Brighton, UK-based Yuxa have an intuitive grasp on the ideal ebbs and flows of atmospheric sludge and doom. In a genre characterized by (sometimes overly) patient build-ups and measured, drawn-out compositions, it’s refreshing to hear a band who make getting to the point possible within the post-metal/sludge framework. The slow-burning fierceness…
I just love album titles that act as declarations of intent, telling you all you need to know about what you’re about to hear. That’s certainly the case here; Montreal’s one-man project Allelic makes the kind of Canadian black metal that’s given us excellent bands like Thrawsunblat, steeped in the wild and foreboding nature of that northern state. The Smoke of Atavistic Fires is a perfect title for that; it conjures to mind ritual, primal forces, and mystical knowledge, all of which feature heavily on this album, whether in the form of blistering black metal crying out pain and defiance or with fully fleshed out and haunting folk passages. We’re super proud to premiere this intricate and ambitious album in full! Head on below for the whole damn thing and I’ll meet you after.
The progressive metal that Stellar Circuits play is in the vein of acts such as Tesseract and Karnivool: atmospheric, expansive, punchily produced, often moving at a sombre mid-tempo. If you’ve been following them since their 2015 self-titled debut, you’ll note that they used to go with a leaner sound, with less emphasis…
Another day, another excellent release from Art as Catharsis. We’ve already spoken about Bear the Mammoth’s Years Under Glass when we premiered “Known Unknowns”, one of the brighter tracks from the album. But now it’s time for the full thing, streaming exclusively here ahead of its release on October 5th. In…
I love micro-scenes. If you’re unaware of the term, it is used to describe those little cliques you can find in the music community, cliques that aren’t big enough to be described as scenes in their own right. They’re often arranged around a person, a band, a family or a…
Hot off the press today – the record releases tomorrow – and joining the prodigious list of young bands we love to feature, Manchester’s Prognosis are streaming their exciting debut with us here at The Heaviest Blog. Arriving armed with comparisons to metal heavyweights like Mastodon, Gojira, and Death could be too much hype firepower for a new act to shoulder. Not the case here. Progressive metal should be exciting and fresh and take on new ideas to build on the blocks laid by such acts. Definition is both wildly exciting and funky fresh. Don’t just take my word for it. Over the jump with ye.
We all come to metal for different things. For some, it’s the visceral rush of anger and aggression that permeates the music. Others approach the genre for its more technical merits. But if you approach metal to hear dark emanations belching their way up from a particularly deep pit of…
I’ve been listening to “brighter” music lately; whether it’s the shrill tones of thrash and traditional heavy metal or the expansive beats of more electronic genres, something in me just hungers these days for cleaner, more direct tones. But I’ll make exceptions as I always do for the best of the best, even if it’s from a genre I’m not currently paying too much attention to. Enter Leonov and their thoroughly corrosive Wake from which we’re proud to premiere the opening track today, “I am Lion, I am Yours”. We’re talking about post-metal which totters on the precipice of sludge, accompanied by excellent and otherworldly vocals of the most rarified sort. The entire album is a bleak, moving work of art and this track is all of it in microcosm. Head on over the jump and dive in the murk.
We’ve been on your case for a while now with our idea of the “East Coast” movement in post-rock so I won’t bore you again with the details of the community that’s been growing there (and extending their reach to the West Coast as well as Europe and beyond). Suffice it to say, for now, that Old Faith are very much a part of that scene; they play a sort of heavy post-rock (although this track is a bit more dreamy), with the bass turned up loud and artwork by Brian Morgante (otherwise known as Deadhorse and featuring heavily on the covers of albums from this scene). If you’ve been paying attention, you already know based on those facts that I love them. And, indeed, their upcoming self titled release is a pure joy for fans of this kind of post-rock. Thus, I am delighted to premiere today the excellent video for “Switchbacks” off of that selfsame album. Head on over the jump!
I have said it before. Perhaps a thousand times. 2018 is the year of death metal. There isn’t a single subgenre in the metal universe that has produced as much quality material as death metal has. Every single branch of the death metal tree is teeming with excellence in a…
