About

Meet the AMG staff:

AMG is the standard by which all should be judged, which is why he started a blog. Before sending promo read this post

Steel Druhm is the undisputed Site Overseer and Lead Contributor at AMG. A teen during the 80s, he’s the oldest, and therefore wisest metal historian on staff and takes pride in the fact he was a fan back when the only genre of metal, was metal. His first love is the traditional or “classic” style, but he has plenty of affection left for doom, death and thrash. He likes his black metal innovative, his beer cold and his tea in the harbor. Dio is his spirit animal and he wields the Banhammer with cold, ruthless efficiency. Under his brutal reign, the site has given nothing back to the academic community and provided no public service of any kind.
Fun fact: Steel is married to the eternally kvlt Madam X.
Favorite Bands: Iron Maiden, Amorphis, Manowar, Mercyful Fate
Guilty Pleasure: Enjoying of deep Jorn catalog
Finishing Move: Flying Buttress

Dr. A.N. Grier (whose initials are neither Ass Nailer, Ass Nullifier, Anal Nibbler — you hurtful sonsabitches) is a first-class writer; winner of the coveted AMG Writer of the Year Award in 2015 and 2016, and every successive year after that. As an editor, he’s meticulous in his work; diligently eliminating any mention of Alestorm from the sacred AMG annals. He likes his black metal spiteful, his death metal rounded, his thrash metal old, his power metal delightful, and his melodic black/death/doom gloomy. He likes Immortal in the snow, Evergrey in the rain, Metal Church in the sun, Death in the shower, and Gorgoroth at rush hour. On Halloween, he enjoys shitty horror movies and spending time with his three special ladies: Abigail, Elvira, and Melissa.

Sentynel is the sysadmin, and occasionally writes reviews to prove to himself he can still remember human language. He runs the servers and keeps the blog online in the face of script kiddies, Chinese password-guessing bots, and worse still, users. He likes his metal melodic, progressive, and/or weird. His non-metal tastes include soundtrack, folk, and whatever else catches his ear. In real life, he is a nerd working in IT, where he has seen things you people wouldn’t believe, and plays the piano and too many video games.

Grymm: gamer, doom metal fanatic, Abbathian cat – he’s all these things, but that just scratches the surface. While unflinchingly blunt at times, AMG’s resident man-cat maintains a soft spot for good beer, good games, and even better metal. From the heaviest, gut-wrenching doom, the most heroically epic of power metal, to the least constrained of black metal, if it’s passionate and heartfelt, Grymm’s all over it.
Favorite Bands: Anaal Nathrakh, Funeral, Iron Maiden, Carcass, Acid Bath
Guilty Pleasures: IPAs, anything Shin Megami Tensei- or Diablo-related, epic power metal vocals
Finishing Move: The Grymm Fandango

El Cuervo was reared in the wrong age. The deluded grandeur of progressive music appeals to him greatly, manifesting in a dangerous obsession with 70s prog. He seeks emotional nourishment in the cheesy synthesizers of the 80s, and especially loves the romanticized nostalgia of synthwave. But his favorite sort of escapism is listening to the borderline indecipherable screeching of Northern European men, most notably Opeth, Ulver, Moonsorrow and everything kissed by Dan Swanö. He will also die on the hill that Wilderun is the best metal band formed since 1995.
Fun fact: El Cuervo once saw Jørn live in concert. He sang along.

