We do our best at Heavy Blog to bring you all the best new music we’ve been listening to, but there’s only so much time and so many things you can say about a band or album. Moreover, sometimes all you need is an elevator pitch to know whether something is worth checking out, which is why we’ve developed our revamped Hey! Listen to This! column where our writers can come together to recommend you all the things that have taken their fancy, but who don’t necessarily need a page-long sales pitch to go with them.  Less time writing means more time listening – for us, and you.

Blood Command – Praise Armageddonism

Previously promising death-pop/pop-punk/punk ensemble Blood Command have released their full length Praise Armageddonism and it’s a hoot and then some. Bouncy riffs, powerful vocals, all the angst you could possibly need. A perfect soundtrack to shout to at the top of your lungs, ride your bicycle really fast and kick ass in diverse and varied ways.

-Eden

Graveshadow – The Uncertain Hour

Is there a sub-genre with a worse ratio of worthwhile releases to overall releases than melodic metal? Regardless, I keep listening to it for gems like Graveshadow’s The Uncertain Hour, an album that’s just metal personified. Big riffs, sweeping vocals, majestic solos and more contained herein.

-Eden

Mélonade – Mélonade

Summer might be coming to a close but there’s nothing stopping you from conjuring those buoyant summer vibes whenever you’d like. Simply press play on Mélonade’s excellent self-titled release and enjoy all of the vapor/chill wave you’d like, splashed with plenty of EDM and enough samples to even justify a “plunderphonics” descriptor. File under “albums that sound exactly like their cover art”.

-Eden

Funeral Chic – Roman Candle

Groovy, noisy, buck-nasty blackened Southern crust for all the redneck stompers too old to mosh anymore. This is music for gargling moonshine, losing your shirt, and squeezing off rounds into the black night.

-Calder

Silurian – End of Ordovicia

Brand new technical blackened death featuring members of Suffering Hour and Sunless, out on new label Ordovician Records run by Sunless’ Lucas Scott. Between this ripper of an EP and the Tulip album they put out a couple months ago, Ordovician looks poised to be the next hotbed of hot shit in extreme music. Keep an eye out.

-Calder

ATEEZ – The World Ep.1 : MOVEMENT

Yeah I know, shut up about k-pop already. Except you’d be missing out on the first instance of harsh vocals in a k-pop track by a group that’s always pushing the limits of what k-pop actually is. Leader, main rapper, and now screamer Kim Hong Joong is also responsible for the dystopian, revolutionary guerilla concept MOVEMENT follows, touching on films like Equilibrium to convey love and compassion as radical in the face of weaponized indifference. Honestly, no one even is attempting to do shit like this in the k-pop space besides ATEEZ (except maybe Dreamcatcher), and they deserve your undivided attention for it. Hong Joong has plainly stated before if he wasn’t doing this, he’d have started a metal band. Respect.

-Calder

In Motion – Thriving Force

​​Awesome thrashy prog metal out of Belgium from 2019, featuring guest vocals and solos by dudes from Revocation, Soilwork and Uneven Structure among others. The Penultimate, 18-minute-long track is particularly impressive.

-Josh