Why use lo-fi production today? Sure, back in the day when black metal was starting out, lo-fi was less of an intentional thing and just a sign of the times and the means by which the people making the music made it. But today, there is no “need” for lo-fi…
I probably need to explain that title, don’t I? No worries! First, Machine Music is an insanely great metal blog run by Ron Ben-Tovim, a fellow Israeli and one of the most serious and thoughtful music journalists out there. You can, and should, read it here (it has plenty of…
The Hellenic black metal scene (AKA black metal from Greece) is known for many things. Chief amongst those is probably Rotting Christ or, if you run in Heavy Blog circles, Spectral Lore. As far as sound goes, popular Hellenic black metal is usually very “large” and flamboyant, influenced strongly by…
Welcome, once more, to Kvlt Kolvmn. It’s… I mean, the world is the fucking worst right now. If a global pandemic of unprecedented modern proportions wasn’t enough, widespread unemployment, looming global economic catastrophe, and a complete exposition of the failures of the US healthcare system have made March one of…
Listening to black metal can be frustrating in many ways but sometimes, the ways in which it is frustrating can also be very rewarding. For example, the element of obscurity and persona involved in black metal can cause confusion, making otherwise excellent music hard to discover. But on the other…
When I was in my senior year of high school, I was really Going Through It. Due to a combination of factors – a couple years’ worth of personal events with peers that I still don’t really talk about much, seeing the signs of the oncoming death of a loved…
Welcome, once again, to the column which exists solely so we could have a place to say: “hey, we fucked up”. And boy, did we fuck up this time; despite getting some traction in our circles, we never covered Locust Leaves’ 2017 release, A Subtler Kind of Light. It’s a major fuck up for several reasons: first, the project contains none other than Ayloss of Spectral Lore, one of my personal favorite musicians in black metal. Second, the album itself is a blend of progressive death metal, folk, black metal and avant-garde, basically ticking every single box of stuff that Heavy Blog cares about. And, lastly and most importantly, it’s fucking amazing.
Editor’s Note: it is our extreme pleasure today to be premiering this album alongside reviewing it. If you’d like to listen along as you read this review, please scroll all the way to the bottom first to find the embed for this release. If you’re a fan of atmospheric black metal…
There’s a lot happening in the music world, and we here at Heavy Blog try our very best to keep up with it! Like the vast majority of heavy music fans, our tastes are incredibly vast, with our 3X3s in each Playlist Update typically covering numerous genres and sometimes a…
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…
