Man, technical/progressive death metal’s really been having somewhat of a boom at the moment, huh? Rivers of Nihil, Obscura, Alkaloid, Monotheist, and Augury have all put out great albums this year, and 2017 saw some landmark drops as well with the likes of Archspire, NYN, Artificial Brain, and Cytotoxin. And as much as I enjoy name-checking bands to remind…
Every so often an album arrives that changes the game. Think Ride the Lightning for thrash or Planetary Duality for American tech death. Fallujah’s The Flesh Prevails had a similar impact within its sphere of influence, with other bands quick to adopt various elements of Fallujah’s sound into their own.…
I would like to open this yearly review on a personal note: human understanding is incredibly limited in many ways. One of the most prominent ways is our perception of time; beyond any metaphysical assertions that might often “grace” metal lyrics, I’m not talking about any extra-dimensional ideas on the…
Welcome to our latest edition of Death’s Door. Wipe your feet on the mat, etc. There’s a lot to discuss this month, though frankly, I had my doubts at certain points about whether or not there would be. You see, July tends to be a musical doldrums for yours truly, with lots of leftover releases that didn’t make it into the prime Spring and early Summer release calendar clogging streaming services with mundane/barely serviceable drivel. Obviously, this makes for some not-so-great listening experiences. Thankfully, July pulled through regardless, delivering unto us another fantastic batch of death metal releases that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of 2017. So much so, in fact, that we are foregoing our new tracks section to focus exclusively on the great records released this month. So prepare yourself for some good stuff and thank your lucky stars, because hell hath no fury like a month without good death metal.
While tech death has seen a consistent stream of high-quality albums over the past few years, it’s stood for a little while now that the genre presently seems to lack a globally identifiable vanguard of sorts. Meanwhile, bands that have traditionally occupied this role have since gone down a series of different paths: Necrophagist lay…
A week full of fun times! We talk about Wintersun shenanigans yet again, Tidal shenanigans, Bandcamp successes, then we talk about new music or content from a bunch of artists. Opeth, Leprous with Ihsahn, Psykup, Betraying the Martyrs, Born of Osiris, Dodecahedron, Disperse, Virvum, Six Feet Under, Arch Enemy, Quasarborn, Oni, Mayhem, Sunless, Pallbearer, Adam Young, and Mastodon. We also talk about this list of power metal in 2016, some cool people stuff. Also, take a look at this gofundme of a victim of crowdkilling (gfm link here) at a Code Orange show, and check out me and Eden’s new role-playing podcast!
Progress and change are divisive topics. How these words are defined, contextualized, and framed is dependent on a vast array of variables that metamorphose and evolve with each topic they are attached to. Social. Political. Economic. Artistic. Take your pick. It would be difficult to find two people who agree…
As is Christmas tradition, we at Heavy Blog Is Heavy have once again reached out to some friends and family in the online metal community to put together a small gift to our readers in the form of Heavy Comp Is Heavy. This year, we’ve collected nearly twenty tracks from…
With our general list for 2016 out of the way, we can now shift the focus from our aggregate opinion to individual ones. Both outlooks have their own merit; the former provides us with an overview of our year in music. However, the latter shines a light on something we’re extremely proud of and that’s the varied and eclectic nature of our staff these days. We used to have a very certain type of music associated with Heavy Blog and while we still have a long way to go, we feel like we’ve done a good job at expanding our palettes and the representation of different kinds of music and metal in our staff. The lists below reflect that; you’ll find black metal, avant-garde, technical thrash metal, hip hop, rap, noise, ambiance, post metal and rock, melodic death metal and much more throughout these lists.
We wrote a pretty big check to ourselves when we closed off 2015. Publishing not only a list which proclaimed the triumph of 2015 but also a whole editorial dedicated to the idea of “The Golden Age of Metal”, we set ourselves up for disappointment. Like the rest of the music establishment which, in numerous places implicit and explicit, was apparently ready to join in the social lynching of 2016, we were well positioned to find it a sobering, dreadful, faith shattering year for music in general and metal specifically. Except it was nothing of the sort and we cannot stress our amazement at metal/music journalism’s reaction so far. 2016 was an absolutely fantastic year, building on the trend of solid and often groundbreaking releases from established acts and simply astounding, out of left field releases from virtually nameless bands. Sure, it had its disappointments for us from huge bands we had expected more from (although signs of their demise were certainly forthcoming) but, overall, it was a year which will surely be remembered in our circles as one of the best years for music in general.
