We here at Heavy Blog like to ponder the big questions: Who are we? Why are we here? What’s your favourite album from 1989? You know, the big stuff. In order to better address such pressing matters, we bring you Heavy Issues: a bi-weekly column by which we plan to…
Writing about a new Abbath album without mentioning Immortal would be tantamount to writing about Bruce Dickinson’s solo albums (The Chemical Wedding still holds up!) without mentioning Iron Maiden. It’s simply not done. It’s uncouth. Almost a quarter century after co-founding Immortal, Abbath struck out on his own in 2015 to assemble a…
Pointing out that Shvpes singer Griffin Dickinson is, indeed, the son of Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson, might not be the biggest selling point, given his brother Austin’s track record with the quickly dismissed Rise to Remain and As Lions. Nevertheless, while it may have taken them a couple of…
Branding is a weird concept when it comes to death metal. How does a band ensure their sound is instantly recognisable in a world full of Soundalikes, all trying to blast faster, groove harder, and shred more than the rest? Fuck knows. If you really need the answer to that…
Is there anything more enjoyable than the current revival of traditional heavy metal? To be honest, I don’t think so; I’m listening to four or five albums from this movement currently and it’s a damn joy. Beyond the nostalgia value, there’s this unrestrained and straightforward quality to heavy metal that…
If a poster was created of famous devil-worshippers then Aleister Crowley’s face would no doubt be near the front and center. Despite not actually being a Satanist, Crowley’s “wicked’’ deeds placed him in league with the Dark Lord in the eye’s of the public back in his heyday. However, he was a practitioner of Thelema, a spiritual philosophy of self-empowerment that’s often lumped in with the glorification of evil much like Satanism has been throughout the years. And like old Beelzebub, Crowley and heavy metal fit together like a hand in glove, and his influence in heavy music can be traced all the way back to the genre’s earliest years.
It ain’t easy being “The New Metallica Song.” It’s a bit of a mystery as to why these guys even bother releasing new music. Any serious Metallica fan (and by that I mean to exclude people who own only the Black Album) will inevitably cite one of the band’s first…
Welcome to our artist-written feature on Heavy Blog, “The Anatomy Of”. Taken from the Between The Buried And Me album of the same name — in which the band pays tribute to the artists and bands that they feel have most inspired their songwriting — it’s a feature in which we…
When news broke that the legendary Bruce Dickinson was diagnosed with cancer, the metal community was stunned and quite rightly so. The iconic frontman of Iron Maiden is one of the most revered vocalists and performers that have ever graced a stage in the name of metal. Well, the trooper…
Image: Henri Käck Photography In a pretty shocking turn of events, one of heavy metal’s most larger-than-life frontmen, Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden, has been undergoing treatment since December for a cancerous tumor that was found at the back of his tongue during a routine checkup. The band currently…
