GUNS!
RAZORS!
KNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES!

You can download the new Deftones song “Rocket Skates” for free at gunsrazorsknives.com. “Rocket Skates” is off of their upcoming album Diamond Eyes, due out May 18th.

For those who want to sample before you download, there’s an official promo video featuring the lyrics above. What a great idea. More bands should do things like that for promotional use. There was some measurable amount of work put into the design of the promotion and design. The song ain’t half bad either.

- JR

“Mother Dirt is a result of too many line-up changes, alcohol and substance abuse and a general lack of faith in everybody and everything. Fast as fuck, loud as fuck, unholy sons of bitches, fuck you.” – Dan Best, Mother Dirt

Born in a tiny town in the dark hills of Worcestershire, Mother Dirt, in their own words sound like “some kind of bastardised necro doom punk.”

I don’t know what it is about our little arse-end of nowhere, but the past few years has seen Malvern churn out more than its fair share of damn good bands. From your AZWAIs, your Deacon Birches and your Push Me Unders at the heavier end of the spectrum, to more expansive artists like Orbit: Dear Beacon. I can pretty much guarantee you won’t have heard of most of them, but that’s besides the point. These bands don’t do it for the glory; they do it because there’s fuck all else to do when you live in a field.

Mother Dirt are not for everyone. In fact, they’re utterly horrible. But in a good way. They are as dirty as both their name might suggest, and as the cow shed they use as a practice space. I don’t really have a basis for comparison I can offer you bar that their vocalist sounds like Jacob Bannon with a throat full of barbed wire. Their EP has absolutely no title bar the moniker above, but it’s angry, full of contempt and should probably come with a health warning. I doubt they care what you think of the recording quality (which is raw, to put it lightly), but it really doesn’t matter with this kind of brutality – in fact, it’s kind of the point.

Live, they’re on a different level. I believe at their last gig a banister got destroyed. I’ve seen blood and beer flying, and everyone in the room fucking loves it.

1. Belly Crawler
2. Tomb
3. Fallen
4. 5 Bar Prison Blues
   

You’re not likely to ever get your hands on a copy, so hit the link below if you think you’re ‘ard enough. As an extra treat, you can also download their live set from The Purple Turtle in London last year over at their Last.fm page. Better quality, equally as nasty.

Myspace // Last.fm // Download

- CG

Oh wow, (mostly) instrumental music that keeps me thoroughly entertained!

An eclectic blend of Post-Rock, Jazz Fusion, and Metal, Tangled Thoughts of Leaving are, with the lack of a better word: AMAZING. With influences ranging from The Dillinger Escape Plan, Opeth, and Neurosis to Sigur Ros and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, you just kinda have to assume you’re getting into something highly experimental and different.

Through the course of their Tiny Fragments EP, you can hear lounge piano over frantic drumming and spastic guitar work that transforms into smoother sections. For a moment during the end  18-minute title track, we get sludge metal vocals over post-metal riffs and atmospheres. And that’s only the first track in this four track masterpiece.

Tiny Fragments Part Two acts as a perfect bridge between One and Three, with industrial noise creating an atmosphere that carries us from the metallic ending of One to the beautifully crafted epic post-rock glory that is Three. I cannot stress enough how amazing Part Three is. This structured soundscape is just unbelievable. It doesn’t have the pitfalls of being somewhat boring that plagues some post-rock. The closing track is the 10 minute Banshee. Through it’s course, you hear the same type of diverse elements heard through the three part title track. Astounding music.

Oh, and did I mention that their work is free? Shit yeah, it is. Listen to samples on their MySpace, and click below to download their Tiny Fragments EP. Their split EP with sleepmakeswaves can be downloaded through a link on their myspace as well. And that’s free too!

Tangled Thoughts of Leaving – Tiny Fragments gets

4.5/5

- JR

Bossk. Bossk were good. The first time I saw them, they outshined the headliner of the evening, Envy. Some dude lay down right in front of the stage and just took them in. I felt like joining him.

But as so many great bands do, they broke up, and our stages seemed a little darker. But towards the end of last year I got wind of bassist Tom Begley’s new project, formed with ex-members of Centurion.

They call themselves The Mire, and are as much a spiritual successor to Bossk as we’re going to get. They’re largely akin to Isis or Cult of Luna, but something about them just feels fresh. So far they’ve only put out a two-track sampler, but I’m already clamouring for more.

Did I mention it’s free? Yeah, probably should have mentioned that. Make haste, minions.