Saunders is something of a jack-of-all-trades metalhead, residing on the distant side of the globe in the coastal slacker city of Newcastle, Australia. Craving diversity and boasting a particular affiliation for death, prog, thrash and grind, Saunders grew up listening to usual suspects like early Metallica, Pantera, Sepultura and Slayer before transitioning into more extreme waters around the turn of the century. A humble servant at Angry Metal Guy since 2014, he’s in for the long haul, with all the benefits.
(Old Favs) Florida & Swedeath scenes, Opeth, Carcass, Death, Suffocation, Bloodbath, At the Gates, Alice In Chains, Porcupine Tree, Faith No More, Acid Bath, Slayer.
Finishing Move: Touch of Death

Eldritch Elitist was exiled from R’lyeh (pronounced “Hellyeah”) for listening to power metal, and is perhaps the least br00tal member of the AMG crew. Active in the metal blogosphere since 2009, he’s been slipping pamphlets on the Japanese power metal scene into the tote bags of hapless passersby ever since. He likes other genres too, especially black metal, but doom and death metal rarely impress him, and he’s typically grumpy about the choice for Record(s) o’ the Month. Eldritch prizes creativity and melody above all else, and thus would prefer if everyone kept their Iced Earth records to themselves.
Favorite Bands: Galneryus, Bal-Sagoth, Darkthrone, Coheed & Cambria
Guilty Pleasure: DragonForce, of course
Finishing Move: Antediluvian Annihilation

GardensTale, the fully formed monstrosity, crawled out of the peat of the southern Netherlands in the damp summer of 1988. His moist tendrils seek to wind themselves around predominantly progressive and melodic metal to this day, including anything from stoner and doom, to progressive death, to heavy and power metal. Emotional resonance is what makes his nostrils flare first and foremost, and should his glistening body rise from your backyard swamp, you better lock up your Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd, Clutch and Devin Townsend records. Don’t think that will keep you safe however, for the beast always hungers, and is more than happy to devour a morsel less familiar to his taste.
Finishing Move: GardensTailwhip

Kenstrosity’s origin is unclear, but scientists believe he—it?—landed on this Earth aeons ago for reasons unknown, though the most prevalent theory is he was sent here in exile of his home for crimes most grievous. Ages it searched for meaning, for purpose, for a home. And finally, it found a home in metal. The Almighty Riff beckoned to it like the sirens of legend, their song stronger than any mortal’s will. But the Riff underestimated Kenstrosity’s appetite for metal, and soon the Riff became Kenstrosity’s prey. Its tastes indiscriminate, it consumed all. Now, Kenstrosity rises to pass short-form judgment upon the consumed and to bask in the cries of the judged. Kenstrosity also enjoys deeply of the gym, animated movies/television (to the point it decided to pursue a career in 3D modeling), video games, cars, and art. It hates its day job, is terrified of wasps and other flying insects, and likes to think it can sing.
Favorite Bands: Evanescence, Sulphur Aeon, Fair to Midland, Myrath, Epica, Slugdge, Artificial Brain, yadda-yadda-yadda, Diablo Swing Orchestra
Finishing Move: Word Vomit

Cherd of Doom was once a sullen fellow, taciturn even amongst friends and given to bouts of melancholia. Dogs whined in his presence. Light bulbs flickered and dimmed if he lingered too long in a room. Then he discovered doom metal, and his despondency found a soothing balm. His sunken cheeks filled in. His performance at work improved. He became a more generous lover. Without daily doses of Yob, Thou, Warning, Pallbearer or Evoken, he runs the risk of reverting to his dolorous demeanor. Lacking these, black metal of the woodsy variety or any death metal with a prefix (tech-, progressive-, melo-) will tide him over. His first metal concert was Pantera, but he tries not to think about that.
Favorite Bands (non-doom category): Panopticon, Anicon, Oldpeth, Agalloch
Guilty Pleasure: Gilmore Girls
Finishing Move: a limp handshake

Holdeneye brings a lot to the AMG table, namely awkward social skills, poor musical taste, and plenty of self-deprecation. He enjoys lifting, driving, reading, watching, discussing, pondering, eating, drinking, listening to, and writing about heavy things. He is deathly afraid of things that aren’t heavy, like mosquitos, jellyfish, and his own children. He drives a fire engine and has been known to respond to emergencies while wearing power metal shirts, so think carefully before you call for help.
Favorite Bands: Symphony X, Nevermore, Sabaton, Becoming the Archetype
Remorseless Pleasure: Skelator
Finishing Move: Deathhammer

