Metal and Hardcore

Rotation

Slipknot

Wielding a Sword

Heaven and Hell

The Heaven and Hell tour stops Wednesday, May 2, at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, 2005 Robbins Dr., 281-363-3300.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Tragic, hilarious and maybe the sweetest rock doc ever made.

Summer Sounds

Enough shows to keep concertgoers busy all season long

Talking With Air Guitar Master Bjorn Turoque

For the past six years, Dan Crane, aka "Bjorn Turoque" has been the preeminent ambassador for the world of air guitar. He retired from competition in the Air Guitar World Championships in 2005 and made a lateral move to being the touring roadshow nightly MC - or the "Master of Air-emonies," as he ca ... More >>

Straight from the Sole: Houston's Best Metal Bands

You know Soledad. He's the vocalist from controversial Houston rap-metal act Daylight Coma. He's got a lot to say. Sometimes it's insightful, sometimes less so, but it's almost always said with conviction. This week, in honor of the fast-approaching HPMA, we asked him who he thinks are Houston's fiv ... More >>

Men of Steel

Three decades after a metal classic, Judas Priest keeps "Livin' After Midnight."

Inquiring Minds: Judas Priest's Rob Halford

 Tonight, Judas Priest, led by the inimitable metal god Rob Halford, hits the stage at Verizon Wireless Theate less than a year since the leathermen last graced Houston. They came to the shed out in the Woodlands last August, headlining the "Metal Masters" tour with Motorhead, Testament and Hea ... More >>

He Said She Said: Hot, Sweaty, Angry Workout Songs

​When it comes to exercise, men and women don't have many different reasons for doing it. Mainly, both genders want to look better naked if perchance they find themselves without clothes on around a stranger they want to sleep with. Life expectancy, general health, and mental well-being are all se ... More >>

Overkill? No Such Thing

Motörhead's Lemmy Kilmister has never been one to mince riffs — or words.

Aftermath: We Do Not Choke Other People, Even at a Dethklok/ Mastodon/ Converge/ High on Fire Metalocalypse

Photos by Marc BrubakerDethklok​ If you were to tell any random music fan on the street that a tour with the four bands on the "Adult Swim Presents" would be happening, they would say "Oh sure, fuck it. Why not? It's all loud." But that's sort of where the tour planners alternately went wrong and ... More >>

Listology: Toxic Noise DJ Bakka's Top Bone-Crushing Jams

​Every third Wednesday at Boondocks, the space upstairs turns into the most fabulous place in Houston for rockers, punks and metalheads when DJ Bakka revs the turntables for his popular "Toxic Noise" DJ sets. It's like going to visit a high-school bully's bedroom in 1987. If you still miss Shanle ... More >>

What Would Jesus Jam? Christian Bands Who Found Secular Success

​Save for a few modern screamo bands like Underoath and the rap-rocking P.O.D., few Christian rock bands have had has as much an impact in mainstream secular music than the Bible-flinging Stryper. In the mid to late '80s the band was the premier Holy Ghost-filled metal band during a time when most ... More >>

Aftermath: Stryper Shout At The Devil at the House of Blues

Photos by Groovehouse / Click here for a slideshow​This year, Aftermath has seen all strains of metal: From Slipknot and Mastodon's metallic beatdowns at Verizon Wireless Theater, to The Sword's kindly menacing sludge jams at the inaugural Summerfest, to the force of power that is Motorhead at ... More >>

Monoliths & Dimensions: The Best Metal Records of 2009, Part 1

​This year was such a good one for heavy music, I wound up having to cheat when putting this list together. I just couldn't settle on ten albums that kicked my ass the hardest in 2009; there were dozens of candidates. The best I could do was fourteen, so each of my top four slots are ties. 10. Meg ... More >>

Anvil

​This year was such a good one for heavy music, I wound up having to cheat when putting this list together. I just couldn't settle on ten albums that kicked my ass the hardest in 2009; there were dozens of candidates. The best I could do was fourteen, so each of my top four slots are ties. 10. Meg ... More >>

Megadeth

​This year was such a good one for heavy music, I wound up having to cheat when putting this list together. I just couldn't settle on ten albums that kicked my ass the hardest in 2009; there were dozens of candidates. The best I could do was fourteen, so each of my top four slots are ties. 10. Meg ... More >>

Iron Maiden

​This year was such a good one for heavy music, I wound up having to cheat when putting this list together. I just couldn't settle on ten albums that kicked my ass the hardest in 2009; there were dozens of candidates. The best I could do was fourteen, so each of my top four slots are ties. 10. Meg ... More >>

