Portland sludge bringers, STONEBURNER, today reveal their first audiovisual insight into the sounds that propel their forthcoming full-length, Life Drawing. Who better to visualize their desolate, down-tuned blues than Kenneth Thomas, director of Blood, Sweat & Vinyl, the captivating documentary about independent music, as told through the eyes of some forward thinking labels, including Neurot Recordings, home of STONEBURNER.  

Taking influence from bands like TESTAMENT, FORBIDDEN, ARTILLERY, EVILE, and BLIND GUARDIAN, the albums boasts classic 90’s thrash metal guitar riffs with speedy double-bass drums and harsh yet melodic vocals with no keyboards, drum samples or re-amped guitars! Just tough, honest, and pure metal!  

Salvation Of Innocents, the epic new album from EARTH CRISIS, is nearing release worldwide, its street date for North America now slated for March 18th.  

You’ve never seen high fantasy heroines like the Rat Queens before. Hannah the Rockabilly Elven Mage, Violet the Hipster Dwarven Fighter, Dee the Atheist Human Cleric, and Betty the Hippy Smidgen are foul-mouthed, gleefully blood-spattered, prone to fits of indiscriminate property damage, and often intoxicated. They’re the stars of the hit Image Comics/Shadowline comic book series RAT QUEENS, and they’re best f*cking mercenary team in all of Palisade. So why does someone want them dead? Wait, don’t answer that.  

BATTLECROSS, who just returned home from a very successful tour in Europe (the band’s first) playing with Killswitch Engage, Trivium, and Miss May I, are set to hit the road in the States this weekend on the US tour featuring Protest the Hero, The Safety Fire, Intervals, and Night Verses. The first date of the tour is in Buffalo, NY on Saturday, March 1 and wraps up in Amityville, NY on April 6.  

Sorry for the lateness, but this is a very important announcement: Shredaholica band Exmortus has released an official video for “Foe Hammer“, through Prosthetic Records, from the newest album Slave to the Sword!  

Today, the volume pushers at This Is Not A Scene vomit forth another helping of auditory punishment from Swiss death metal tyrants, NEAR DEATH CONDITION. Titled “Evolving Towards Extinction,” the latest requiem of revulsion comes by way of the band’s upcoming new full-length of the same name. Set to detonate next month via technical death metal empire, Unique Leader Records, Evolving Towards Extinction was mixed at renowned Hertz Studios (Vader, Hate, Dead Infection, Vesania etc.) in Poland, mastered at Iguana Studios in Germany, and boasts eleven imposing tracks of hypnotic drum gymnastics, demented riff structures, oppressive atmospheres and calloused vocal incursions. Dark, acrimonious and wholly... 

Baltimore-based duo, DARSOMBRA, is about to embark on the most extensive tour excursion in the band’s history, beginning tomorrow, February 28th in Richmond, Virginia.  

NOLA riff lords CROWBAR will release an all new full length album entitled “Symmetry in Black” on May 27, 2014. The album will be released in Europe on May 26, 2014 via Century Media Records. Founding vocalist Kirk Windstein provides the following comment,  

This March, the pulse-pounding horror epic continues in EMPIRE OF THE DEAD #3 – from the mind of Zombie Godfather George Romero and drawn by critically acclaimed artist Alex Maleev! Zombies roam the streets of a plague-ridden Manhattan by day. And Vampires feast on humans by night! Something is rotten in the big apple. Someone moves to strike against the mayor from the shadows.  

Following a few months off the grid after an action-packed first half of 2013, Vancouver’s BAPTISTS, announce their return to the front lines in 2014.  

ENGLAND – Following the band’s recent appearance on the inaugural voyage of the ‘Progressive Nation at Sea’ cruise, the UK’s heralded rock group, Anathema, has announced a U.S. tour for March as special guests of Finland’s, HIM. The tour marks just the second proper North American run for the acclaimed group, after a successful tour last September/October which Billboard.com called “powerful… no one walked away disappointed.”