Metal Nerdery Podcast

Hopefully by now, everyone is familiar with those first three notes from the first Black Sabbath album. During The Middle Ages, this was referred to as DIABOLOUS IN MUSICA (which is Latin, meaning “The Devil In Music”). While also known as “The Devil’s Interval”, or in musical parlance simply as the tritone, SLAYER fans recognize DIABOLOUS IN MUSICA as the band’s 8th album of sonic evilocity and d...

Imagine being in a record store, just flipping through the LED ZEPPELIN section of albums on November 8, 1971, and finding an album that appeared unfamiliar, mysterious, and perhaps even a bit out of place. The album cover gave no reference as to the band’s name or any discernible album title, the back cover had no track listing, there were no pictures of the band.    There was nothing.    On the...

Often in life you have to “strike while the iron is hot” because more often than not, the “First Strike Is Deadly” and not striking may result in lost opportunity and success. And while TESTAMENT were riding the wave of success from their first three albums and the subsequent tours that followed, their fourth album within three and a half years, SOULS OF BLACK, might have been a step too far.    G...

1991 was a year unlike any other. KFC changed their name to avoid paying royalties to the “trademarked” commonwealth for which they were named (whereas K-Y Jelly could not be reached for comment), Terminator 2:  Judgment Day was blowing up the box office as the number one movie in America, the first ever “world wide web” website was introduced to the world by Tim Berners-Lee, and just 6 days after...

May 17, 2024, marks the day that KERRY KING released the diabolically brutal debut, FROM HELL I RISE, forging a new chapter in thrash metal. And before you get all “skeptical” about it and start in with some snide remark like “Oh, this is just diet Slayer…”, understand that this is definitely NOT Slayer (although, it kinda is…even though it’s “allegedly” not).    Make no mistake, KERRY KING is not...

Not only is BILLY MILANO a blessing and “a bold, courageous man”, he’s also the mastermind behind M.O.D. (METHOD OF DESTRUCTION), the crossover thrash patriots that emerged following the end of S.O.D. with a similar sense of politically incorrect humor, biting social commentary, and a more hardcore infused thrash sound than S.O.D. (Stormtroopers of Death).    As with S.O.D., M.O.D. was “designed t...

May 3, 1988, may just be the biggest, red-letter, landmark date in all of progressive metal, as it marks the release of QUEENSRYCHE’s 3rd studio album OPERATION: MINDCRIME, one of the finest concept albums in all of metal. It’s very much a “Pink Floyd meets heavy metal” style and vibe, and is quite a departure from their two previous albums (The Warning & Rage For Order), with a very “in your...

Summary: AC/DC’s follow-up to Back In Black, 1981’s FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK (WE SALUTE YOU), seems to have a heavier, darker, and doomier vibe than its legendary, multi-platinum predecessor. FTATR (WSY) is all about dynamics, as Robert John “Mutt” Lange’s production masterfully blends the sounds of Highway To Hell & Back In Black with just a touch of the old school Bon era, resulting in an alb...

We’ve already tackled Side One of our ’86 HEAD-TO-HEAD DEATH MATCH featuring MOP & RIB (“Puppets & Blood”), and now it’s time to go through Side Two in order to reach our final verdict. As usual, there were difficult decisions to be made, and the deliberation was not easy, but we did it, and the only thing we can really say that will make any sense at all is that it’s really hard to compar...

For those who haven’t been following the bouncing ball(s), we’ve been discussing the ’86 DEATH MATCH since we did our ’88 Death Match a few episodes back (which was a complete bloodbath all on its own!) so we decided “What better way to commemorate our 5th anniversary as ‘The Number 2 Podcast Ever’ (behind Rogan) than to pit the two finest albums in the totality of thrash metal history against eac...

Definitely “angsty” and undisputedly heavier, more aggressive, and focused than punk, NEW YORK HARDCORE  (NYHC) emerged at a time when punk was on its way out and thrash was on its way into the heavy music scene, ultimately becoming a “de facto” bridge between the thrash and punk scenes and eventually bringing them both together to bless the metal world with the new genre known as crossover (inser...

“Is this the GOOD Sabbath or the BAD Sabbath?” We know what you’re thinking: “Wait, didn’t they skip a few albums in there somewhere? Did they put them all on Patreon or…what happened?” Rest assured, nothing has been skipped, however, we did jump ahead a little bit because “some of us” have been jonesing to fast forward through the BLACK SABBATH catalog by 3 albums or so and time travel straight t...

