When did hardcore stop being fun? Not to start this review with a sweeping generalization, but it feels like the mainstream music press has been fawning over a wave of “edgy, “unique” hardcore for the sake of celebrating something different. I’m all about infusing adventurous songwriting into the hardcore and…
Editor’s Note: I’m glad to welcome longtime reader Remi VL as a regular guest contributor to our Release Day Roundup posts! He submitted several of the albums listed below. Join his Facebook group for more recommendations. Well, here we are: another year full of new releases. In lieu of our weekly Release Day…
I’m in love with 2019’s deluge of dark, bleak hardcore bands coming out of Scandinavia. If you pay attention to my columns at Heavy Blog, you’ll be well aware and probably getting sick and/or tired of me rattling on about them. Lowering the world’s temperature at the end of summer…
A decade ago you’d be laughed at for telling everyone that Scandinavia’s hottest musical export would be hardcore music. Scoffed at. Derided. Ran outta town. Well, sorry, but that’s just how it is now. Norway’s Oberst are the latest in a long line of Scandignarly bands blending the traditional frosty…
It’s my birthday today, but I’m here to give YOU a gift, via NYT LIV, Indisciplinarian Records, and Earsplit PR. If you’ve been paying attention (have you?) then you’ll have seen this Danish melodic hardcore mob pop up here over the last few weeks; the Copenhagen crew taking part in…
There’s something gorgeous happening in Denmark. It seems you can’t throw a guitar into a crowd without hitting great new hardcore and metal bands from the Nordic country – Copenhagen, in particular, is the home of many of these talented, tuneful new acts, forcing me to drastically consider a music-centric…
Bergen’s Blood Command are one of those bands who should be way bigger than they are. Bill gave them a favorable shout-out in his most recent punk round-up, but the band remain a relatively uncelebrated quantity, especially when compared with the quality and consistency – not to mention the sheer…
Despite being just a guitar and drum duo, Mantar still sound just as massive as their modern sludge metal brethren. On their third album The Modern Art of Setting Ablaze, Erinç Sakarya (drums, vocals) and Hanno Klänhardt (vocals, guitars) continue their consistent trend of dropping an abrasive slab of blackened, crusty sludge every two years, all…
I promise this episode title isn’t about the podcast itself. I think this is one of the better episodes in a while, in fact! We discuss a bunch of new music, including Krisiun, Epica, Born of Osiris, Anaal Nathrakh, Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway, and Erra. Then some happenings, like Kvelertak getting a new vocalist, Matt Tuck of Bullet For My Valentine and his terrible hot take, The Ocean (not to be confused with Oceano, Eden) working on a double album, Eden’s Alkaloid prognotes, and me meeting a fellow metal musician and discovering his awesome band Cartilage. Along the ride, we discuss how modern production is ruining death metal (I promise it’s not “old man yells at clouds”), the DC cinematic universe, and more. Also, we do cool people time with Enter the Gungeon and Middle Earth: Shadow of War DLC, and me waxing poetic about puzzle games, including The Spectrum Retreat, (The) Portal 1/2, The Talos Principle, The Witness, The Swapper and more. Enjoy!
Since the vast majority of Heavy Blog contributors fall on the left side of the map (shocking, we know), focusing on the latter seems like the way to go. Criticizing the other side of the political map is easy enough; taking a hard look at your own camp is where things get tricky. Thus, let us turn our eyes on one of the most typical leftist refusals to engage: the retreat. There are few places in the cultural world where this retreat is more obvious than in music and, more specifically, in metal. Even more specifically, the current throes which are black metal is undergoing are even more lucrative for our needs. There, leftist retreat is alive and happening right now, both because of the virility of the claims on the other side (read: the amount of black metal that’s truly awful) and because the themes of black metal have already been declared by the larger, more abstract “left” as anathema in the past.
