by Oliver Sheppard Portland doom metal band Atriarch have taken a gothic turn since their split earlier this year with San Francisco’s Alaric. Although still solidly anchored to a doom metal-y rhythm section — complete with ponderous, stomping drums and trudging bass guitar — on the band’s new LP, Ritual

Now signed with Nuclear War Now, Oregon underground enigma Knelt Rote has all but moved away from their grindcore origins and into pastures more akin to the death metal and black metal that is often associated with the label. Last album Insignificance went a long in bridging the gap to

To the uninitiated, Beithíoch (meaning beast in Irish, an appropriate name if there was one), is a warped black metal project with branches into death and doom, all resonated from a not so specific location in the “north west” of Ireland. Maintaining much of the mystery and sometimes peculiar anonymity

King Dude’s third LP, Burning Daylight, recently came out on Dais Records, continuing the one man project’s exploration of dark, eerily psychedelic, low-fi, Americana-tinged folk music. King Dude — whose name, as I’ve said before, is a little too close to something like “Kid Rock” for me (but that, as