Vikings, raise your goblets high! Sweden's favorite Norse warriors, Amon Amarth, have announced that they will be charging their steeds into Fascination Street Studio later this week to record a new album.

Only the driver can stop the momentum of an 18-wheeler. Dino Cazares - founder and guitarist of up-and-comers Divine Heresy - has done just that, firing vocalist Tommy Cummings following a scary onstage altercation.

What constitutes the perfect weekend? For many it might be a nice, quiet getaway to some isolated lake to sip wine and chat about the weather. For me? I like to spend my weekends crammed into unreasonably hot, sweaty, filled-past-capacity rooms perhaps more suitably described as warzones, watching bands that play music that is waaay too fast and heavy for normal people's minds to comprehend.

Yea, the Los Angeles Murderfest was my kind of weekend.

Murderfest was like a study in underground music. Bands from several subgenres of the extreme music world, with their own fans that have their own codes of dress and conduct at shows, came together in a celebration of sheer heaviness and aggression. It wasn't unusual to see a mohawked punk headbanging next to a long-haired metalhead throwing up the horns.

In Flames have been a source of argument among metalheads in recent years. Many accuse the band of having taken their music in a more commercial direction while others argue that their changes are part of a natural progression. A Sense of Purpose probably won't convince the naysayers -- older fans of the band who abandoned them post-Colony likely won't be lured back -- but those who enjoy In Flames' more recent material will probably adore the new LP.