Doom_et_Al, the only medical doctor in this godforsaken hellhole, never quite got enough of the emotional abuse and humiliation he suffered during his internship years at a South African public hospital and now is back for more at the offices of AMG. He finds solace from examining Steel’s hemorrhoids through running improbably far distances which are perfectly drivable. Black, doom, post and melodic death metal speak to his tortured soul. Working with kids by day and listening to music that would scare the bejesus out of them by night is how he rolls. Gets funny looks from colleagues when he wears his Fleshgod Apocalypse t-shirts to ward rounds. If you don’t vaccinate your children, he will find you (and he knows where it hurts).
Favorite Bands: Agalloch, Isis, Sulphur Aeon, Yob, Emperor
Guilty Pleasures: Deafheaven, Yoga (Try it, it’s metal AF)
Finishing Move: The Open Thoracotomy

Twelve is an enigma. Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t twelve personalities inhabiting a single body; rather, it’s a single personality inhabiting twelve (unless it’s the other way around). One thing is for certain, though: it is not twelve years old, and has spent its more-than-twelve years of life writing, procrastinating, making excuses for things, and listening to metal. It enjoys most doom, some death, a bit of black, too much power, way too much folk, a little prog, and any well-done concept album. Sometimes, it likes Avantasia, and it’s always in the mood for Orphaned Land. It once missed the chance to see Wilderun opening for Alestorm, and the mistake has haunted its life ever since. Favorite bands include Mistur, The Diablo Swing Orchestra, Blind Guardian, Apocalypse Orchestra, Swallow the Sun, Orphaned Land, and two or three others that aren’t coming to mind at the moment of writing.

Dear Hollow began down the winding and spiraling road to madness and metal because his dumbass roommate listened to too much Asking Alexandria and Bring Me the Horizon. He tends to lean toward quiet activities nowadays, like watching direct-to-video Scooby-Doo movies on repeat, watching YouTube makeup tutorials with his lovely wife, and blasting Altarage and Black Cilice in the church parking lot. He prefers the atmospheric in metal, and loves criticizing all post-black for sounding too much like Deafheaven.
Favorite bands: Infernal Coil, In Mourning, Dirge, Ulcerate, The Great Old Ones, Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Finishing Move: Another comma??

Carcharodon has spent years plumbing the murkiest depths of the oceans, hunting down the choicest of metal cuts and the most select of puddings. After briefly surfacing for an ill-advised nu-metal phase in the early-2000s, he sank quietly back beneath the waves. He now searches the boundless vasts for huge riffs, brvtal vocals and haunting atmospherics. Hailing originally from London, he has moved – via Cornwall and Berlin – to the frozen wastes of Northern England where, in his free time, he cycles, hikes and climbs, and looks after his kids.
Favorite bands: Oldpeth, Cult of Luna, The Ocean, Isis, Death, Carcass, Emperor, Clutch, Meshuggah, 16 Horsepower (they’re more metal than you are!) and Woods of Ypres.
Guilty pleasures: I don’t believe in guilty pleasures (if pushed on the subject, I will admit to Machine Head and peanut M&M’s)
Finishing move: The Five Finger Pudding Punch

Felagund is a new addition to the AMG horde, having done battle with various sorcerers, bog demons, Carpathian criptids and spellcheck to earn an exalted seat at the blood-splattered table where the black-clad review-wraiths hand down their eternal judgments (is anyone ever going to clean this thing?). Felagund guzzles coffee like Theodore Roosevelt, withstands the torments of AMG overlords with the strength of Hurin (read the Silmarillion, plebes), cowers with all the grace of a de-veined shrimp when attacked (especially by his toddler), and prefers to revel in the depraved world of death metal.
Favorite Bands: Rush, Cannibal Corpse, Iron Maiden, Carcass, Cattle Decapitation, Acid Bath
Finishing Move: Sindarin Stunner

