Top Pick Adon – Adon (blackened groove death) Keeping it short an sweet this week, as I'm off to see Gatecreeper in a tiny studio venue this evening, and also because I don't actually have access to my top pick at the time of writing. Nevertheless, amid all the juicy death metal releases this week it's the unknown Adon's brand of aggressive blackened death metal that has lashed out and caught my ear. Just when you think there's only so many times Behemoth's "Conquer All" (itself a repurposing of Anthrax's "Be All, End All") can be repurposed, Adon come roaring out of the traps with the nastie ..read more

It's been a while since I premiered some good old psychedelic music and The Cosmic Dead definitely hit that mark. Infinite Peaks, their new album that drops tomorrow and which we are premiering here in full today, is another ambitious entry in the prolific Scottish band's discography. Like the rest of their releases, it is an unfurling and expansive work, two tracks that each span around the twenty minute mark and explore vast structures of feedback, reverb, ambience and groove. However, where other bands are satisfied with relying on that sheer mass to generate most of the appeal for their w ..read more

Hello my friends! It is time for the second craziest month of the year in music, the craziest being next month. As you can tell from the below, music has ramped up and is spitting out some of the best albums of this year. Death metal once again stands out, responsible for a sizeable majority of these excellent releases (exact number depending on your definition of death metal). But there are other genres in here as well, some of them even weird and original hybrids of styles. Regardless of their level of uniqueness, each release on here, as per usual, is well worth your time, so let's not was ..read more

Top Picks Wretched Death – Democide (blackened death thrash) I was in a shitty band once. We were alright. Our singer sucked and I didn't really know how to play, but we had fun. We used to joke that we were cool and played "blackened death thrash" when we really played some pretty rudimentary groove-metal/core. Point is, I wish we sounded more like Wretched Death. One-man black-thrash bands are a dime a dozen these days but, for whatever reason, Wretched Death are doing it for me, while recently lauded releases from the likes of Midnight and Hellripper have left me pretty cold. Is that reaso ..read more

So, uh….something big recently happened in the music world. Unless you’ve been living under a rock (no judgment, if that’s the case), you probably noticed that a small town superstar known as Beyoncé dropped a new album last week. As a purely musical endeavor, the album is a certified banger that pays thoughtful tribute to the history of country while putting Beyoncé’s emphatic stamp on the genre. As a cultural contribution, Cowboy Carter is nothing less than a bonafide phenomenon. From fashion to politics to everything, we’re living in yet another moment shaped by music. For us music nerds ..read more

Let’s be honest, we’ve all dreamt of putting on our own metal festival at some point. Stages stacked full of our favourite bands, playing non-stop bangers to adoring crowds of like-minded punters. It all sounds amazing, but most of us know that this dream will never happen and therefore leave it up to others to organise our beloved independent metal festivals. But who are these insane people? What drives them to do such a thing? And how many packs of paracetamol and bottles of cider do they require to get through an average week?  Organising and promoting a single night of live music can ..read more

How can the sentence "death metal has been having an amazing decade" and the sentence" there is something stale about death metal" both be true? Perhaps it's because that the absolute deluge of death metal releases means that there are some truly excellent albums being made but also that the aesthetic, approach to production, and overall "flavor" of death metal are being inundated into acceptable norms. Regardless of why exactly it's happening, it feels to me like I hunger more and more for death metal which breaks the mold, both in sound but also, and maybe primarily, in approach to the genr ..read more

A big one here, as we make up for our lack of March column with a Catalina Wine Mixer of RTTC posts, covering a dozen of the best -core and noise releases from both February and March. Lots of heavy, grinding, sludgy violence. I hope you enjoy our picks, there was even more that could have been covered but as always peep the best-of-the-rest recs at the bottom as well. With that, lets get into it. -Trent Bos The Wall of Death Crippling Alcoholism - With Love From a Padded Room (noise rock, goth rock) One thing that noise rock excels at more than maybe any other genre is the unsettling. That h ..read more

This was a tough one to get out. No particular reason, just the endless crunch and pressure of everyday life coupled with all of the rest of the things we do on the blog. But, here it is - another iteration of Heavy Blog's longest running column. This is also one of the strongest ones I can remember, on quality rather than quantity. Simply put, the albums on this list are fucking excellent and I can't wait to see what more post-rock and its adjacent genres do this year. I want to let the music speak on its own so let's just cut to the album. Oh, before we do: big thank you to Trent Bos for ke ..read more

Top Picks Rage – Afterlifelines (semi-symphonic power thrash) I don't like Rage. I don't know why. I love thrash metal, and there are plenty of similar speed- and power-metal-inflected acts that do it for me, but they've just never clicked with me. Now, however, that declaration comes with the caveat of their twenty-third full-length effort, Afterlifelines, which has been busy rocking my socks off for the last month or so, and shows absolutely no signs of letting up anytime soon. The album's appeal probably has a lot to do with its bolstered bottom end, which renders it more readily reminisce ..read more