Ah, NAMM. It’s one of the biggest trade shows in existence, a veritable mecca for music and gear nerds. We at Heavy Blog would, of course, love nothing more than to send a few of our staffers out there to cover the event and bring back exciting news and interviews from the whole thing. Sadly, none of us lives remotely close to southern CA, and we don’t exactly have the money in the Heavy Blog bank to cover airfare and lodging for people. So we had pretty much resigned ourselves to completely missing out on the event when the beautiful lads over in Seattle’s A Sense of Gravity came to us with a proposition. Watch them carry the mantle for us as they catch up with esteemed bands and artists including Arkaik, Angel Vivaldi, Alaya, Painted In Exile, Nekrogoblikon, Xanthocroid, Aliases, Ola Englund, Per Nilsson, and others to find out what they’ve been up to and to ask the important questions like how they prefer their eggs.
It shouldn’t be a secret that we here at Heavy Blog were MIGHTY impressed by A Dark Orbit’s Inverted. Even though we’re already a couple of weeks into 2016, our very own Matt MacLennan is still hyped on the record, and decided to hit up Chad again to cover a myriad of different topics.
Good morning! Today I am here with yet another awesome premiere for you, our beloved audience. This time, we’re looking towards Chicago, where Alaya guitarist Evan Dunn has been mentoring and teaching two young dudes, and these same guys have an EP coming out! Their band is called Plethora, and their debut…
For those who missed our last installment, We post biweekly updates covering what the staff at Heavy Blog have been spinning. Given the amount of time we spend on the site telling you about music that does not fall neatly into the confines of conventional “metal,” it should come as…
Early last year an album which we had been waiting a long time for was released. It was none other than Alaya’s Thrones, a brilliant iteration of modern metal touched with exceptional vocals. It seems as if, once getting into gear with their previous release, the band are on a roll, as…
And the list marches on. We’ve covered a myriad variety of metal so far and it’s a been a blast. Some of the albums already on the list definitely enjoyed a few more spins, just to remember exactly how good they are. As we charge towards that illustrious top five,…
Lists! What unruly, yet wholly necessary beasts. On the one hand, they offer a great opportunity to get a bearing on the amazing year 2014 has been so far. Just so you get an idea of exactly how awesome it’s been, the master list for these final 25 included over…
Alaya have been the recipients of a great deal of praise from many sources (us included), being a formerly-innocuous three-piece act from the heart of Chicago playing huge-sounding, technically-inclined progressive metal with high-range vocals to make even the most fierce Coheed and Cambria fans jump ship. And now, our babies…
The tag “progressive” is assigned loosely today, with every band that features poly-rhythms or non standard time stamps hailed as innovators. However, being “progressive” doesn’t have to necessarily lie in the complexity of your music or a wide swerve off accepted musical norms. It should instead be placed in changing the…
We’ve been waiting for the debut album from Alaya for nearly two years. Setbacks in mixing and production helped put a year and a half between the release of the album’s first single ‘Inside’ and the album’s final release, which is a pretty staggering gap. Now the album is actually…