Metal Assault was started by Aniruddh ‘Andrew’ Bansal on February 13th 2010. Andrew first stepped into music journalism while he was based in Los Angeles, with a Las Vegas-based online outlet called Full Metal Rock. He covered metal shows in the Los Angeles-area for that website, by doing concert reviews, live photos and interviews with bands of all kinds big and small. His prolific output soon made him realize that he should be starting his own outlet for publishing such content, and thus he launched Metal Assault with a small group of friends consisting of writers and photographers in the local metal scene on board with him in his initial team.
Metal Assault rapidly became one of the most actively working organization of its kind, providing coverage for nearly every single hard rock and heavy metal event that took place in 2010. The subsequent year of 2011 saw Metal Assault grow even further and bigger, and despite the fact that Andrew had to move back to his native country India in early 2012, the content on the website never died down. His Los Angeles-based staff made up for his absence, while he got involved in discovering some Indian metal talent himself, thus raising the popularity and credibility of the website amongst its Indian followers as well.
Based on website analysis and statistics, Metal Assault has a following not only in North America but also in Europe, South America, Australia, and thanks to the coverage in 2012, parts of Asia as well. Andrew, along with contributions from other writers from time to time, has interviewed and reviewed almost every metal band you can think of, but besides that, the website prides itself on the effort expended towards spotlighting some of the best unknown local talent in the Los Angeles area, San Francisco, India, and a few other places. The aim and the motto is to promote and write about good heavy music, no matter how popular or how obscure the artist may be.
Besides the usual categories like news, concert reviews, album reviews, live photos and interviews, Metal Assault also has the Retrospective section which celebrates classic hard rock and heavy metal albums on their landmark anniversaries, and an Articles section which deals with a broader, more general perspective on all things metal. In addition to the content on the website, Metal Assault is extremely active on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube, and serves to an ever-growing list of followers on all those platforms. But more than anything, Metal Assault is known, recognized and respected for its ultra-quick turnaround time, wherein concert reviews are posted within one or two days after the concert, and the same applies for other content categories.
As of now in April 2013, Andrew is set to return to Los Angeles to resume Metal Assault activities full-on, and for the rest of the year the website promises to continue delivering honest, no-nonsense content featuring the best in heavy music.
[Last updated on April 14th 2013]