We here at Heavy Blog like to ponder the big questions: Who are we? Why are we here? Do people even “own” music anymore? Did they ever own music? Can music ever actually be owned? You know, the big stuff (actually, that one is kinda big). In order to better…
As you might recall, Heavy Blog is ten years old this year. As such, we’re setting off on an adventure, each quarter exploring a different “Year 9”. After looking at ’79, we’re now at ’89, and oh boy was ’89 A Year. It’s the year in which the Soviet Block…
If the coming months in punk music are going to continue to be so stacked there’s not really going to be any room for me to pontificate on the state of affairs in the punk world. Suffice to say, that’s not entirely a bad thing. With that said, the last…
Four years ago, I started to keep a complete list of every band I saw. Three years ago, I began kicking myself for not starting that childishly simple task sooner. Never mind. At least I can tell you exactly what I got up to this year – with one important caveat. A…
Whilst the decision to keep a band purely instrumental can be liberating in some respects, it can also present some issues, especially around structure and theme. Without the verse/chorus progression that naturally forms through lyrics, there can be a tendency for instrumental songs to become meandering riff parades which amble…
One of the most interesting and annoying things in the world are those micro-genres of music that are incredibly hard to describe but you just know them when you hear them. There isn’t necessarily a lot that’s inherently in common between artists in this scene; if you played it to…
You can’t download a show. It’s no understatement to say that the internet changed almost everything. Today, imagining a world without Wi-Fi is tantamount to imagining a world without cars – we probably could just about manage, but everything would take an awful lot longer. Certainly, the way we discover,…
We here at Heavy Blog are not known for under-doing something when it comes to bands we love; we like to shower them with attention and do it often. Thus, it should be no great surprise that, so soon after we reviewed their most recent release, we’re here with an…
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.
I am at Rough Trade in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for the Boston-based art-rock band Bent Knee, both to interview them and to see them play live for my first time. I would love to say that I had been following the band for years and have already seen them a handful of times, but somehow their head-spinning mixture of heavy-hitting Faith No More energy, proggy theatrics, and off-kilter pop/rock experimentations somewhere between Björk and St. Vincent had escaped me until only just this year when a fellow Heavy Blogger introduced me to them through their 2014 sophomore LP Shiny Eyed Babies. Upon hearing tracks like “Way Too Long” and “Being Human” I was instantly hooked. The blend of jazz influences with the bite of heavy rock and metal, extensive incorporation of violin, and the powerful siren sounds of vocalist Courtney Swain were more than enough to grab my attention, and I quickly did all I could to catch myself up on their (at the time) 3 albums.