Metallica Likes Death... A LOT

​This video (watch it after the jump) claims to collect every single time that Metallica has mentioned death or dying in the band's music, which tallies up to 81 instances. Somehow that seems awfully low to us, being almost life-long Metallica rats, and fans of, well, death. According to the v ... More >>

"Metal, Dude!": Ten Juicy Quotes From The Ultimate Metal Movie

​With hair-metal legends(?) Ratt playing Warehouse Live this evening, Rocks Off decided we'd take a look back at the definitive document of that era of metal in Los Angeles: Penelope Spheeris' rockumentary The Decline Of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years. Ratt isn't featured in the fi ... More >>

Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax

​With hair-metal legends(?) Ratt playing Warehouse Live this evening, Rocks Off decided we'd take a look back at the definitive document of that era of metal in Los Angeles: Penelope Spheeris' rockumentary The Decline Of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years. Ratt isn't featured in the fi ... More >>

Anthrax's Charlie Benante Shouts Out King's X And The Refused

​Of the three bands on the bill at Sunday's Jagermeister Tour Houston stop, Anthrax is perhaps the one with the most varied reach. Sure, everyone loves Slayer, and Megadeth has a dedicated following of Mustaine-iacs, but it was Anthrax who touched the most upon hip-hop and hardcore punk. The ... More >>

Last Night: Slayer, Megadeth And Anthrax At Verizon

Photos by GroovehouseSouth of Heaven: Slayer's Tom Araya​Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax Verizon Wireless Theater September 26, 2010 With the end of this concert, Aftermath was sort of sad. Not only did it mark the end of a marathon music week in Houston and for Rocks Off, it also signaled that we ... More >>

Friday Night: GWAR At House Of Blues

Photos by Matthew Keever​GWAR House of Blues November 5, 2010 See pictures of GWAR playing a tarp-covered stage at the House of Blues in our slideshow. It's difficult to describe GWAR. Some say the band is a mixture of KISS, World Wrestling Entertainment and the Rocky Horror Picture Show; ot ... More >>

Eddie Trunk, Ultimate Metalhead, Writes Metalhead's Bible

​Eddie Trunk's Essential Hard Rock and Heavy Metal By Eddie Trunk Abrams Publishing, 240 pp. $19.95. If hard rock and heavy-metal journalism have their own Eddie Murrow, it's Eddie Trunk. Via his web site, as a co-host of VH1 Classic's That Metal Show, and his programs on both terrestrial and ... More >>

GWAR Singer Vows To Swap Sex For Votes

Marc BrubakerGWAR at Fun Fun Fun Fest, Waterloo Park, Austin, November 2010​What do you do when your band is up for a prestigious award against the likes of Rammstein, Iron Maiden and Megadeth? If you're GWAR front "man" Oderus Urungus, you promise to get up close and personal (very personal) ... More >>

The 25 Most Influential Bands Of The '90s

Trent Reznor, you know, before the Oscar and all the weightlifting. ​As a music writer, we are asked constantly to compare the new with the old, to decipher the periphery where modern bands' influences come from to understand where we are going and what we are seeing. We can hear everything Ke ... More >>

Walk on the Wild Side

One tour unites three very different faces of glam-rock.

Sanctus Bellum: Nothing Certain But Metal And Taxes

Photos courtesy of Sanctus BellumSanctus Bellum at Denton's 35 Conferette in March​What fuels heavy metal music? Some might say the Armageddon that is flirting with our world; others, watching the machinations of craven political and religious leaders. We, however, can testify that some of the ... More >>

Faster Pussycat

Photos courtesy of Sanctus BellumSanctus Bellum at Denton's 35 Conferette in March​What fuels heavy metal music? Some might say the Armageddon that is flirting with our world; others, watching the machinations of craven political and religious leaders. We, however, can testify that some of the ... More >>

1986: Best Musical Year Ever?

​For almost two weeks now, Rocks Off has been obsessed with the year exactly 25 flips of the calendar backward from this one. It started when Steve Earle did one of his "Time Machine" shows, where the singer-songwriter who plays House of Blues Wednesday spotlights a dozen or so of his favorite ... More >>

Turn It On, Leave It On: MTV's 10 Best Music Series

"Henry Rollins asks Kevin Shields how much he can bench on the next 120 Minutes..."​This week marks the 30th anniversary of the beginning of MTV, that loud, hyper-colored behemoth that changed pop culture and the music industry forever, endlessly providing viewers with visual and mental stimul ... More >>

Turbo Lovers

British metal icons Judas Priest are still living after midnight — but aren't retiring.

