Karnivool are not just a blog favourite, but a personal one too – comfortably sitting within my top five favourite bands of all time. For someone who routinely listens to hundreds of different records a year top five is a big deal. Surprisingly, for a band that inspires such love…
Note: As far as this writer is concerned, the live version of this album, performed with the BBC Concert Orchestra, is the superior version of the album. All references to the album in this post refer to this version of it. This is a love letter to the greatest love…
Angra is one of those bands that I always mention when speaking about other bands or when describing their genre in general. There’s a reason for that and it’s mostly Temple of Shadows, their 2004 release. While Angra is a band with a pretty prolific discography under their belt (and…
“Dream Theater is a good band” is not exactly a hot take, although, depending on which kind of circles you move in and their level of jaded cynicism, it might be. Still, as we stand at the foot of one of the most illustrious and divisive careers in metal’s brief…
Between the Buried and Me. Dillinger Escape Plan. Periphery. Death. Dream Theater. Opeth. Tool. Mastodon. Meshuggah. Protest the Hero. Cynic. Voivod. And so, so, so many others. I could go on ad nauseum but suffice to say, hard rock and heavy metal as we know it would not exist without…
Look, supergroups are usually bad; this is known. It’s not hard to figure out why either. There’s nothing in their circumstances which would make them good. They are usually created ad-hoc, meaning that first a bunch of musicians are friends and then they try to have ideas strong enough to…
Adam Clayton is one of the most distinctive bass players in rock n’ roll history. Although most of U2’s media attention is focused around Bono and The Edge, it’s Clayton who is the centerpiece of many of the band’s biggest hits. This is never more true than on the Dublin…
The idea of a “musical high” is a cliche by now and for good reason; music has an undeniably physical, unmediated, and immediate effect on us. It can lift the spirit or send it tumbling down, make you feel like a million bucks or a wet towel. But, day to…
I know what I’m about to say might be seen as lame on Heavy Blog but I’m not ashamed to admit it: I love Christmas. There is such a special feeling in the air in the days leading up to it. Now I’m not a crazy person like some folks…
When Purity Ring’s sophomore album Another Eternity dropped in 2015, I was unsure of what to think. It was compositionally and sonically different than their debut, Shrines, and I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. I put it on the backburner and decided to revisit it later to see if my opinion would change.
