weird bunch, which means it’s all the better they sing in their mother tongue and spare humanity a whole lotta wincing from awkward lyrics. For their, uh, sixth album titled “Liebe Ist Fuer Alle Da,” the former citizens of the German Democratic Republic [...]

Lest they are totally forgotten two years since the release of their misunderstood major label debut (2007’s “Threads of Life”), Shadows Fall return with a monster of an album to exact retribution on those who let them down the last time. Yet the ride begins on a soft note, as the gentle acoustic intro “The [...]

Ignoring the fact that Decadence have a hot chick for a singer (she’s the growly type, FYI), this new album of theirs is a savage thrash beast filled to the brim with utterly smokin’ guitar play from uncelebrated six-string wizard Ken Latz and the deadliest machinegun tempos to emerge from Europe in a long while. [...]

While most in the metal community have welcomed Megadeth’s return in recent years, the band’s output since mainman Dave Mustaine’s wrist healed (a strained radial ulnar nerve caused temporary paralysis in his hands around 2002, requring him to bury Megadeth until his 2004 comeback) has been glass-is-half-full at best. While the excellently titled “The System [...]

Like a perfect cup of coffee, “Pray for Villains” is that boost you need to enliven a dreary morning. Right from the start the epic title track creams inside your ears with its rumbling double pedal mayhem and slaying guitars. Yet besides the magic between the Devildriver axemen Mike Speitzer and Jef Kendrick, even [...]

Extreme metal is a many splendor thing, and no other musical force on the planet confirms this better than the majestic foursome called Rudra. Hailing from Singapore, these punters’ unique take on death metal leaves them well ahead of their peers, even if Rudra have been an underground phenomenon for two decades now. Never mind [...]

“Alchera” is a rare album that enters your life like a gust of freezing wind blowing through an empty room; years after listening to it, the otherworldly experience its music creates will remain an odd memory. Take this: it has no lyrics, no vocals, no energy except for the slow, contemplative pace of each song, [...]