Anyone who has been lucky enough to make the trip to the sleepy East Flanders town of Zottegem, Belgium for dunk!festival knows that for three days every Spring this picturesque hamlet takes on the weighty and well-earned title of Center of the Post-Rock Universe. I’ve been to my share of…
Greetings, heaviest of Heavy Bloggers! Welcome back to Doomsday, our monthly effort to highlight some noteworthy but potentially overlooked releases in this month’s wide world of doom. September has been truly a gift from the riff gods, and Heavy Blog has already highlighted new and upcoming releases from Mindkult, Big…
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 trove, others find themselves drawing a blank at the end of the month due to the breakneck pace needed to keep up to date with what’s been released. Which brings us to this Heavy Blog PSA: a weekly roundup of new albums which pares down the the week’s releases to only our highest recommendations. Here you’ll find full album/single streams, pre-order links and, most importantly, a collection of albums that could very well earn a spot on your year end list. Enjoy!
Ufomammut are a strange band. Let’s just get this out of the way right off the bat. The Italian trio of metallers moonlight as professional graphic artists in the Malleus art collective, and also have an expansive back catalog of albums that plunder elements of psychedelic, stoner, and sludge-infused doom with reckless abandon. Given this mix of styles, the band are fairly difficult to pigeon hole into any specific subgenre niche in metal. Which is simultaneously both one of the best things about their music and one of the worst aspects of it when trying to explain how they sound in a review. But bravely shall I endure for the cause.
Sometimes, you don’t want something complex. While a fancy, flavorful dish bursting with spice and variety is well and good, there are times when you just need a damn cheeseburger. And musically, nothing is closer to the equivalent of a cheeseburger than sludgy stoner doom; it’s a tried-and-true perfected formula…
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…
Italy’s premier sludge metal band, Ufomammut, have been one of the most prolific artists in the genre ever since they first came onto the scene in 1999. It’s hard to imagine that the band is actually about to release their ninth full-length album, yet here we are already. Following up…
Last week we reported on Italy’s psychedelic sludge connoisseurs Ufomammut’s first North American tour, with support from blog favorites Usnea. An effort to generate excitement in their seventh full-length project Ecate, the band has continued public intrigue with the debut of the album’s first single, “Plouton.” Head past the jump to hear the…
In case you don’t know, Usnea released one of my favorite albums of 2014. It came in a year I had already dubbed The Doom Revival™ and further cemented that idea. The album is relentless, uncompromisingly heavy and well composed. Now, the good folks of Usnea are joining forces with one of…
For a couple years now I’ve decided to make a kind of midway list at the end of May of the records that have come out in the year, it helps me remember them when the year-end lists start rolling up. It’s also probably the best opportunity to shine a…
