Lingua Ignota, The Body and Full of Hell—three of extreme music’s most exciting projects, are joined at the hip. Over the past decade, The Body has collaborated with Full of Hell twice, Kristin Hayter has sung on the latest The Body and Full of Hell albums, and Hayter’s Caligula featured…

Kyle J. Kohner checks in with his own list of the best albums of the year. The second part includes Thom Yorke, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Sharon Van Etten, Lana Del Rey, A.A. Bondy, Injury Reserve, TEEN, Nilüfer Yanya, Field Medic, Kate Tempest, FONTAINES D.C., TR/ST, Boy…

Clockwise from top left: L’Acéphale, Nile, Opeth, Lingua Ignota, Swallow The Sun, Alcest, Car Bomb, Liturgy, Idle Hands and Inter Arma. Well, we’ve made it to the end of the road to hell. These are the best slabs of heavy goodness I heard this year. Sometimes you have to…

Even a handful of Emperor Caligula’s misdeeds justify the Roman leader’s legacy as an insane tyrant. His decedent sadism undercurrents Kristin Hayter’s latest album as Lingua Ignota. The Rhode Island experimental artist is no stranger to appropriating evil and violence. Infusing death industrial, avant-metal and ritual ambient music with…

Clockwise from top left: San Fermin’s Ellis Ludwig-Leone, Ceremony, Hundredth, MONO/POLY, Jacques Greene and Cadence Weapon, and Jake Clemons. With so much music coming out at once, it’s easy to stick to what you know and avoid the intimidating ocean of tunes. Daunted music lovers can count on RIFF to…

Clockwise from top left: Wreck and Reference, Lingua Ignota, Knocked Loose, Daydream Masi, Jordan Klassen and Shenseea. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of music on the internet. Don’t get me wrong; I love how platforms like YouTube, Bandcamp and Soundcloud have opened the floodgates of independent…

Even without considering the band’s landmark collaboration with Merzbow, Full of Hell embodies boundary-pushing insanity like few others. As the quartet has built on its combination of power electronics, grindcore and black metal, the caustic chaos has yielded mixed results with regard to cohesion. Having recently signed with Relapse…

The Body performs at the Echo in Los Angeles on July 31, 2018. Photos: Max Heilman. LOS ANGELES — Petrifying Portland sludge metal duo The Body brought its decimation to The Echo Tuesday. The performance came as a stark reminder of its primitive foundation, primally executed and terrifyingly brutal.…

Since releasing “the grossest pop album of all time” in 2016, the members of Portland’s The Body have kept themselves busy with two collaborations with Full of Hell and a self-released mini-album. Even so, the sludge metal interlopers’ cacophonic experimentation remained ornamental, against strangulated cries, crushing riffs and caveman…