The “Bunkerpoon After Dark” is a bit different than the usual Metal Nerdery Podcast format. It’s stripped down, bare, naked, and not unlike “The Triangle”, it’s unredacted, unfiltered, and completely raw. There’s not a lot of production quality, no shittah, no clinkies, and no beers of the episode, but it’s pure unbridled Metal Nerdery madness at its finest.    Think of this as a sample of the sor...

After catching Damage Inc. live in concert a few weeks back, we felt inspired to investigate the vast conglomeration of artists who have performed their own cover versions of songs originally written by the biggest cover band to have ever blessed heavy metal, the mighty METALLICA.   Even though METALLICA have come a long way from their old school “dirty thrash” sound, modern artists continue to cr...

Before OM and High On Fire, there was the marijuana infused, Sabbath worshipping, stoner metal power trio hailing from San Jose, California known as SLEEP. Just saying the name transports you to a land filled with THC infused riffs, the sweet aroma of sinsemilla, and enough smoke to indicate that the pyramid sized bong is fully loaded and ready to transport you to another dimension of audio stoner...

Ahhh, the joys of 1994 and the youthful days of yore. Y’know, there was a time when 1994 actually seemed relatively “recent”, like maybe a couple of decades ago, but we’re actually 30 years beyond 1994, the year when Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in his garage, Quentin Tarantino released an ultra-vulgar display of cinema with “Pulp Fiction”, Sony forever changed the gaming landscape with the PlayStati...

It’s safe to say that 1990 represented the absolute zenith of thrash metal greatness. All you have to do is thumb through everything released that year and you’ll have irrefutable proof. Thrash was at its peak when SUICIDAL TENDENCIES unleashed their 5th studio album, LIGHTS…CAMERA…REVOLUTION! their first to feature “future Metallica bassist” Robert Trujillo and also their first album to be sonica...

Although they formed in Ventura, California in the early 70’s just a few short years after Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, CIRITH UNGOL (which, if you know anything about J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings lore, translates to mean “Spider’s Cleft”) sound like a band “out of time”. Whether they’re releasing 70’s sounding albums in the 80’s or releasing 80’s sounding albums in the 90’s, it sho...

With the release of their 4th album (a.k.a. one of the finest albums in thrash metal history), MEGADETH conquered new levels of greatness with their progressive thrash masterpiece RUST IN PEACE, featuring Marty Friedman on guitars and Nick Menza behind the drum kit who, along with founding members David Ellefson and Dave Mustaine, would become known as “the classic lineup” of the legendary band.  ...

After hair metal all but destroyed heavy metal in the late 80’s and early 90’s, things were a bit grim. Grim in the same sort of way that Birmingham, England was grim in the late 60’s. Perhaps one of the silver linings to emerge out of the make-up and hairspray laden aftermath of glam was the down to earth, retro metal infused sounds emerging out of the Pacific Northwest region of the United State...

Welcome to the inaugural episode of the Metal Nerdery Podcast “Bootleg Edition” series, recorded deep within the echoey underground confines of The Bunkerpoon, direct from The Bunkerpoon video feed. While we strive to be “The Black Album of Podcasts” (in terms of sheer production quality), we decided to see what it might sound like if Bob Rock produced the podcast equivalent of St. Anger (which is...

Given that it was produced and released without the band’s involvement (and likely lacking the front to back awesomeness it would have otherwise possessed), WE SOLD OUR SOUL FOR ROCK ‘N’ ROLL was “technically” BLACK SABBATH’s 7th release; a greatest hits compilation covering “The First Six” albums from the legendary Ozzy Osbourne era of the band.   Having said that, we decided to build what WE bel...

Spring, 1991. Thrash had hit its apex as a genre and was beginning the transition into what would become “the next wave” of thrash with a sound and identify located somewhere between the thrash, groove, and death metal genres. With SEPULTURA’s 4th album, ARISE, emerging a mere 2 years after their 1989 thrash masterpiece, Beneath The Remains, the Brazilian metal shamans continued to refine and inte...

1984 was the year that saw the introduction of the Apple Macintosh, the launch of the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference, and the year the world learned of the terrifyingly destructive potential of A.I. courtesy of Skynet and The Terminator.   1984 is more than just the title of George Orwell’s cautionary, dystopian novel or Van Halen’s wildly successful 6th album. 1984 is the year that...

Originally formed in the thrash metal mecca known as The Bay Area a year before Metallica was even a thing (shortly before relocating to the Tri-County, metropolitan Seattle, Washington realm), METAL CHURCH continues to bless congregations of faithful metal fans with their own unique brand of thrash infused progressive power metal which has relentlessly persisted and triumphed for more than four d...