The A.V. Club - Metal Box

Music: Metal Box:October 14, 2009

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Every month, The A.V. Club lets its hair down and drops its well-cultivated hipster douchebag image, giving its inner Hessian free rein. The other 353 days of the year, we still pretend to care about what Conor Oberst is up to, but for that one day a month, we let the site look and smell like an old patch-covered denim jacket. That’s the day when Metal Box takes over and reviews the best in hard rock, heavy metal, and other forms of loud, filthy noise that your parents tell you to turn off, even if they have been ...

Music: Metal Box:September 2009

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:31:00 -0500

Every month, The A.V. Club gathers together all the CDs with black covers, Lucida Blackletter fonts, and art that rips off Boris Vallejo, and ships them all to San Antonio, Texas, where our resident metalhead, Leonard Pierce, gives them all a listen. He then picks the best, the worst, and the ones with the most compelling swag, and recommends them to you, the metal-loving reader. The result is Metal Box, our monthly recap of the hard and heavy. So give your sister’s iPod back, put down your dad’s shotgun, and join us for a trip through September ...

Music: Metal Box:August 2009

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Every month, The A.V. Club puts its love of well-crafted, folksy guitar pop on temporary hold and lets all the long-haired creeps in black T-shirts gather in one place. Metal Box is your one-stop shop for all that is loud, vile, and crude in the world of hard rock and heavy metal, and by gathering this site’s surprisingly large number of metal fans in one place, we’re keeping you off the streets so you won’t be a danger to yourself or others. So call up your good buddy Satan, tell your parents you’ll be home ...

Music: Metal Box:July 2009

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Each month, The A.V. Club takes a break from its usual routine of reviewing records by sensitive guys with scruffy beards and glasses singing about how sad they are, and instead asks you to pay attention to loud, horrible screaming by alcoholic misfits. Metal Box is our monthly column of what’s new and notable in the world of hard rock and heavy metal, and we’ll strive to bring you the best of the mainstream as well as the most essential extreme metal, along with an audio sampler to let you know what you’re in for. So ...

Music: Metal Box:June 2009

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Last year, in my role as a regular columnist for Metal Edge magazine, I wrote a piece criticizing a number of music magazines and websites for largely excluding metal from their reviews and end-of-year lists. Metal has been one of the most diverse, interesting forms of pop music for several years now, and I felt it was incumbent on publications who were helping set the critical canon for our time to pay more attention to it. Unfortunately, Metal Edge has since folded, but to my pleasant surprise, one of the publications I criticized actually took my advice: The A.V ...