Metal is a genre that prides itself on its technicality – but sometimes a meaty guitar riff is all you need to serve a great song. Getting faces scrunched and heads banging is one of the best things a ...

Revisit four songs from the late '70s, which all have iconic guitar riffs that more or less helped define heavy metal as we know it.

It’s a slow month for noteworthy new metal, so we’re going to try something different this month. First up: a quick rundown of tracks from January’s handful of standout heavy releases. Then, we’ll ...

Heavy music has reached a golden age of sorts. The family tree of genres continues to branch out, with artists finding new ways to expand upon the styles of the past. For example, Spirit Adrift are a ...

Hard rock and metal dominated throughout the '80s, and in hindsight, perhaps they owe much of that success to the stellar releases that kicked off the decade. Read about all of these and more in our ...

When you think about metal’s riff masters, who do you have in your Mount Rushmore? Tony Iommi, Dave Mustaine, Jeff Hanneman, K.K. Downing… all masters in their own right. But for my money, one dude ...

What band wrote the first-ever heavy metal riff? According to Zakk Wylde, that honor goes to the legendary English power trio Cream. In addition to Cream, Benante points to Queen for their influence ...

As the '80s came to a close and a new decade dawned, it was obvious that the heavy music landscape needed — and had begun to undergo — a radical shift. It was a unique moment in hard rock and metal ...

The main criticisms against nu-metal during its heyday were that a) it wasn’t metal enough, and b) it was too mainstream, and therefore watered down its punch. While both of these takes have merit (I ...