heavy metal
Kieron Tyler
In October 1967, John Lee Hooker released a single titled “The Motor City is Burning.” The song commented on the civil unrest which had taken place in his Michigan home city of Detroit that July. “Oh, the motor city's burnin',” sang Hooker. “My home town burnin' down to the ground, Worser than Vietnam, Well, it started on 12th and Clairmont, this mornin'.”A couple of years on, Detroit’s MC5 released their version of “Motor City is Burning” (no “The”) on their debut album, the live set Kick Out The Jams. Now, the title is borrowed for the three-CD clamshell box Motor City Is Burning - A Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Langenu are a black metal band. On stage at Estonia’s Tallinn Music Week, they are fearsome. Blood-vessel-burstingly intense. Tempering their force with twists into progressive, psychedelic-adjacent territory, they are a band any rock fan would dig.Playing an evening dedicated to the region’s Finno-Ugric culture, Langenu stand apart. Folk or traditional music is typical to this realm. Rock, in any form, is not. This is a first. They are here because their last release, the Setooniq EP, is sung entirely in the Seto language.Seto, like Estonian, Finnish and Sámi, is a Finno-Ugric language. The Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Pigsx7 have hardly got a reputation for penning tender and soulful ballads, but Death Hilarious is a particularly aggressive and punishing album even by their standards. Taking cues from Black Sabbath’s heft, Motorhead’s “bend not stab” sound and soul shaking noise rock, their new album is the aural equivalent of being mugged by a gang of feral kids and being left feeling particularly battered by the experience.Starting as they mean to go on, opening track “Blockage” is a riotous barrage of speedy riffs and heavy beats punctuated by atonal guitar soloing that’s reminiscent of Black Flag’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The sticker on the front cover says “The heaviest proto-metal compilation ever released.” And considering the label behind Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy is Rise Above, founded by former Napalm Death and Cathedral frontman Lee Dorrian, this is not idle hubris.Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy collects 10 tracks which were not originally released (a bonus seven-inch with early copies of the LP takes it to 12 tracks). The first band heard are Birmingham’s Heavyboots. They are followed by Band Of Mental Breakdown (also known as B.O.M.B.), Macbeth Periscope, Agatha’s Moment, Jessica’s Theme, Greenfly, Read more ...
Tom Carr
Within the loud realm of metal, it often exists happily unbothered by the mainstream. And although a metal band going mainstream isn't always well received in the subculture, it is still exciting when a band feels on the cusp of shattering through to something bigger. Spiritbox, the Canadian metalcore band hailing from Victoria, British Columbia, are one of those bands who feel inevitable and that momentum is behind them.Formed by husband-and-wife Mike Stringer and Courtney LaPlante in 2016 after leaving their previous band, Spiritbox have since emerged as one of the most captivating modern Read more ...
Tom Carr
Brighton metallers Architects have weathered various tribulations in their almost 20-year career. Formed by twins Dan and Tom Searle, after various line-up changes and a devasting, personal loss, the band now consist of long-time vocalist Sam Carter, Dan on drums, rounded out by Ali Dean on bass and Adam Christianson on guitar.Their path hasn't been straightforward, as the band themselves admit it wasn't until four albums in that they started to achieve wider renown. But they are now one of the foremost UK metalcore bands – that genre which blends the thrash of metal with the ferocity of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The utopian messiness of 1990s dance music culture is now so far back in time that what remains, for those under 40, is an idea, a meta myth. It is one that ALT BLK ERA embrace. Where the Nineties was a smorgasbord of futurism, vanguard electronic exploration and hedonic madness, the excellently titled debut album Rave Immortal reimagines it through the prism of catchy TikTok snippets and rampant rock punch. The result is not, perhaps, the intended, explosive Prodigy-play-Download riot, but buzzy ebullient pop.Nottingham sisters Nyrobi and Chaya Beckett-Messam, who are both teenage or nigh-on Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
I’ve known for some time that Ariel Sharratt & Matthias Kom’s Never Work is my Album of the Year. This lividly witty, no-filler take-down of workplace servitude arrived on vinyl in May. The creation of two Canadian indie-folkies (from The Burning Hell), it’s my most-played album of 2024, containing my most-played songs, the title track and the poignant, “The Rich Stuff”, the latter a call to revolution themed around The Goonies.One big problem. I just discovered Never Work came out in 2020. Was it a vinyl reissue? Who knows!With its disqualification I scrabble about. A couple of monster Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHBlood Incantation Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media)When death metal takes LSD it’s quite a thing. Whether this band have done acid or not, the output of Colorado's Blood Incantation feels that way on their fourth album. Each side is one long suite. “The Stargate” and “The Message”, 20 minutes and 23 minutes respectively, both three-part odysseys that take in Floydian guitar solos, ambient Gregorian-style chanting, Seventies synth-wizarding, lilting reggae rhythms and much else, occasionally and suddenly exploding into galloping guitar squalls underpinned by frenetic blast Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Rapper, actor and occasional media celebrity, Ice-T’s heavy metal band, Body Count have been around since the early ‘90s and have turned out some fine albums along the way – most notably their self-titled debut and 2014’s Manslaughter. Unfortunately, their latest offering, Merciless is unlikely to be viewed as a career high point, as it sees Ice and his buddies hit a musical dead end with some considerable force.At its best, Body Count’s sound is loud, antagonistic and seriously heavy but gritty and with a sly sense of humour that frequently leans into machismo without lurching into idiocy. Read more ...
Tom Carr
The return of Linkin Park has been a long, winding path. The seven years since Chester Bennington's passing have swirled with speculation over what the long term future for the California nu-metal icons would look like.The picture suddenly became clear in September as a 100-day countdown ended (after mysteriously counting back up for another week), revealing a five-hour livestreamed event confirming the bands return, new vocalist, new drummer and new album: From Zero, the band's eighth overall.With the introduction of Emily Armstrong as a new vocalist, an air of contention has followed since Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The music of Brit alt-rocker Cassy Brooking, AKA Cassyette, comes from the emo school of pop-metal. Her 2021 debut single was, appropriately, called “Dear Goth”, she’s much-hyped by Kerrang, and has been tour support for both Bring Me the Horizon and My Chemical Romance. All these are apt reference points for the music on her debut album which is feisty, occasionally spicy, and – contradictorily – very precisely produced to suggest a gnarly aesthetic.The songs flip about between crunchy sampledelic wodges of metal riffage, Prodigy-ish electronic hammering, and howled, but polished vocal angst Read more ...