Trying to describe a Nails record to the uninitiated is like trying to give a blow-by-blow account of a tornado. Both tear through, leaving a trail of destruction. And before you know it, it ends just as abruptly as it began, leaving you wondering “What the fuck just happened?”

Thus is the case, once again with the Oxnard, California band’s third full length record You Will Never Be One of Us. With producer Kurt Ballou at the helm again, singer/guitarist Todd Jones and his powerviolence trio take no pause in just laying to waste everything in sight. Clocking in at under 22 minutes for the entire album, the record leaves the listener feeling brutalized and yet still wanting more. Imagine Slayer on speed and steroids at the same time!

The first single from You Will Never Be One of Us is the minute and a half long title track, which also happens to be our choice for this weeks Massive Metal Monday spotlight. Check it out here below.

Swedish death metal pioneers Entombed stood out from many of their contemporaries due to their “buzzsaw” guitar tone. It was a tone that would inspire countless bands in its wake. Converge guitarist and producer extraordinaire Kurt Ballou has often cited hearing Entombed as the moment that he realized hardcore and metal could be combined with such spectacular results.

Entombed would evolve beyond straight death metal over the course of their nine studio albums, leaning more and more towards a sound they called “death and roll.” With the departure of founding guitarist Alex Hellid in 2013, it seemed as though Entombed had come to an end. However, the remaining members regrouped under the moniker of Entombed A.D. and released their debut record Back to the Front in 2014.

Today’s Massive Metal Monday track takes us back to 1993 and Entombed’s killer third album Wolverine Blues. Here with the official video for the title track is Entombed performing “Wolverine Blues.”

All Pigs Must Die is a hardcore metal supergroup consisting of Kevin Baker of the Hope Conspiracy, Ben Koller of Converge, and Adam Wentworth and Matt Woods of Bloodhorse. They play an amalgam of blackened metallic hardcore and crust punk that takes no prisoners. Imagine late period Darkthrone meets Converge and you have a vague idea of the brutality afoot here.

The band is currently signed to the metal super-label Southern Lord Records and have, to date, issued 2 EPs and 2 full-length albums. Today’s Massive Metal Monday selection is from their excellent 2011 full-length debut God Is War, which was produced by Koller’s Converge bandmate Kurt Ballou. This is the album’s closing track “Sadistic Vindicator.”

Oakland metal powerhouse High On Fire is set to release its seventh studio album Luminiferous next Tuesday, June 16th, but for a limited time the full album is available for streaming.

Legendary Oakland metal trio High On Fire has made a major announcement regarding their highly anticipated upcoming seventh studio album. We now know that the disc is titled Luminiferous and it will be unleashed upon the world June 23, 2015 via eOne Music.

Once again, the album was produced by Converge guitarist and engineer extraordinaire Kurt Ballou at his God City Studios in Salem, MA. Luminiferous is being hailed as “a supersonic exercise in conquest by volume, delivering calculated catharsis as a volcano of revolving riffs and hailstorm of thundering drums combine to beam a blazing spotlight towards the future of modern metal music.”

I am extremely excited by this news since HOF is one of my three favorite bands (I even have a tattoo of the cover art of their masterpiece Snakes For The Divine that takes up my entire inner right forearm!) and you can bet that as soon as humanly possible I’ll be giving you a full review. Until then, enjoy the official video for their classic track “Rumors of War.”