There’s a type of victory in sports called a “wire-to-wire” win, where one team holds the lead throughout the entire game. Instead of both teams tying and trading leads multiple times or one side staging an epic comeback, the winner dominates the match from start to finish and quells any…
The saxophone has become an increasingly en vogue addition to the extreme music formula. Ever since John Zorn bleated and honked over grindcore and avant-garde metal with Naked City and Painkiller, a growing crop of younger bands have demonstrated how to masterfully incorporate a jazz staple into heavier compositions. The sparsity of such bands should come…
Even a cursory glance of our biweekly “What Heavy Blog Is Really Listening To” posts will reveal that there is a great deal of variety among our staff’s musical tastes. Due to this, we brainstormed the idea of “Playlist Swap,” another biweekly segment that takes place between playlist updates. We…
What exactly makes a good metal song or album? How does solid songwriting create a critically-acclaimed album? Some think that experimentation is the way to go, and with the recent rise in black and death metal acts that want to add different sounds—post-black metal, the new trend of “dissonant” death…
We’ve talked about John Zorn before on Heavy Vanguard (and everywhere else too), but not much about the project he’s most famously associated with: Naked City. Founded in 1988 and featuring a handful of the New York Downtown scene’s best players (Wayne Horvitz, Henry Cow’s Fred Frith, Bill Frisell, Joey Baron, and, later, Japan’s own Yamatsuka Eye) Naked City was on a quest to test the limits of a rock band format through a sort of free jazz/grindcore hybrid that played through nearly every style of music ever, all within a matter of seconds, referred to as “miniatures”.
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.
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.
Today’s episode is interesting, in that it represents the first time a fan has requested a certain band. We received an email a few weeks ago from Eric T., who recommended we cover Henry Cow (or Fred Frith’s Massacre) at some point, and we aren’t one to say no to that. Anyway, about…
You know, I was debating on whether to even write this article; I feel like I talk about John Zorn and his music so much on this blog that yet another article would seem like just an exercise in sycophantism. But here’s the deal: I like Zorn’s music. There’s no…
It’s a new year, and that means that Scott and I are continuing our quest of finding the weirdest, coolest, most out-there music on the planet (and possibly beyond if we can raise enough money on our non-existent Kickstarter). And today, we have what was actually my third favorite album of…