Ferox once met three witches upon a blasted heath, and they told him he would someday be king of angrymetalguy.com. While that prophecy sorts itself out, you can look for him in the promo sump in the dark of certain moonless nights, when he emerges to pry scraps of death/doom loose from the muck. Ferox saw the immortal Krokus play live at the tender age of nine, but then spent years in self-imposed exile from the Kingdom of Heavy Music. He fancies himself a subgenre magpie, pledging his sword to bands that catch his addled fancy rather than genre tags. A storyteller by day, Ferox will always lend a kind ear to themed bands and concept albums.
Always on heavy rotation: Judas Priest, Midnight, Bolt Thrower, Black Royal, Vredehammer, Sub Rosa, Immortal, Sulphur Aeon, a host of bands ending in the suffix “-er” (Demiser, Bütcher, Hellripper, Bewitcher)
Finishing move: The Furrowed Brow

Maddog is believed to exist, but the jury is still out. The circumstantial evidence consists of occasional sightings of a shadowy figure in the back corner at NYC death metal concerts. The same mysterious being has been seen skulking around breweries in Queens, sheepishly ordering every beer with a double-digit ABV. Maddog’s least-despised genres include intense death metal and minimalist rhythmic post-metal, with room for some things in-between. He compensates for his love of extreme metal and dark beer through his other tame interests, like knitting, indoor gardening, eating vegan (while silently judging everyone who doesn’t), and reading Quora posts about abstract math.
Favorite artists: Cult of Luna, Gorod, Iron Maiden, The Ocean, Death, Moonsorrow, Æther Realm, Pink Floyd, Sammy Rae, Madonna

Thus Spoke descended from the mountains of obscurity after many years spent replacing an early admiration for teenies metalcore with a love for the darker and more extreme sides of metal. Drawn primarily to anything in a minor key, she derives particular strength from the fusions of black, death, and doom with one another, and eschews anything remotely power or traditional-adjacent. A dichotomy of sorts, she is a disciple both of the iron-wielding tribe of lifters, and of the more mild-mannered circle of philosophers ex-philosophers. When she doesn’t have her head in the clouds, or her hands on a barbell, you’ll probably find her ardently defending animal rights, or combing through Youtube and Facebook data (now guess which one is her day job).
Favorite bands: Ulcerate, Shape of Despair, Mare Cognitum, Gaerea
Starter pokemon: Bulbasaur
Finishing move: Strongly-worded email

Dolphin Whisperer hails from a land of cool breezes and sunny skies. Some say he’s a truly gifted individual with a rare talent for enchanting the delphine kind. Some say he’s a madman who yells at the ocean without regard for who or what understands his screeches and howls. While a temperate upbringing has left him indifferent to wandering one-man bands in Nordic forests, he revels in the vulnerable waters of emotional prog, pitch-black sludge/grind, and post-genre chaos. You might also find him shuffling away to Latin jazz or folky fairy music in a cove far offshore with only animals as company.
Favorite bands: Pain of Salvation, Fates Warning, Crowbar, Intronaut, Beaten to Death, ミドリ
Favorite food: nachos
Finishing move: endless stanning of the things he loves

Iceberg floats serenely somewhere in the Sargasso Sea. Perhaps because of an inherited affinity for eel mating habits, or simply missing a turn lane somewhere in Newfoundland, it doesn’t matter, semantics carry little water with the inanimate. Drinking deep from the well of nu-metal and crab-core as an iceling, his bergels grew to embrace all things melo and technical, dedicated to discernible structure and logic. When not pontificating about taste to the stray polar bear, he enjoys recalling the pre-haze age of craft beer, reading impossibly dense fantasy sagas, and attempting to read music on thirty-foot tall pipe organs.
Favorite Bands: Symphony X, Currents, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Brothers of Metal, Amigo the Devil
Finishing Move: The Clownin’ Drownin’

