As I get older and write more and more for Heavy Blog Is Heavy, the thing that keeps me motivated is to hear how music is changing. As a 30-something dude, it’s really cool to hear how bands that were huge to me 20 years ago are now having a…
Last October I went to the Days of Darkness festival in Baltimore, MD to see Blue Oyster Cult play alongside a number of esteemed metal, industrial, and hard rock acts. Among the other bands on the lineup were Philadelphia psych rockers Ecstatic Vision, a rising star in the heavy music…
Writing about a band as foundational to their genre and as monolithic in the landscape of post-Y2K metal as the Japanese amplifier cult known as Boris is tough. Trying to wear the hats of both fan and critic for these sorts of bands is always difficult; the same album elicits…
What I like best about getting my paws on a debut record is experiencing the twofoldness of the statement that is made on this introduction. The record simultaneously says “this is definitively us” and “this is just the beginning.” (Well, hopefully it’s not the end so soon, right?) Portland quartet…
It’s always a tricky thing when an established group puts out a new record. You don’t want to get your hopes up necessarily, but you’re just really looking forward to hearing it. Especially if that artist is one of your favorites. You don’t want to project on them but it’s…
I still remember the first time I played Fuck the Sun, Stone From the Sky’s previous album (yes, that’s actually what it’s called). What I don’t quite remember is what I was expecting but it wasn’t an expansive, droned out, psychedelic walk through sunlit hills, nature in bloom all around…
Motorpsycho are a hard band to grapple with; their career, as we have told you before, stretches all the way back to the end of the 80’s. They’ve also ping ponged between numerous genres, always fixated upon progressive rock but blending in influences from jazz, pop, country, post-rock, and more.…
Editor’s Note: Den of Antiquities focuses on the hazy days of proto-metal and the sounds and stories which surrounded the birth of our beloved genre. Read on below for loud pioneers, forgotten gems from days of yore and a healthy dose of fuzz! Also no, this isn’t the Sleep album, keep reading. Apologies, my fellow den-dwellers, for my extended…
If High on Fire’s newest—Electric Messiah—was, in fact, inspired by a dream Matt Pike had about Lemmy, then opener “Spewn from the Earth” is a statement of purpose. Pike has always reminded me of Lemmy as a vocalist and High on Fire always incorporated a bit more thrash than some…
Editor’s Note: Den of Antiquities focuses on the hazy days of proto-metal and the sounds and stories which surrounded the birth of our beloved genre. Read on below for loud pioneers, forgotten gems from days of yore and a healthy dose of fuzz! If you meet a stoner metal freak devoted…