We continue our wander through the 4CD Intrigue compilation. This installment features 15 UK bands, several which we’d never heard of before (Art Nouveau, New Musik, Section 25). We hope this episode helps prove curator Steven Wilson’s note that Intrigue operates on the “idea that conceptual thinking and ambition didn’t suddenly evaporate after ’77…ambitious, weird and thrilling music was all around you in the ‘80s – if you looked in the right places.” Amen. Note I: Please consider donating if you listen to Radical Research often: https://www.paypal.me/rrpodcast We also have a webstore where y ..read more

Sigh is unquestionably one of the weirdest bands in the metal realm. And since Radical Research skews weird, and since we are both fans of Sigh since the mid ‘90s, it seemed obvious that we would eventually do an episode featuring some of the very weirdest of Sigh’s weird moments. So…if you are down with our motto of Keep Metal Weird, you know what to do. Note I: Please consider donating if you listen to Radical Research often: https://www.paypal.me/rrpodcast We also have a webstore where you can find shirts, CDs, and books, many of them recently restocked: http://radicalresearch.org/shop/ Mus ..read more

The body of critical study - and fan adoration - around the music of Napalm Death has concerned itself principally with the band's pioneering grindcore and its transition into the death metal of Harmony Corruption. But what of the band's wilderness years, the mid- to late-1990s? The 108th episode of Radical Research digs into what its hosts consider to be Napalm Death's most radical music, the four-album futurist blitzkrieg spanning the years 1994-1998. Get ready for some serious side-eye, Legions, as we cross over into the torn apart.   Note I: In the episode, Hunter mentions I ..read more

For a podcast that traffics in all things wild and mind-expanding, the subject of our 107th episode makes everything else feel stone-cold sober by comparison. The fifth album by Sweden's Tiamat, A Deeper Kind of Slumber, luxuriates in the wan, reclined possibilities of Leary biscuits and Psilocybin dreams. This episode paddles along the hallucinatory waters of Tiamat's final masterpiece and resolves itself to the album's irreconcilable mysteries.  Note I: Please consider donating if you listen to Radical Research often: https://www.paypal.me/rrpodcast We also have a webstore where you can ..read more

We tend to skew toward the past in our explorations with Radical Research, uncovering sounds we feel are overlooked and/or underrated. We’re breaking our usual time travel approach and focusing solely on some new metal music that thrilled us in 2023 and one very fresh entry for 2024. It’s not 1986 or 1991 anymore, obviously, but 2023 was a great year for new music, metal and otherwise. Herein, we delve into the greatness that is Ontological Mysterium (Horrendous), In But Not Of (Afterbirth), Andermans Mijne (Laster), and The Deepening (Vemod). Metal lives? Metal lives!!! Note I: Please conside ..read more

For Episode 105, Radical Research follows the lead of musical polyglot and overachiever, Steven Wilson. Inspired by Wilson's recently-curated, Intrigue: Progressive Sounds in UK Alternative Music 1979-1989, this episode traces out the music found on the first disc of this four-volume edition, digging into such varied artists as Public Image Ltd., John Foxx, In Camera, and This Heat. This constitutes the first in a four-part series around Wilson's collection, which we will revisit occasionally throughout 2024. Should you have any interest in the rich mosaic of the late 1970s/early 1980s UK unde ..read more

As is so often the case, Radical Research, for its 104th episode, finds itself in Norway, only this time to investigate the psycho-necrotic brutality of Oslo’s Diskord. At once garage-y, asymmetric, and morbid, Diskord hawks death-wares that invite listeners to stroll through the hallways of the weird metal madhouse. Only death and Norway are real. Note I: Thanks to Tim Hammond for the Oscillations mp3s. We only had the vinyl and no digital version, and we knew who to turn to. Thanks Tim, you are a fucking champ! Note II: Wagner was thinking “Funebrarum” but said “Encoffination.” Please forgiv ..read more

Death, humor, society? Who doesn't love these things? Radical Research certainly does! So, it should come as no surprise that we chose the second album by Houston, Texas' Dead Horse as the subject of our 103rd episode. Peaceful Death and Pretty Flowers, released by Big Chief Records in 1991, plunders the remotest corners of thrash, hardcore, and mangled death as fodder for its singular brand of knee-slappin' brutality. Join us for this rather less than peaceful episode. Note I: Please consider donating if you listen to Radical Research often: https://www.paypal.me/rrpodcast We also have a webs ..read more

Forged in the crucible of the Tri-State hardcore and thrash scenes, New York City's Into Another released three genre-defying albums that blend together -- seemlessly -- the disparate sensibilities of its members. The band's membership boasts a heritage that includes such stalwart acts as Whiplash and Youth of Today, though Into Another's rich, mystical rock hardly betrays those roots. Episode 102 of Radical Research does its best to reveal the treasures of this tragically-overlooked band.  Note I: Please consider donating if you listen to Radical Research often: https://www.pay ..read more

2023 marks the 40th anniversary of Voivod, a band that are at the very heart of everything we do at Radical Research and everything we listen to as incorrigible music obsessives. In celebration, Voivod released Morgoth Tales, which finds the Mark V lineup (Snake, Away, Chewy, Rocky) covering songs from various past eras. For ourselves, we pay tribute by offering our longest and most in-depth episode yet, while also celebrating a landmark of our own. We invite all chaosmongers, nothingfaces, cockroaches and diehards across the schizophere to join us in celebration of the one, the only, the eter ..read more