It’s been a long four years since the sophomore release from Australian post-black metal outfit Hope Drone. Cloak of Ash, released July 2015 through Relapse Records, was the group’s shot at a breakout, and it was certainly a devastating and compelling release, earning a four-out-of-five score from us back when…
Many words have been spilled around these parts in service of post-rock and post-metal. Yet – outside of more expansive, god-tier, genre heavyweights; such as Isis and Neurosis – I’ve never found myself particularly captivated by the genre(s). Lush soundscapes building to cathartic crescendos are all well and good, but…
Back in November we premiered “Prayers” from the debut album by SOM, a supergroup of sorts featuring a trio of unheralded members of the heavy music landscape. Vocalist/guitarist Will Benoit and drummer Duncan Rich comprised two-thirds of the spacey/heavy indie band Constants, who played a strong role in the burgeoning…
For fans of post-anything metal, there was a turning point where we came to dismiss instant gratification. The point where we came to fall in love with the longform sonic journey, the gradual and subtle expanse of musical ideas, or the entrancing (and at times physical) nature of cascading, droning riffing and phantasmal leadwork. Bigger than that, it’s where we abandoned immediacy in exchange for the ambient, the psychedelic, the densely layered, or the ruminating.
There are a few topics which we keep hammering at here at Heavy Blog, whether through the text of our posts, the musical selection which we make, on “external” channels like the podcast, and more. One of them is that music, whether we like it or not, is a business.…
Brighton, UK-based Yuxa have an intuitive grasp on the ideal ebbs and flows of atmospheric sludge and doom. In a genre characterized by (sometimes overly) patient build-ups and measured, drawn-out compositions, it’s refreshing to hear a band who make getting to the point possible within the post-metal/sludge framework. The slow-burning fierceness…
The world will end. The world will end. The world will end. Not with a whimper but a long, drawn-out, human-inflicted death rattle. …Or so Anthrocene, the fifth-full length from ex-Neurosis visual artist Josh Graham’s A Storm of Light, will have you believe. While I’m to understand that Graham never…
The Anatomy Of feature has always been about getting under the skin of the bands we admire at Heavy Blog Is Heavy. Listening to the bands that made them pick up their instruments and start pouring out their souls becomes something new in itself. Norway’s Attan don’t sound like any…
Doom metal. There’s a lot of it, yeah? By now, the idea of doom metal making a comeback is absurd, since we’re already well into this comeback. We’ve forgotten that doom (and, to a lesser extent, stoner) was a dead genre not too long ago, mostly but not totally buried…
Tristan Shone’s industrial doom project Author & Punisher is easily one of the most unique acts on the current landscape of extreme music; while many acts proudly identify as a “one-man band,” Shone’s array of handmade instruments and impeccable limb independence allows him to weave songs together by himself without relying on backtracks to get the job done, borrowing musical cues from the likes of Neurosis, Godflesh, and Helmet in the process. Leaning heavily into drone and doom on initial releases, Shone’s musical palette and production know-how have broadened the dynamic considerably.
