Avant-garde vocalist Jarboe has recruited Down singer Philip Anselmo, Mayhem growler Attila Csihar and others to contribute to her new album MahaKali, which comes out October 14. Click "more" to hear an audio stream of the full record. Read more...

Pink Floyd founder Richard Wright, photo courtesy of www.telegraph.co.uk
A little over a week has passed since Pink Floyd founder Richard Wright died at age 65 following a bout with cancer. Obviously, Pink Floyd were hardly a metal band, but their impact on the heavy metal genre is impossible to deny. And it isn't just psychedelic and atmospheric acts like Neurosis, Opeth, Mastodon, Isis, Pelican and Nachtmystium that were influenced by Floyd. The intensity of songs like "One of These Days," "In The Flesh" and "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" and "Welcome to the Machine" was comparable to the tension and dynamics of metal. And the desperation, darkness, anguish and fatalism in the vocals and lyrics is as gloomy as that of any Sabbath-derived doom band.

And that's why a bunch of stoner, doom and experimental metal bands have gotten together to create Like Black Holes in the Sky: The Tribute to Syd Barrett. As the title explains, the album is actually a tribute to early Pink Floyd member Syd Barrett, whose madcap antics and excessive drug use and erratic behavior earned him an early dismissal from the band -- despite the fact that he wrote the majority of Floyd's stunning debut, 1967's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. He was replaced by David Gilmour, who, over the next two decades, helped Pink Floyd reach creative and commercial heights few imagined possible. Barrett died of diabetes in July 2006 at age 60.

Click "more" to stream Like Black Holes in the Sky: The Tribute to Syd Barret, which features such acts as Kylesa, Jesu, Intronaut, Unearthly Trance, Giant Squid, Stinking Lizaveta, Pentagram and Yakuza. Read more...