I Pity the Country.

Presenting my 2021 Album of the Year.

A Tide of Change is Coming

Sanctuary from hell on earth.

Gloriously Ragged

Rolling another number, 30 years later.

The Best Tracks of 2021

The songs that provided respite in a brutal year.

Canadian Metal!

Presenting my favourite Canadian metal albums of the year.

Look Good, But Don’t Be Obsessed

Ask me what my favourite band is from 2010 to the present, and I’ll tell you one of them is Chvrches. What started out as an innocuous little electropop outfit has matured before our eyes, the songwriting improving, the musicianship evolving, and the emergence of a powerful female voice in popular music. Every new release […]

Can’t Ever Slow Down

By now I’m usually neck-deep in the very best of the new music I heard in the past year, but I’m changing things up today. For some weird reason I read an extraordinary number of music-related books, and I thought I’d share a handful of my favourites, and they’re all doozies. While it came out […]

Tomorrow is Another Chance

This one blindsided me.

No Step on Snek.

When I think of the crummier things that happened in 2021, one of the biggest was learning just how many metal musicians are anti-vaxxers. Heavy metal has always skewed farther right than, say, a left-wing haven like the indie music scene, but metal fans have always been able to co-exist without dwelling on political differences. […]

Communicating From My Tail End

Not “your” dog. “A” dog.

Everything Must Go!

Death metal is always around to make life more bearable.

Swear Eternal Devotion

Heavy is people.

Strength & Sacrilege

Dark music can be uplifting, too.

I Want Out!

You can always count on Danko Jones to bring the fun back to hard rock music.

Again and again, again and again and again…

This might seem crazy, but between 2007 and 2009 I couldn’t stop writing about Black Sabbath’s eras with Ronnie James Dio. It was a crazy promotional whirlwind, with so many reissues, compilations, box sets, reunion albums, tours, live DVDs, and sadly, Ronnie James Dio’s death. I don’t really have to write about that incarnation of […]