Mystikus Hugebeard is an exiled practitioner of the forbidden sorcerous arts. From high atop his secluded tower, he scours the ancient tomes and scrolls to glean supreme knowledge of metal music, a knowledge that he plans to use for evil. While he favors incantations that deal in melodeath, folk, progressive, and black metal, he seeks to understand the magic in all metal. Though metal be where his heart lies, one can often hear cyberpunk darkwave and neofolk emanating from his tower, or find him reveling in the familiarity of his comfort YouTube videos while playing video games. To fund his sorcerous practices, he slings coffee in the American Midwest. Caffeine has all but lost its potency on him after drinking enough coffee to sustain a kingdom, but that will never stop him from downing a delicious cup o’ mud. Oh, and he has a huge beard.
Favorite Bands: Persefone, Subsignal, Insomnium, Kauan, Grand Magus, Conan, Ne Obliviscaris, Gojira, Pain of Salvation, Wardruna
Guilty Pleasure: comfy synth
Finishing Move: a suitcase full of bees

Alekhines Gun showed up one day at an AMG staff meeting and refused to leave. Hailing from the death metal capital of Tampa Florida, he brings the attitude of swamps and alligators to the halls with his hipster-in-denial hot takes about the rest of the staffs’ favorite bands. When he isn’t boring everyone with rants about the professional chess circuit or insisting Gateways to Annihilation is the best Morbid Angel album, he’s playing his Nintendo and writing ludicrous piano ballads in a complete disgrace to his love of all things heavy and brvtal. He likes his death filthy, his black metal melodic, and doom metal that doesn’t put him to sleep. Heed his Florida Man energy and anaconda-wrangling wisdom.
Favorite bands: Dying Fetus, Blut Aus Nord, Decrepit Birth
Finishing Move: Mate in 4
Fun Fact: He really does play piano, and is the joy of all the staff even if they never admit it.

Killjoy was hired as the AMG Industries bookkeeper, but the position was scrapped after the company failed to bring in any revenue for 15 years, so he was begrudgingly permitted to write reviews instead. He swore undying fealty to metal to maintain some semblance of sanity while preparing tax returns at his day job (only for his kids to rip it to shreds anyway). Not one to pine for metal cred he never had, he wades without hesitation through staggering quantities of atmoblack, power, melodeath, folk, symphonic and any other type of metal that promises arresting and affecting melodies. When not working to share these colorful spoils with the dear readership of the blog, you can find him spending time with his family, immersed in action/adventure video games, or sleeping.
Favorite bands: Theocracy, Mägo de Oz, Fellowship, Alcest, I Fight Dragons, Æther Realm, Aephanemer, Epica
Guilty pleasures: Avenged Sevenfold, American Idiot, Rise Against, Fall Out Boy… I should probably stop now.
Finishing move: The Party Pooper

Tyme travels back and forth through the metalverse in a flux-capacitor-equipped Ford Escort station wagon held together with duct tape and band stickers. He visits the future sparingly, mainly to find out if George R.R. Martin ever finishes Game of Thrones and if King Diamond ever releases another album. Under penalty of death, the Gods of Time have sworn him to secrecy about what he’s seen, so don’t ask. He has a vast love for all things metal and keeps an open mind when discovering new music, but his heart beats strongest for the metals of death, thrash, and black. His day gig finds him practicing the fine art of Human Resources. However, requests to head up an AMG HR department where staff are sent for actual re-programming have gone unanswered.
Favorite Bands: Darkher, King Diamond, Bolt Thrower, Obituary, Morbid Angel, Darkthrone, Metallica, Slayer, Carcass, Iron Maiden, Kiss
Guilty Pleasure: Below Deck and all the other Bravo shows Mrs. Tyme watches that I openly scoff but secretly enjoy muchly.
Finishing Move: The Time Warp

