What's better than a big book full of horror fiction? The answer is a big book of horror stories that are about Heavy Metal music. Axes Of Evil is a heavy metal anthology for people who are passionate about metal music and horror fiction. There are 34 stories in this collection that go from supernatural horror to comedy to splatterpunk. Axes of Evil is edited by music journalist and horror writer Alex S. Johnson and it includes stories from Sephera Giron, Terry M. West and Charie D. La Marr.

There are so many good stories in Axes Of Evil that its hard to pick just a couple to talk about but one of my favorite story in this collection was The Plaster Casters Rise Again by Charie D. La Marr. Since I love stories that combine horror, humor and smut this one really appealed to me. It's about a woman who makes molds of Rock Stars privates and goes to a metal show to get a mold from a rock star named Thor. Thor always talks in the third person and considers himself to be the viking god of thunder. I thought it was hilarious the way Thor talks about the women he has been with and the situation that makes Thor loose his temper towards the end was funny. There is another good story by Charie D. La. Marr in this book called Once Bitten, Twice Shy. This is a more serious story and deals with a night club fire that killed almost 100 people in Rhode Island back in 2003.

Another story I liked was All the Rage by Lindsey Beth Goddard. This story was told by a rock god who has been living disguised as a singer in a boy band. The rock god gets tired of hiding his true self and decides to give his fans a surprise. I liked the concept here of rock gods that don't like music that isn't heavy. The editor of the book Alex S. Johnson has a great story here also called Die, Clown, Die! This one shows the diversity of stories in this book. It's about a guy dressed as a clown that goes to a clown metal show. He goes to the wrong place and the band that is playing is called Bozokill and they don't like clowns.

Battle Of The Bands by Joel Kaplan is another one of my favorites in this book. This is a futuristic story where the competition between the bands isn't just about having the best songs, they also have to kill the other bands and try to be the most shocking. This story was gruesome but entertaining at the same time. These bands torture their audience and and use their instruments as weapons to slice through their competition. This story is an original idea and has to be read to be believed.

At 572 pages, Axes Of Evil is one massive anthology. For fans of horror and heavy metal this is a must have. Both metal and horror have a lot in common, they both look at the dark side of life yet in my opinion have a positive energy to them. Reading horror and listening to metal is like a socially acceptable way to get your aggression out, so its great to see an anthology that merges the two. ( )