Hey! Listen to Fleshmeadow!

Karlo Doroc
Listen To This!
December is a shocking month to release music in. If you’re thinking about doing so, don’t. Most publications have already settled on their end-of-year list, and if they haven’t been published yet they’ll be coming soon. Music journalists are going into shut-down mode as they give themselves some time off and try to recover from the mountain of listening they did in preparation for their end-of-year list. Listeners are on holidays and are enjoying their time off with loved ones. If they’re listening to music it’s going to be their personal favourites and not some new record that’s dropped. What this all means is that albums released in December are likely to get lost, falling into an abyss from which escape is near-impossible even for those with a formidable PR machine behind them. When you’re independent you’ve almost got no chance. That’s my theory for how an album as great as Fleshmeadow’s debut Umbra slipped through the cracks in late 2016 and why they’re still a largely unknown quantity. But we’re trying to fix that because these blackened death metallers are ready to rip your face off.

What Heavy Blog Is Really Listening To – 10/13/17

Scott Murphy
What We're Really Listening To
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.

What Heavy Blog Is Really Listening To – 3/17/17

Scott Murphy
What We're Really Listening To
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.

57 – Pain Of Salivation

Noyan
Podcast
Ok. News time. New stuff from Pain of Salvation, Metallica, Cyclamen, Benighted, August Burns Red, Protest the Hero. Shining are doing a Patreon, Dream Theater an Images and Words tour. Blood Music are going legit. The piracy/community site What.cd is dead. Keep of Kalessin are involved in a pyramid scheme somehow? The Faceless's debut Akeldama is 10 years old. And there's this AMAZING avant-garde black metal thing, Hypnosophy by Aenaon. Real cool. Enjoy! Also read our editorial on edginess.

56 – Feeling of Weight ft. A Sense of Gravity

Noyan
Podcast
Hey, we have guests this week as well! Namely Brendon Williams and C.J. Jenkins from A Sense of Gravity! We talk about the upcoming album Atrament, how they got to this point, and what it takes to make progressive metal. There's obviously more to it, so find out for yourself! Then we talk about news items, including the upcoming System of a Down album, Cyclamen's cover of Linkin Park, the new In Flames album, Betraying the Martyrs, the Ned Flanders themed band Okilly Dokilly, the "incredible" Pain of Salvation artwork, new Behold the Arctopus (also Indricothere), Khonsu, the brother band of Keep of Kalessin, Eagles of Death Metal and the Bataclan, Oathbreaker's Audiotree session, Hollow Earth, and this dank playlist. In the cool people section we discuss potential movie of the year Arrival. Enjoy!

What Heavy Blog Is Really Listening To – 9/9/16

Scott Murphy
What We're Really Listening To
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.

19 – feat. Jimmy Pitts and Tom “Fountainhead” Geldschlager

Noyan
Podcast
We have two very special guests today! Jimmy Pitts and Tom "Fountainhead" Geldschlager, who are involved in so many projects that it's kind of ridiculous. Between them, they've worked with Christian Muenzner, Hannes Grossmann, Obscura, Spastic Ink, Scholomance, Nader Sadek, Cerebric Turmoil and many more. Jimmy's currently playing keyboards for Muenzner's power metal band Eternity's End, and him and Tom are currently crowd funding the Pitts Minneman Project's new album, The Psychic Planetarium on Indiegogo. Top notch prog metal/jazz fusion. We invited them over to have a chat about their projects, but of course it all devolves into talking about a whole slew of topics, and we had a great time!

Heavy Blog Is Heavy’s Outliers 2015

Simon Handmaker
Features, Lists!
Inevitably, every best-of list incites comments of "what, no ___?", especially in a year as overflowing with great music as 2015 has been. Among the staff here, it's no different, because of our extremely democratic process towards ranking our best-of list.