Owlswald lived atop AMG Industries’ last remaining old-growth pine for years on a strict diet of metalcore and discarded lunch wrappers, Owlswald was coaxed into captivity by deliberately placed snacks and a chilled bottle of local microbrew. Hailing from the grey and foggy Pacific Northwest, he spends most hours in the AMG aviary with his wise and ancient eyes focused on death, prog, thrash and post-rock from his lofty perch, though he isn’t afraid to wet his beak in hardcore, doom, and black metal. When he isn’t regurgitating his meals or hitting others with “hoot takes,” he can be found drumming, hiking, cycling, lifting or enjoying nature’s majestic splendor with his parliament.
Favorite bands: Rush, Voyager, Textures, Immortal, Meshuggah, Soundgarden, Edge of Sanity, Death
Finishing Move: The Pellet Cleanser

ClarkKent escaped Krypton in part to get away from the nu-metal that began to pervade the Kryptonian music scene (that the planet was about to explode was further incentive). He spent his formative years in the Fortress of Solitude studying the metal classics: Metallica, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, to name a few. He’s developed a love for genres his significant other, Lois Lane, barely tolerates–traditional metal, power metal, doom, and symphonic metal. When he isn’t busy repelling asteroids and alien attacks, you can find Clark spending time with his kids, reading novels, visiting craft breweries, and playing video games. And whatever you do, don’t start singing that damn song by Three Doors Down.
Favorite bands: Opeth, Enslaved, Dark Tranquillity, Swallow the Sun, Ayreon, Blind Guardian, Therion
Guilty pleasure: Reading Batman comics
Finishing move: X-ray radiation poisoning

Samguineous Maximus was found deep within the labyrinthian sprawl of AMG’s storied arcane library, combing through long-forgotten literature in an effort to crack the sacred “cringe vs. quality” ratio which underpins all great metal. Having been raised in the paradoxical hellscape of northern New England, Samguineous was forced to adapt a music taste as equally conflicted as the region’s harrowing seasons; turning to frigid black metal in frost-bitten winter, the whimsical grandeur of prog in summer’s incessant heat, and unlistenable sonic experiments during the rest of the year. When they’re not delving into esoteric novels, Samguineous can be found playing various instruments, conquering rage games, and slinging Magic: The Gathering with a group of equally depraved aural adventurers.
Favorite Groups: Opeth, Pyrrhon, Between the Buried and Me, Cobalt, The Dear Hunter, Agalloch, Chat Pile, Yes
Guilty Pleasures: Limp Bizkit, Slipknot (Nü metal was great I swear), Periphery
Finishing move: The “Jesus Lizard chord” outside the context of a breakdown

Spicie Forrest wasn’t around when Raphael and Lucifer cried for attention in the Garden of Eden, but he knows the story quite well. His gateway to the devil’s music opened via Slipknot and Trivium as an adolescent, and his soul was ever after pledged to the dark. He likes his metal gritty, weighty, and profane, but other than prog, he’s an equal opportunist. Outside of worshipping dark gods in the house of gains, he loves a good souls- or rogue-like, reads more than his fair share, and plays D&D with friends. He loves cooking for Mrs Forrest, and he eagerly awaits the day Luffy is crowned King of the Pirates.
Favorite Metal: Ulcerate, Fellowship, Zeal & Ardor, Bloodywood, Primitive Man, Whitechapel, Anaal Nathrakh
Favorite Non-Metal: Yellowcard, Kai Wachi, Curtis Harding, Tyler Childers, Kesha, Seatbelts, Souls of Mischief
Finishing Move: Moby Dissertation

Grin Reaper frolics in the ironbound fields outside AMG HQ, gleefully harvesting ripe tunes and sharing them with loved ones, coworkers, and even his own children. Usually against their will. When not wielding his Blithe Scythe, Grin Reaper can be found reading, watching doomed sports franchises, writing, or smoking sundry meats and pounding IPAs while aurally assaulting his neighbors with anything from Amigo the Devil to Suffocation. Thrash was his gateway, but the likes of Amon Amarth and Cannibal Corpse coaxed him down the left-hand path. Now he’s so far down it, he hardly recalls a time before. These days, Grin Reaper feasts on a wide variety of subgenres, with a soft spot for metal that features folk instrumentation.
Favorite bands: Clutch, Rush, Iron Maiden, Gorod, Powerwolf, Sigh, Immolation, Children of Bodom
Finishing move: The Chuckle Duster

