Category: From The Depths

Forward: In this day and age with access to everything but a click away, the world has become a lot smaller than it used to be. I remember a time when the only way to discover new music was by word of mouth, magazines/fanzines, tape trading, and if you were lucky enough, a college radio station with a show dedicated to metal. These were the times when you’d write letters to people, sometimes across the world, in order to share new music with one another, and the days of waiting for the mailman to come hoping that package or magazine would finally be there.

Although it’s a lot easier to discover new music these days, a little bit of magic has been lost. The hunt has become less of a hunt and more of a blind prodding on a computer screen. You use to have to wait patiently to check out that music you so badly wanted to hear while staring at pages in a magazine, reading interviews and reviews, imagining what it sounded like through the words of the author. With the music industry in disarray and more and more artists doing everything on their own without the help of labels, there is an endless sea of undiscovered music at your fingertips. You are free to surf and stumble around the interwebs in search of the next thing that grabs your attention.

While this is sometimes a cool and great tool, it’s also limited by what is available. There are bands that existed before the days of dial-up and DSL that have been lost and left behind. Sure, there is probably some type of information you can dig up on just about anything, but it takes someone, a physical person, to upload it and make those rarities available. Because of this, there are many bands and albums that have been lost, have gone unnoticed, or just plain skipped over due to lack of information about them. Fellow writer for All About the Rock and metal veteran, Frank Rini, and I, have taken it upon ourselves to introduce, guide, and educate whoever is interested about some of our favorite bands and/or albums that influenced, inspired, or completely just blew us away.

Disclaimer: Some of these bands we feature you may have heard of, been a fan of, or even followed. We won’t be able to please everyone. We are making a conscious effort to try and present bands that we feel have been forgotten or overlooked in order to cast light upon these rare gems. There may be other times however where we have just been affected so greatly by a band or record that, while not the rarest or most uncommon, it is something we feel strongly about and we felt compelled to share. We hope this column will help open a door to the world we knew and what it means to us. We hope to create a unique experience for you too.