Meshiaak’s debut album, Alliance of Thieves (2016), is one of the best thrash metal albums to ever come out of Australia. A supergroup of sorts, featuring current and ex-members of 4Arm and Terramaze, the Melbourne outfit perfectly blended groove and melody to deliver a record that simultaneously exceeded the bounds…
Following our mailbag post last week, Pete and I thought we’d get further antiquated with a good old-fashioned Heavy Blog is Heavy playlist swap. We each put together a list of the songs that we thought best defined our personal thrash metal tastes and where we think the genre is…
Each month, we always seem to come to the same conclusion when it comes to our Editors’ Picks column: Friday release days open the floodgates and unleash a seemingly endless stream of quality new music. But while some of our Editors and Contributors sit down gleefully each week to dive into this newly stocked treasure…
Heavy Pod Is Heavy Cast!
We’re back! And we’re bringing you new old content! The Haarp Machine crowdfunder, the Arch Enemy debacle, Blood Music disbanding, Baard leaving Borknagar (but new album!) and The Most Feared Song in Jazz, by Vox (but sub to Adam Neely instead!), then cool people time with You (the show), Kingdom: Two Crowns, Atomic Blonde, Sundered, and Donut County. Enjoy!
Welcome to Connecting the Dots, the column where we give a brief rundown on a central band along with a host of other projects their members, both past and present, have been involved in. Today we’ll be focusing on progressive sludge powerhouse Mastodon and the myriad of projects they’ve been involved with.
Everyone loves a good split. They’re basically a BOGOF. There are a bunch of good ones in the shit gilded halls of Grind My Gears this time around. I’m keeping the intro short this time around because I’m sick of the sound of my own voice in my head and…
Swedish act Lechery was born when Martin Bengtsson left Arch Enemy to pursue his own musical vision. The band, who play a very traditional and familiar style of classic, epic heavy metal, released their debut album Violator in 2008, and it was well received, but the band subsequently fell on hard times, with a series of unfortunates accidents and setbacks keeping them from capitalizing on the album release as well as they should have. Luckily, they managed to find their footing again, and now in 2018 they’ve released their third, and likely best, album, We Are All Born Evil.
Each month, we always seem to come to the same conclusion when it comes to our Editors’ Picks column: Friday release days open the floodgates and unleash a seemingly endless stream of quality new music. But while some of our Editors and Contributors sit down gleefully each week to dive into this newly stocked treasure trove, others find themselves drawing a blank at the end of the month due to the breakneck pace needed to keep up to date with what’s been released. Which brings us to this Heavy Blog PSA: a weekly roundup of new albums which pares down the the week’s releases to only our highest recommendations. Here you’ll find full album/single streams, pre-order links and, most importantly, a collection of albums that could very well earn a spot on your year end list. Enjoy!
This week we cover a usual assortment of topics. Jeff Loomis not being allowed to write for Arch Enemy, Thom Yorke and Roger Waters going at it about Israel, Soundcloud being on the verge of death, kind of, the new Enslaved single, and this interesting op-ed from WSJ about how negative music reviews have disappeared. We also revisit the latest Shokran album, then talk about small things in songs that immediately sell us on them. Then some cool people time, with Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief, Brian Catling’s The Erstwhile, and more! Enjoy!
By the way, the NYN album Entropy: Of Chaos And Salt is finally out, so check it out!
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 no surprise that many of us on staff have pretty eclectic tastes that range far outside of metal and heavy things. We can’t post about all of them at length here, but we can at least let you know what we’re actually listening to. For those that would like to participate as well (and please do) can drop a 3X3 in the comments, which can be made with tapmusic.net through your last.fm account, or create it manually with topsters.net. Also, consider these posts open threads to talk about pretty much anything music-related. We love hearing all of your thoughts on this stuff and love being able to nerd out along with all of you.
