Amenra – De Doorn
Staring up at the dark ceiling in the dead of night is a pastime that many metalheads are intimately familiar with. For all its braggadocio and inflammatory tendencies, there are few mental spaces that metal h... Read More...
The Anatomy Of Stygian Crown
There's not much in this world that I love than epic doom metal done well. When you add in the "traditional" moniker in front of that definition, you elevate things to whole new levels of excitement for me. Al... Read More...
AMA (Ask Metal Anything) // September 2020
AMA is Heavy Blog’s monthly community Q&A column, where readers ask questions across the gamut, and we are legally required by the universal laws of “AMA” to answer them! These are edited and excerpted tra... Read More...
The Ditch and the Delta – The Ditch and the Delta
Sludge tends to be a catch-all genre term these days. I find it seems to apply to a whole lot of different sounds that aren’t quite alike but there’s nowhere else to put them. Does your band make big riffs but... Read More...
END – Splinters From an Ever-Changing Face
Something, something, the sum of its parts, or whatever. Anyone coming to END and asking "what do you get if you cross Counterparts with Fit For An Autopsy and Dillinger..." is already doing themselves a disser... Read More...
Bolt Gun – Begotten
As we deepen our exploration of different genres, expectations form alongside our opinions. This allows us to better curate and analyze music within a constant, torrential downpour of new releases. With bands ... Read More...
Ulcerate – Stare Into Death And Be Still
Six albums deep into their discography, with nary a dud in the bunch, New Zealand’s Ulcerate hardly requires introduction. The extreme metal three-piece carries an unlikely musical lineage from both Neurosis and Gorguts, specializing in technical and brutal post-death that has pushed Ulcerate into the cutting edge of extreme metal that we’ve only just begun to see the influence of in the genre’s continued evolution. The band’s distinctive sound pairs an incredibly technical and intricate rhythm section with swarming, chaotic guitars that lend well to both suffocating walls of sound and passages of contemplative post-metal, often within the context of a single track. It’s a formula that the band have been perfecting since their 2007 debut Of Fracture and Failure and seemingly mastering by their watershed third album. 2011’s Destroyers of All.
Nero di Marte – Immoto
Drama. It’s one of those things that, in the context of metal or extreme music, often feels clichéd like some sad self-parody, or just hackneyed and predictable. Things like the demonstrative highs and lows of... Read More...
Cult of Luna – A Dawn To Fear
In their much anticipated follow-up to Mariner, the band returned to their core writing mode free of outside collaborators for their Metal Blade debut A Dawn To Fear, and have simplified their songwriting process to eschew a full-album concept, instead offering a collection of independent songs without preconceptions in the writing process. The result of this experiment is a record that is massive, plodding, expansive, and pensive, if not daunting and exhausting for those who aren't too keen on The Big Slow™
Best of 1999
The historical significance of 1999 will be remembered for a long time now. It was a cultural moment that far exceeded any other "decade closer" in the 20th century. Events like Y2K or The Matrix seemed to bri... Read More...