Magazine

After discovering Hero’s Last Rite while doing my research form the Thrash Metal episode of the Iron Club, I was intrigued by the little heavy band from Fredericton, New-Brunswick. After exchanging a few emails, I got my first phone interview with singer Steve McDonald and here is the transcription of that phone interview.

JP Bernier : “I’m with Steve McDonald, frontman of Hero’s Last Rite, a band from New-Brunswick. Hi Steve, how are you?”

While contemporary heavy groups are busy hugging trees and familiarizing themselves with legal botany, Assimilation occupy themselves with cultivating relentlessly crushing death metal. Often operating with beers in hand, the quartet finds an odd but fitting balance between crushing sonics and laid back attitudes. Here's a look into what makes them tick.

The idea behind Mark Morton’s first solo album, Anesthetic, was to creat an album of songs that wouldn't fit in a Lamb of God release. In interviews, Morton has said that this album was written at a relaxed pace over a long period of time. It presents a body of work in a veritable variety of styles, though for the most part it does not stray too far from his work in the aforementioned Lamb of God.

Beirut is an American band that mixes multiple styles such as indie rock, pop and American folk. Whatever this band experiments with musically, the highlight is always the multi-instrumentalist talents of frontman Zach Condon and the abundant horns in their records. The band was touring in support of their fifth album Gallipoli, named after the town in Italy where they spent some time recording. The twelve songs in this album are smooth, instrumentally rich and take you back to warm summer days.