Download

Myspace

- CG

Carving out a niche of their own in a genre filled with Meshuggah clones, London based experi-metal group Cyclamen is making a name for themselves with a fanbase growing by the day. Cyclamen boasts a repertoire featuring both mathcore chaos and technical aggression to the seemingly polar opposite with post-rock atmospheres and calming beauty in a genre I like to call post-djent.

I swapped emails with Cyclamen mastermind Hayato Imanishi for Heavy Blog Is Heavy’s first ever interview to gain some insight to the world of Cyclamen.

Revenge-of-the-Geeks1.mp3

A quick Google search for Cyclamen leads one to find out that a Cyclamen is a flower. What inspired you to name your project after a flower?

Cyclamen is pronounced “Shikuramen” in Japanese, and since “Shi” means death and “Ku” means suffer in Japanese, so even though it’s a pretty flower it’s a taboo to give it in some occasion, like to people who are in a hospital. Also its “Hanakotoba” (translates to “flower word” – In Japanese culture, pretty much every flower has some sort of meaning and it’s important to know the meaning when you are giving flowers to someone) changes according to its colour. Red means “Envy”, white means “Innocence”, for instance.
I thought Cyclamen was fitting name because my music isn’t restricted in one genre – it could be aggressive (e.g. Revenge of the Geeks) or beautiful (e.g. Senjyu) or both in one song (e.g. Never Ending Dream) depending on what songs need to express certain emotion I am aiming to translate via music.

I remember reading on the Cyclamen MySpace a while back that Cyclamen basically started out because you missed your favorite band, Sikth, and wanted to write music in the same vein as them. In light of this, getting the attention of [Sikth vocalist] Mikee Goodman must have been a surreal experience for you, to say the least. How did this collaboration come about and how did it go down?

It was very valuable experience to work with such an awesome and creative vocalist, but since we both are perfectionists we ended up exchanging mails for about 3 months until the final version was made! He was very open to my opinion and understood what I wanted – Awesome guy all around and was real pleasure to work with him. Everyone should check out his new band The Painted Smile, it’s very different from SikTh but still very exciting : )

Sleep-Street.mp3

As time moved on, Cyclamen started to sound less like Sikth and started sounding more like its own thing. Was this a conscious decision or was it just an organic change that happened as writing progressed?

It may sound selfish, but I always write music just for myself. At that time I really needed SikTh-esque tech metal, but right now I am enjoying more post-rock (MONO, This Will Destroy You) and pop (The Ting Tings, B’z (Japanese rock duo)) so that probably reflects to what I write. I am sure once I get enough of these music I will write songs with different influences. But I think there is always certain Cyclamen sound that stays in every song I write – And I always make sure they are good songs obviously haha

Read the rest of this entry

The deathcore scene seems to be evolving into something more more progressive. Some call it Sumeriancore, named after the label who signs these progressive metalcore/deathcore artists such as The Faceless, Born of Osiris, and Veil of Maya, among others. I’m taking a liking to the term Progcore, myself. Whatever you want to call it, its presence is growing. Young, talented musicians are trying something different and it’s sounding good.

Speak of the Devil are one of these bands. On the musical spectrum, it would seem that their closest relatives seem to be Born of Osiris and Between the Buried and Me. Speak Of The Devil have this hard/soft duality that this type of progressive music has. The heavy sections feature powerful aggressive screaming and crushing riffs that are cut up with synth melodies and guitar lines. When SOTD thinks the listener has had enough, they take a step back for a second to treat us with some spacey atmosphere and clean singing, found in tracks “Monkey See, Monkey Doomsday” and “Formaldehyde and Seek.” There’s also the very slight tendency to go into a proggy and experimental game of wank every now and then, but nothing as far out there as BTBAM. With Speak of the Devil, there’s a considerable amount of progressive flux, but they don’t stray too far from the course.

The band has a penchant for naming their songs with clever puns and portmanteaux, a la Norma Jean. To me, this is pretty cheesy and gives off the impression that they don’t take themselves too seriously, which is kind of bittersweet. And upon further inspection, one of the members has the role of “lighting/lifecoach.” My first thought I found this pretty confusing, but I saw this high quality video of pro-shot footage.

Eh, I’ll just give it to him. The light show is pretty impressive. But I’ll just assume that by “lifecoach,” they mean “the guy who supplies the weed.”

All joking aside, the music is damn good. The heavy parts are satisfying, the proggy parts are enthralling, and the clean parts are kinda soothing. I highly recommend giving SOTD a listen if you’re a fan of any of the bands I name dropped above. And how can you afford not to? The music is free.

