Adeleaide’s Truth Corroded have long been one of the most respected names in Australian metal. Yet, although they’ve been putting out brilliant releases since the early years of the new millennium, they’ve never achieved the same level of exposure or international acclaim as many of their peers. All that has…
Each month, we always seem to come to the same conclusion when it comes to our Editors’ Picks column: Friday release days open the floodgates and unleash a seemingly endless stream of quality new music. But while some of our Editors and Contributors sit down gleefully each week to dive into this newly stocked treasure…
Doom metal can sometimes become a catch-all term. Bands just get that label because they don’t clearly fit into something else. If it’s not fast-paced or evil enough, then you can’t give it the death or thrash or black label. But you have to give it something. If it sounds…
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again (and again): Australia has all the best thrash metal bands at the moment, and you can now add Battlegrave to the list of reasons why. It’s been a fairly subdued year, as far as thrash metal happenings, but the Melbourne duo’s…
There are many paths towards the status of veteran in death metal. Some bands, like Mithras who recently came back to us, release classic albums and then disappear only to resurface years later, bearing the gospel of the riff once again. Others are second/third/fourth wave mavericks, incessantly dragging death metal into modernity like Misery Index. But there’s also a rare kind of beast out there, the death metal band that’s been around since the genre’s heyday and has also ceased to stop working, constantly releasing new music. In that category, few bands have the primacy of pedigree that Krisiun enjoy.
Unfortunately I don’t have a fun or a dab-inducing dank reference for the episode title this time. Just a regular old episode. We discuss new music. Mike Shinoda’s EP, Justin Timberlake’s album, Cyclamen’s new album, Misery Index’s single, Judas Priest’s new song, yndi halda’s EP, and August Burns Red’s Messengers Remixed. We also talk about Matt Heavy from Trivium streaming his practice and gaming sessions, and how Best Buy and Target are trying to get rid of CDs. Devin Townsend is quitting DTP, and we discovered this Metallica show that was filmed in Antarctica. Finally, cool people time. The new Netflix cyberpunk show Altered Carbon is amazing. Also Celeste and Subnautica are cool games.
How to navigate the sheer number of festivals now available for the metal fan? With the aim of helping you sort through this vast variety, we’ve compiled the following primer. It’s by no means extensive; it’s simply impossible to write about all of the festivals we would have liked to mention. We focused on those we’ll be attending and on those who have the most attractive setlists in our eyes. That being said, do feel free to share more great festivals with us in the comments and please enjoy this, our selection of festivals for 2017.
Even with the hundreds of albums we come across every year, let’s face it, we still sleep on things. Especially with a large group such as ours, even if most of us on staff have listened to and obsessed over a particular album, it’s inevitable that at least a few of us won’t have jumped on the hype train. For a variety of reasons, we either dismiss certain albums when they come out, can’t properly give the time to them at first, or were simply unaware of them until someone recommends them. With that in mind, we’ve decided to make a fun new addition to our annual end-of-year lists, which is one comprised entirely of our favorite albums we heard for the first time this year or learned to love that weren’t released in 2016. Though most of these have been released in the past 5 years, there are a few that are far older, all the way to the most classic of thrash. Being a music enthusiast means constant discovery, and that includes digging back through the annals of music history. We encourage you to share your own favorite non-2016 “discoveries” this year, but in the meantime check out some of our staff’s top picks below.
Yeah, we love pretty much everything on Season of Mist. So what? This week we talk about new music from Thy Catafalque, Brain Drill, Opeth, Snowy Shaw, SHOKRAN (teaser here), Noctem, Victor Wooten’s new band Octavision, Oxiplegatz, Exotype, Sleep Token, Hannes Grossmann, and Watchtower. Then we go over some news, like Darkthrone’s Fenriz getting elected for city council, Persefone announcing a new album, Sikth reissuing Death of a Dead Day, and Enslaved announcing a rarities collection. Then we discuss two albums that have been on our minds: Insomnium’s Winter’s Gate, and Misery Index’s The Killing Gods. We introduce our new segment, “Underrated release highlight of the week” – this week we talk about Arkona’s Yav. Finally, we talk about our process for discovering and ingesting new music. Enjoy! Also cool people time has some cool stuff.
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.
