112 – Digging Deep For That Rare Form

Noyan
Podcast
This week we do the promised Deep Segment on After the Burial! They're one of my favorite bands and I have a lot to say about them, so it takes quite a while. We dig into their career and talk about it all. We barely have time for news, but we do discuss a few items. Namely Avenged Sevenfold protesting the Grammys, Converge politely trolling a fan who disrupts their show, and Pestilence kinda accidentally releasing their album, maybe? Also cool people stuff - Eden finishes All the Birds in the Sky, I talk about the new J.K. Simmons series Counterpart, and Eden plays Subnautica. Enjoy!

What Heavy Blog Is Really Listening To – 9/1/17

Scott Murphy
What We're Really Listening To
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.

Progress, Erase, Improve? The Case For Progressive Death Metal

Eden Kupermintz
News
My fingers itch to start this article with yet another semi-apologetic defense of the use of sub-genres but I'll resist that urge. By now, I'm sure most of you are aware of the way I approach such things and why I find them useful. If you're not, head on over to my Taxonomy of Progressive Metal piece to get a good idea. Funnily enough (or not) we start here as well from Progressive Metal; in this case, we're going to take a look at a vanishing category, a branch in the extensive history of the genre that, somehow, disappeared. That category is progressive death, a style which first flourished in the mid 90's but was then swept away in favor of both revisionism and the laziness that permeates most human interactions. Instead of retaining its clearly distinct and unique attributes and standing out as another pillar within metal, it was somehow sublimated, swallowed into a category with which it had a few conjoining points, consumed like in a weird osmosis.