The A.V. Club - Metal Box

Music: Metal Box: December 2010 (The Best Of 2010)

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Throughout the year, Leonard Pierce, The A.V. Club’s most devoted metalhead, has steered you through the minefield of hard rock and heavy metal, hoping to guide you toward some of the best offerings in rock’s most diverse and fluid genre. This has been an especially rich year for metal, and so he’s happy to help kick off The A.V. Club’s best-of-the-year coverage with a Satanist’s dozen of the best albums in a great year for the heavy. So put on your black leather Santa cap, bust out your red and green corpse paint ...

Music: Metal Box: November 2010

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 12:00:00 -0600

Leonard Pierce, The A.V. Club’s resident metal maniac, started writing this month’s column on Halloween night with Abruptum’s Evil hissing and bleeding out of his living-room stereo. How metal is that? Well, a bit less metal considering that he had to stop writing every few minutes to hand out Fun Size Milky Way bars to the neighborhood kids. Anyway, now it’s November, and it’s time to catch up on the best in hard rock and heavy metal in our monthly Metal Box column. October was, as we mentioned last time, a month filled with ...

Music: Metal Box: October 2010

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 13:00:00 -0500

It’s October, and a lesser metal column would make jokes about skeletons and zombies and the witching hour. But here at Metal Box, we respect you too much for that. We figure your October is going to be much the same as every other month, but on the 31st, the streets will be flooded with amateur drunks trying to look as cool for one night as you do the whole year ’round. And besides, since we last spoke, the world of hard rock and heavy metal has coughed up an embarrassment of riches for your listening pleasure—so much ...

Music: Metal Box: September 2010

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Even though it caters to angry shut-ins whose taste in home décor tends heavily to the animal-bone-intensive, metal is a business, and like most businesses, it has its doldrums. The vicissitudes of the music industry hit hard this time of year, as summer starts to wind down and school begins, and even the hardest-touring deathgrinders get sick of trying to find a vegan burrito in Columbus, Ohio at 3:20 a.m. But even when new releases start to slow down, Metal Box never rests, thanks to a combination of drug abuse and sleep disorders. So put down that ...

Music: Metal Box: August 2010

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:38:00 -0500

While his A.V. Club colleagues have been enjoying the exciting world of outdoor music festivals, Leonard Pierce has been inside, haunting the dark clubs and enclosed spaces of South Texas for the best in live metal. Since the true hardcore eschew the sunshine, and consider it an act of weakness to abandon their usual attire of long hair, black jeans, and black T-shirts just because it’s 101 degrees in the shade, this has meant no small amount of personal suffering on his part, but suffering has been an essential part of metal since before Bruce Dickinson cajoled the ...

Music: Metal Box: July 2010

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:00:00 -0500

It’s turning out to be the hottest month on record, but that doesn’t bother metal fans: We already live in hell. Metal Box, The A.V. Club’s monthly look at all things heavy, loud, and disreputable in the world of music, is celebrating its one-year anniversary by saying thanks to all of you who have stuck with us since the beginning, and all of you who have joined us since then. With this column, we took a chance that there were enough metalheads out there to make it a success, and you haven’t let us down ...

Music: Metal Box: June 2010

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:21:00 -0500

Maybe April is the cruelest month, but recent events have proved that May can be a real bitch as well. As the summer begins, your intrepid A.V. Club hessian has seen some of his heavy-metal heroes bite the dust, been forced to contend with the interruption of his road trip and the cancellation of some of the most promising tours of the season, learned of the demise of a handful of terrific bands, and coped with spending an entire day in Oklahoma listening to the likes of Buckcherry. But his is not to reason why; his is but to ...

Music: Metal Box: May 2010

Wed, 12 May 2010 13:16:00 -0500

May, in the tradition of the times, is the month to hit the road. And Metal Box is no exception; while we’ll still be bringing you reviews of the latest and greatest hard rock and heavy metal released in a generally slow month, The A.V. Club’s metalhead-in-residence has decided to embark on a summer-long road trip, scaring the livestock in America’s rural heartland with the horrible meatgrinder sounds emanating from the stereo of his dozen-year-old beater. He’ll also be providing recaps of live shows he sees along his transcontinental journey, and giving advice about which ...

Music: Metal Box: April 2010

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 12:20:00 -0500

Spring is here, and everywhere you go, young lovers are enjoying the sunshine, the beauty of the natural world, and the promise of new life. Unless, of course, you go to Leonard Pierce’s house, where the Texas sun beats down on his roof but never penetrates the eternal darkness of his heart, soul, and home office. For it is from there that he brings The A.V. Club the best in metal, hard rock, and affiliated white noise, and will continue to do so until Jesus finally returns and tells him to knock it off. So open up your ...

Music: Metal Box: March 2010

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

One day out of each month, music writer/A.V. Club regular Leonard Pierce sits down with a cup of Earl Grey, cues up some Belle & Sebastian, and tells his two cats, Doc and Vera, that they are very special and wonderful. The rest of the month, though, he fills his head with life-defiling madness and evil, as he seeks out the best of hard rock and heavy metal for your enjoyment in his column, Metal Box. So crank your speakers up to 11, carve a pentagram on your forehead, and get ready to spread some mayhem: here’s what ...

Music: Metal Box: February 10, 2010

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:00:00 -0600

Every month, The A.V. Club feels a brief tinge of regret for having spent all that time writing elegant, well-considered criticism of thoughtful, emotional music that brings love and hope to its listeners. That’s when Leonard Pierce—his ears ever attuned to the sounds of human suffering—shows up with an armload of the latest metal releases. Metal Box represents the cost of getting him out of the office so we don’t have to hear any more songs about bloody vomit. February is the shortest month of the year, but that doesn’t mean the box is ...

Music: Metal Box: January 2010

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Every month, The A.V. Club sorts through its growing pile of ill-sounding Satanic noise and shoves it under a table in the break room, where, late at night, trained rats gather it up for delivery to Leonard Pierce. Our official staff devotee of music made under the influence of sour adrenaline, resin, and Christian blood writes up a column recommending the best and the rest of the month in hard rock and heavy metal, then opens up the floor so you can come in and tell him that his choices are either too mainstream or not mainstream enough. Metal ...

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 ...