I first became aware of Tajikistan’s tiny rock scene this past summer, when I read this dispatch about the straight-edge, black-metal band Al-Azif. I am always drawn to stories about artists who create despite hardship, and so I was naturally intrigued by the band’s zeal for playing Western music in such an oppressively conservative country. […]
Tags:Al-Azif·Dushanbe·heavy metal·music·Red Planet·Tajikistan
Taking a sick kid to the doctor this morning—an hour-plus on the subway, followed by a sure-to-be interminable wait for gruff service. Should be fun.
Okay, quick word association game: When we say “Bulgaria,” what’s the first thing that pops to mind? For us it’s french fries slathered in partially melted sirene, but heavy metal is a close second. And so you can only imagine the great times we’ve been having sifting through the archives of this stupendous site, inarguably […]
Tags:Bulgaria·heavy metal·Legs McNeil·music·scorpions·Soviet Union
We’re about to jet downtown for an all-important meeting regarding the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay, so we’ll call it a day with this super-classic clip from Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. Though we’re no great fans of the band, we swoon over the doc—a probing portrait of creative minds in crisis, brought on […]
Tags:Dave Mustaine·heavy metal·Metallica·movies·music·Now the Hell Will Start
We were never the biggest fan of Iron Maiden’s music, with the possible exception of “Prowler” (later memorably covered by the great Trans Am). But we’ve always had a soft spot for the band’s ghoulish cover art, starring a wrinkly, gore-loving skeleton called Eddie. So yesterday, when we saw a fellow Harlemite non-ironically sporting a […]