Baguette of Bodom is often mistaken for the inferior French product instead of the frozen Finnish one trve connoisseurs prefer. His journey started atop the DragonForce mountains of power and it’s all been downhill since, branching off to explore anything from the fastest and brightest of power metal to the most sadboi of doom, occasionally making excursions to olde thrash and death metal (and video games). During his never-ending search for synthesizers, dual-harmonized guitars and glass-shattering wails, he somehow broke into the kitchen of AMG Industries and was kept around as a weapon—threatening the unruly with a fate worse than the Banhammer.
Fun Fact: He likes his black metal how he likes his coffee, nuked from orbit.
Favorite Bands: anything Arjen Lucassen’s in, Stratovarius, Fates Warning, Amorphis, Death, Nightwish, Judas Priest, Draconian, Testament
Guiltless Pleasures: salty licorice, Katy Perry
Finishing Move: Seal of Disapproval

Andy-War-Hall wandered into AMG HQ while chasing a butterfly and hasn’t found the door again since. He is serious about enjoying things—like fantasy novels, horror movies, his Pittsburgh Steelers and metal music—even when said things make him miserable. He is a capital ‘A’ amateur painter, musician and writer, having written several short novels with his wife. Andy loves his choruses big, his solos unrestrained and his bridges expansive; this is death or glory music, and we never say die around here. Art is whatever you can get away with, and Andy’s looking forward to seeing what his next assignment tries getting away with.
Favorite Bands/Artists: Blind Guardian, Death, Iron Maiden, Visigoth, Iotunn, Unto Others, Bruce Springsteen and ‘Weird’ Al Yankovich.
Finishing Move: The Can Opener

Lavender Larcenist fell in love with heavy music by sheer chance, hearing System of a Down wafting out the door of her older brother’s room like The Devil’s pie on Hell’s windowsill. Luckily, she avoided most of the nu-metal trash (you have to earn those umlauts), finding surprisingly great recommendations on the year-end lists of a now-defunct gaming magazine. The Purple Pilferer jumped right into Mastodon’s Leviathan and Gojira’s From Mars to Sirius, and nothing has been the same since. Whalecore remains a staple of Lavender’s repertoire, but the Heliotrope Hijacker only digs the well ever deeper. Atmosphere is queen in the Amethyst Abode; genre be damned. Although she couldn’t even begin to describe the arcane science behind it all.
Favorite Bands: Kanonenfieber, Hath, Horrendous, Dormant Ordeal, Fit for an Autopsy, Khemmis, Cattle Decapitation, Misery Index, Crypt Sermon, Venom Prison
Non-Metal: The Antlers, Modest Mouse, Born Ruffians, Whores., Ashnikko
Finishing Move: Crying in the Shower

Creeping Ivy scaled the metal tower via its shared wall with punk. Smitten with Bad Religion and Strung Out in high school, Ivy discovered trve metal when a friend made him an American Big 4 mixtape (Anthrax bridged the punk/metal gap). After a dalliance with the New Wave of American Heavy Metal, he fell off the metal edifice for a time. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ivy rekindled his passion for bloodcurdling screams, guitarmonies, and double bass, filling gaps in his knowledge of metal history and discovering that there exist, in fact, new bands that are actually good. Today, Ivy can be found lurking the halls of academic purgatory, rocking righteous metal posters in the nook of his shared office. His taste tends towards most things progressive, Sabbathian, and blackened.
Favorite Bands: Death, Earth, Hellripper, Opeth, Sigh
Guilty Pleasure: Caspar Babypants, Keep It Real!
Finishing Move: Compulsory Simpsons Reference