Speak of the Devil – Speak of The Devil

1. My Name Is Fire

2. Formaldehyde & Seek

3. Napalm Reader

4. Monkey See, Monkey Doomsday

Click here to download

Enjoy the free music. If you like it, make sure to add Speak of the Devil on myspace.

HBIH gives Speak of the Devil:

4/5 | B

- JR

So I was busy today helping a local group featuring some friends of mine record a demo, which is why there’s been no updates for today. The band is called Victim’s Respect and they are from Pikeville, KY. Most of the band are still in high school, so I expect them to grow and just get better with time.

I produced the track and mixed it. It’s a SUPER ROUGH DEMO, so don’t expect too much pizazz. It was recorded in a dirty basement in just a few hours and we made do with what we have, which was basically just my laptop and an old microphone. I’m just getting their music out there for people to hear. They’ve got this melodic death metal/metalcore influence that I really dig. Check out their first demo below and download an mp3. If you like it, comment this blog. If not, go suck a dick.

Victim’s Respect is:

Nate (Vocals)
Jay (Lead Guitar)
Mikey (Drums)
Jordan (Bass)
Dan (Guitar)

Victim’s Respect – Tears of Redemption [Demo] Version 2

[audio http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/2592180_zcgbc/tearsofredemption_053206.mp3]

Victim’s Respect – Tears of Redemption [Instrumental]

[audio http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/2592181_jx0ne/rsofredemption--instrumental.mp3]

The new Killswitch Engage single “Reckoning” can be downloaded for free at this location.

It’s a good song, although it sounds along the same lines as before. The track comes off the band’s self-titled fourth album, which is scheduled for release on June 30.

Get another taste of the new album below with a video of KsE performing the song “Light in a Darkened World”

- JR

Two HevyDevy news posts in a row. It’s a good day.

Today while reading his twitter account, I saw that Dev released three bonus tracks from the Ki sessions on Bittorrent which features a b-side, a 15+ minute jam session, and Dev testing out his equipment. He actually did this a few weeks ago, but I couldn’t find any other place that had it available. Here’s what Dev had to say:

“Hey folks!  Dev here…here’s three tracks for ya. I think they’re cool, but theyre just ‘bonus’ stuff for Ki…take em, love em, hate em, burn a disk and enjoy…(or not)

Track 1) SYNCHRONICITY FREAKS: This is the first song I wrote for Ki, didn’t end up quite right though…I like it and it’s cool to hear (I think) It’s unmastered.

Track 2) KI JAM: This is Me, Jean and Duris kind of jamming in between takes while we were recording the album…yup. It’s unmastered too.

Track 3) TESTING SOME FENDER TOYS: This was a sunny afternoon and I’m just messing around with clean sounds and different pickups. It was a Fender 57 Twin reissue with some Mullards, My EJ strat, and a Keeley compressor. Echos were after the fact. Aaaand, unmastered. Get yer wank on.

Theres lots more stuff I’ll put up here in the next month or so. Music is life, thanks for letting me continue to do it!

Devin.”

How nice of him! I downloaded the .wavs from the torrent and converted them to mp3 for all of you who want them. Spread the word and support The Devin Townsend Project!

1. Synchronicity Freaks

[audio http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/2568749_8jhu3/01SynchronicityFreaks.mp3]

2. Oodles of Noodles (Ki Jam)

[audio http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/2568822_yj00y/02OodlesofNoodles_KiJam_.mp3]

3. Testing Fender Gear

[audio http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/2568838_dpffe/03TestingFenderGear.mp3]

These are definitely interesting tracks. Make sure you pick up Ki when it comes out June 19th in the USA. It’s actually worth paying money for.

- JR

Since Victory Records released the new Darkest Hour song on a free sampler, I’ll go ahead and put it up here for those of you who just want the song and not the whole sampler. It’s not like I’m putting up something you have to pay for, anyway. Does it make it stealing if you take something that’s free in the first place? I doubt it.

So anyway, Darkest Hour’s new song “No God” comes off of their upcoming fifth album, The Eternal Return, which is  due out on June 23. Listen and download below:

Darkest Hour – No God

[audio http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/2560706_wuui5/01DarkestHour-NoGod.mp3]

I tried my hardest not to come up with a lame title for this entry, but I can’t help myself.

Swedish Tech Death metallers Spawn Of Possession are currently working on a new album, and they want to let their fans know how it’s going. They issued this update:

“The songwriting process has been going quite well these last few months and five new songs are now complete. Seven other songs are in the works. We recorded a little pre-production teaser to finally break the silence. Additional lineup changes will be announced soon.”

SOP TEASER:

[audio http://www.spawnofpossession.se/sop23fade.mp3]

-JR