Rotten to the Core – devthbed, Justice for the Damned & Vein

Matt MacLennan
Rotten to the Core
We're at a point where a hot shit, flavour of the month band can become old hat moments after they are touted as the next big thing. It's so easy to lose track of who's who, what's hot and not and generally what the hell is happening in music and it's always gonna be impossible to hear everything good out there. That's where Heavy Blog, and others like us, come in. We have our core features focusing on specific genres—what's up Grind My Gears fans?!—but today I'm lumping together bands who's only similarity is their shared suffix. They're all "core" in some form or another. To make things more digestible, I've even added a strapline for each, covering their sound in one fantastically humorous sentence. Please, enjoy and rock responsibly.

The Devil’s Roots: Thelema in Metal

Kieran Fisher
Deep Dive
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.

29 – Breaking it Down

Noyan
Podcast
This week we (mostly I) run a terrible pun to the ground, just like deathcore bands have run breakdowns to the ground. You'll see what I mean. Or hear. New music: Black Crown Initiate, Kamelot, Perturbator, Within the Ruins, Inter Arma, Devildriver, Vektor, The Fall of Troy, If These Trees Could Talk, Downfall of Gaia, Slaughter to Prevail and... Death Grips. Then we talk about negative reviews, what a review should be and how one should respond to reviews; then we talk about, yes, breakdowns. Then it all breaks down.