When the British metal band Carcass formed more than three decades ago, its members had a fairly straightforward aim. “We were just three teenagers that wanted to cause havoc,” guitarist Bill Steer says, looking back on the group’s 1988 debut, Reek of Putrefaction. “We were priding ourselves on having made …
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When Tom Gabriel Fischer looks back on his first band, the pioneering black-metal group Hellhammer, he still sounds rattled by the cold reception they got. “We were ridiculed,” he says in a low and sincere tone. “We weren’t taken seriously.” When the trio formed in the early Eighties, underground metal …
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The lyrics on “From the Spear,” the first taste of extreme-metal group Gaahls Wyrd’s upcoming debut, are mostly incoherent. At one point, frontman Gaahl growls, “I hold the spear, blood dripping”; at another, he moans, “I stare down from here.” But by and large the words’ intention is obscured, and …
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