Jason Bracelin

Back in 1986, death was in the air. India's Bhopal gas leak disaster exposed half a million people to toxic fumes, scorching lungs and killing thousands. The nuclear reactor meltdown at Russia's Chernobyl power plant spewed radioactive fallout throughout Eastern Europe, an outbreak of cancer and birth defects riding the...

Municipal Waste is a band meant to be blasted while tearing the sleeves off your jean jacket. With gang vocal choruses, rapid-fire machine-gun riffing, and tongue-in-cheek rippers like "The Thrashin' of the Christ," these dudes recall the glory days of '80s crossover, when metal and hardcore first swapped DNA via...

When it comes to heavy metal, 2005 will be remembered as the year the promising Sounds of the Underground tour debuted, metalcore dominated the scene popularity-wise, and Iron Maiden got egged at Ozzfest. There weren't a lot of big hits (only nü-metal holdovers Disturbed and Mudvayne cracked the Billboard Top...

When the Supreme Court ruled against Internet sites that enable peer-to-peer file-sharing this summer, it did music downloaders a favor. As anyone who's ever visited P2P sites like Grokster and Morpheus can attest, sound quality is maddeningly dodgy and the catalogue is hopelessly disorganized. The imminent shutdown of these sites...

Blag Dahlia wants to have his cake and eat you, too. The pop records that the slim, shady Dwarves front man (who compares himself to both Jesus Christ and Jack the Ripper) makes with pop producers often sound sweet -- until you pay attention to the words. With sing-alongs about...