Top 5 Guns N' Roses Riots

More literal than metaphorical.​"The World's Most Dangerous Band." That was the tag applied to Guns N' Roses in their late '80s heyday, and though the smacked-out bad boys of Appetite for Destruction have largely mellowed into comfortable, safe middle age, Axl's crew can still lay a claim as ... More >>

Our Top Ten Picks For Fun Fun Fun Fest 2011

Photo By Marc BrubakerBest Coast at Fun Fun Fun Fest 2010​This weekend the Rocks Off team will cover their third Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, at the festival's new home Auditorium Shores. Each year this fest seems to get bigger and better, without losing it's grimy luster. Is it the Austin City ... More >>

Last Night: Five Finger Death Punch, Hateebreed, All That Remains at House of Blues

Photos by Marc Brubaker​Confidence in our domestic brand of capitalism may be approaching new lows these days, but Five Finger Death Punch rolled into the House of Blues on Tuesday night riding high on the American dream. The L.A. headbangers' new album, American Capitalist, debuted at number ... More >>

Mosh Potatoes: Thanksgiving Recipes From Metal Musicians

​If there is one thing virtually all of us agree on when it comes to Thanksgiving, it is that we like to eat and we often do more of it on that particular day than we should. Apparently, heavy metal musicians are no different. In between blood-soaked shows filled with music that will melt your ... More >>

Thankgiving Recipes from Metal Musicians Courtesy of Mosh Potatoes

​We all love to eat at Thanksgiving and, apparently, that includes some of the loudest and angriest sounding bands on the planet. If Mosh Potatoes: Recipes, Anecdotes and Mayhem from the Heavyweights of Heavy Metal is any indication, there are a bunch of culinary experts in the world of metal ... More >>

Bummer, Dude: The 10 Big Musical Disappointments of 2011

Photo by Marc BrubakerThis guy's crazy rant at Fun Fun Fun Fest made the list.​All things considered, 2011 was a pretty bitchin' year for popular music. It wasn't all high-fives and Grammies for our musical heroes, however. More than few steaming flops, blown gigs and sour notes made the yea ... More >>

Hail, Santa: The Top 10 Metal Christmas Carol Covers

​Rocks Off likes to believe that Christmas is such a merry holiday, even some of Satan's most stalwart servants can't help but get into the act. Of course, it could be that heavy metal musicians record Christmas music for the same reason as Mariah Carey: Because there's a crapload of money to ... More >>

Is Dave Grohl Rebooting Probot With Hair Metal Kings Ratt? Maybe So...

Dave Grohl and Ratt team up​When Dave Grohl released his Probot project in February 2004, it opened a whole new world of metal to a new legion of kids whose only exposure to the hard stuff may have been whatever was on MTV or VH1 Classic. Here was Grohl teaming up with crusty scumlords like Le ... More >>

Gigantour Hitting Houston March 2 With Motorhead And Megadeth

Photo By GroovehouseMegadeth's Dave Mustaine in Houston in March 2010​And just like that, my normally non-soiled jeans were not. Yes, March 2 the traveling metal bonanza Gigantour is hitting Houston's Verizon Wireless Theater, with Megadeth, Motorhead, Lacuna Coil, and Volbeat in tow. Are we e ... More >>

With a Rebel Yell: 10 Rockers Gone Country

Photo by Matthew KeeverAaron Lewis at the Verizon Wireless Theater in 2010.​When Staind singer Aaron Lewis rolls into Verizon Wireless Theater tomorrow night, odds are he'll leave his mudshuvel back at the hotel. As modern rock radio turns to the next generation of angst, the former Fred Durs ... More >>

Rock Star Energy Drink Mayhem Festival Announces Houston Date: Includes Slipknot, Slayer, Anthrax And More

Photo By Marc BrubakerSlayer's Kerry King making Austin bleed at Fun Fun Fun Fest last November​This morning, the lineup for this summer's mega-metal fest, the Rock Star Energy Drink Mayhem Festival, was released. It includes re-activated act Slipknot, warhorses Slayer, Anthrax on the Jagermei ... More >>

Drum Kit From Hell: With Bill Ward Out, 5 Replacement Drummers For Black Sabbath

Drummer Bill Ward, furthest right, has left the band.​Black Sabbath's big reunion plans seem to be cursed. First, guitarist and the only consistent member of the band Tony Iommi was diagnosed with lymphoma. Then they had to drop out of playing Coachella due to Iommi's diagnosis. The latest spe ... More >>

Machine Head

Drummer Bill Ward, furthest right, has left the band.​Black Sabbath's big reunion plans seem to be cursed. First, guitarist and the only consistent member of the band Tony Iommi was diagnosed with lymphoma. Then they had to drop out of playing Coachella due to Iommi's diagnosis. The latest spe ... More >>