Every year, I grow more impressed by the breadth of new ideas introduced into the world of black metal. I’ve long held the belief that the “blackened” prefix manifests in more unique ways than any other metal subgenre. Even the lightest introduction of black metal aesthetics can significantly alter the…
We here at Heavy Blog like to ponder the big questions: Who are we? Why are we here? What were we thinking? You know, the big stuff. In order to better address such pressing matters, we bring you Heavy Issues: a semi-regular column by which we plan to get to…
As I covered in our video premiere for “Calm,” Secret Shame strike just the right balance of post-punk nostalgia and innovation. The group employs a “dark rock” kaleidoscope throughout Dark Synthetics that touches on elements of deathrock, darkwave, and goth rock. Yet, at their core, the band maintains the punk…
Annnnnnnd we’re back…. Or something. After a “small” bit of time off we’ve decided, and I have been granted the kind privilege, to get back into the swing of things with what’s been going on in the punk universe. This time out I’m going to take a stab at a…
Heavy Blog is Heavy is ten years old. When Jimmy Rowe first started this blog, I doubt he imagined that it would become what it is today; I doubt anybody around back then imagined it. It was special for music journalism; right at the cusp of the mass migration of…
Oh, shoegaze. Does anyone have one of those genres that is, on paper, a perfect storm of everything they want to hear, but rarely seems to come together in the way they are dreaming of? That is shoegaze for me. That delectable blend of heavy soundscapes and lush melodies, dreamy…
There’s a lot happening in the music world, and we here at Heavy Blog try our very best to keep up with it! Like the vast majority of heavy music fans, our tastes are incredibly vast, with our 3X3s in each Playlist Update typically covering numerous genres and sometimes a…
If depression had an official soundtrack, there’s no question it’d be exclusively comprised of songs from post-punk’s family tree. The genre’s swirl of reverb, haunting bass lines and drab, lifeless vocals capture the essence of endlessly staring out the window of a dimly lit room on a rainy day, every…
There’s a lot happening in the music world, and we here at Heavy Blog try our very best to keep up with it! Like the vast majority of heavy music fans, our tastes are incredibly vast, with our 3X3s in each Playlist Update typically covering numerous genres and sometimes a different style in each square. While we have occasionally covered non-metal topics in past blog posts, we decided that a dedicated column was warranted in order to more completely recommend all of the music that we have been listening to. Unmetal Monday is a weekly column which covers noteworthy tracks and albums from outside the metal universe, and we encourage you all to share your favorite non-metal picks from the week in the comments. This week, we’ll be highlighting a few albums and tracks that struck our fancy over the past few weeks. Head past the jump to dial down the distortion.
Art is less concerned with clear borders or delimitation. In fact, it thrives where uncertainty flourishes, giving us a wordless dictionary to help us understand, empathize, and connect with phenomena too nebulous for a direct approach. The artist (and this is no original thought, as reading any number of countless thinkers on aesthetics will show you) is more of a mediator than an explainer, someone who is able to speak both the odd un-language of art and the odd language of our daily lives. Ulver have always understood this. From their black metal roots, channeling the wild indifference of nature, and through their by-now countless transformations, they have served as a unique trumpet for the unintelligible and yet impossible to ignore intonations that flash ceaselessly across the skies of our culture.
