Let’s talk about Heavy Blog for a second. This odd place a lot of us call a second home has been around for eight years now and, if you don’t mind us tooting our own horn, it’s been doing pretty well, all things considered. When our blog was starting out, it was the heyday of the platform, the injection of a form that had been around on the Internet’s more niche spaces since the early 00’s into the mainstream of the stabilizing Web 2.0. More than that, it was the heyday of the metal blog, with MetalSucks, Metal Injection, Invisible Oranges and so many more outlets expanding and solidifying their role in the nascent, online, metal community. Into that fray entered Jimmy with a passion for a focus on smaller acts and with genre interests focusing on the progressive, the avantgarde and the extreme.
And today? After countless transformations, in style, in content, in the very members of the blog, Heavy Blog is once again poised at the wave front of something new. It’s possible this doesn’t impact you in your daily lives but the Internet is changing. We won’t go into the details of the change here; they’re really too complex to encompass without a series of in depth posts. But these changes offer the blog a risk and an opportunity. First, a risk: the days of the blog (the format, not only Heavy Blog) seem numbered and those who wish to survive, must adapt. Second, an opportunity: in the forming age of clickbait, people seem hungry for in depth and longform content.
Which is where we want to come in. Almost two years ago, we realized something: we can’t, nor should we want to, compete with the alacrity and relevance of news sites. Our strength, the strength of the unique body of individuals we have gathered around us as staff members, is not the strength of immediacy or “the scoop”. Instead, our strengths lie in thoughtful analysis, long articles, and our passionate dedication to the ideas behind the music we all love. In order to stay relevant, we had to leave the news cycle, detach ourselves as much as possible from the daily realities of pageviews, clicks, reach, and schedules and turn to what we love and do best: writing about music in diverse, interesting, and (hopefully) unique ways.
Which is where you come in. Over the almost-decade we’ve been around, we’ve come across your passion on a daily basis and it humbles us. We’ve felt your burning love for not just metal but all its surrounding genres and even genres quite different from it. To put it shortly, we felt your love for music. And, sometimes, we’ve seen your words, in comments and replies to our articles. Through them, we’ve caught a glimpse of your thoughts and perspectives and they fascinated us. We can’t tell you of the number of articles that were jump-started by ideas from the readership; they’re countless. We love our readership. It’s the best.
So, what’s the bottom line? The bottom line is this:
We want you to write for us.
This is a clarion call for writers; this is the trumpet at dawn, signalling the march forward. This is us saying: “we know you have interesting ideas, we know you want to put them out there. Let’s do that together”. We’re looking for people who are as passionate as we are (and more so) about any genre of music but that have some contact with metal. We’re looking for people who like working in a team and are able to collaborate. We’re looking for people who want to put their passion into words and lots of words to boot. We’re looking for people who come from groups that are usually under represented or outright ignored in the metal/music community and who want to make their voices heard.
A note about that last part before we set you on your way (and give you all the boring technical info). We believe that Heavy Blog is a stage for the new, for the other, for the under-heard. As such, we have striven and still strive to give voices to the voiceless where we can. We haven’t done enough in this regard and we want to do more. If you’re a part of such a group (and we’ll leave everyone to figure out who these groups are, although if you’re familiar with our politics you probably have a good idea of who we mean) please, please, PLEASE consider writing for us. We would love to work with you to refine and publish your perspective and voices.
OK, here’s your tl;dr you edgy netkids – if you want to write for Heavy Blog, send a 500+ word submission (notice that there’s no maximum limit) to mail[at]heavyblogisheavy[dot]com. Your submission can be about anything related to music (we mean that) but we encourage you to write a review or a short analysis article.
Let’s do this together. Our readership is who we are, it’s our fuel, our goal, our agenda. And now, we want to make it more a part of who we are. Do you hear the clarion call? It’s calling out for one and all.