Thermal count is rising in perpetual writhing, the primordial ooze of albums continues, and the sanity they lose choosing their favorites of the year. Awakened in the morning, to more ear-pollution warnings…
Now I can only laugh, as I read our epitaph – we end 2023 with cheer, in the light of our Albums of the Year.
May you all rust in peace…Continue reading
There’s a solitary figure on a frozen plane, playing a strange melody, while a howling storm beats a furious march against his back. He’s probably being chased by goblins as well. That’s one way to describe A Dialogue With The Eeriest Sublime (I, Voidhanger Records) the second album by Italian (kind of one man) band Vertebra Atlantis. Another way would be as intricate, powerful, creative and atmospheric death / black metal. Evocative, lyrical, mysterious, magical.
Following a meteorically successful inaugural year, Sick New World is set to return to the Las Vegas Festival Grounds April 27, 2024 with an enormous collection of the world’s biggest hard rock, alternative, and up and coming artists. With a closing performance from returning headliner System Of A Down, this colossal lineup features over 65 artists across five stages, including Slipknot, Bring Me The Horizon, A Perfect Circle, Alice In Chains, Danny Elfman, Bad Omens, Sleep Token, Knocked Loose, and many more.
ArcTanGent Festival, a yearly outdoor four-day fixture at Fernhill Farm near Bristol, attracts a devoted following to its niche yet eclectic lineups of artists who generally have an association with post-rock, progressive metal, or experimental rock. It’s “sort of” a metal festival, but the range of acts it showcases steers towards the more left-field and eccentric end of heavy music and at times stretches beyond what could reasonably even be labelled as “rock”.
According to the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus, change is the only constant in life. Everything that comes into being is a product of conflicting opposites and that process of becoming never ends. We never stop becoming. We are never at rest. The music of Swans (and by extension that of songwriter/bandleader Michael Gira) is the embodiment of an ever-changing being, existing through the continual tension of opposing forces; never at rest.
Thirty-one years after the release of their sophomore Godflesh album Pure, Justin K Broadrick and Ben Green (and Machines) allude to this one aspect of the band’s crushing history with new album Purge, releasing on June 9th on Avalanche Recordings.
This experimental Chicago band has been toying with the dark sonic corners for over twenty years. It’s been eleven of those years since we have had a new album from Yakuza, and it is good to dive back into their land of twisted shadows. The focus has shifted to a more deliberate brand of heavy, that places them not far from the sonic zip code of older Mastodon. The differences are fewer guitar pyrotechnics and a much darker trajectory than the Atlanta progsters. Bruce Lamont’s baritone moan carries a hint of anger as the opening track is framed with dissonance.
No matter how rotten the State of Denmark ever was, the fecundity of fetidity seems ever more prevalent in the Belgian ward of Ghent; more specifically within the parish boundaries of the Church of Ra, is something far more foul. Missionary for ruinous, dark, and heavy music, six-string dire wolf Lennart Bossu presents a new vehicle to spread the word of power of exacting, challenging, but ultimately rewarding, dark metallic music captured and presented under the guise of Predatory Void, a quintet of local luminaries to Bossu who have helped mould and shape a new, slightly more straight-forward, yet no less demanding than Amenra, force.
The mighty Arctangent Festival 2023 today announces their final main stage headliner for this year’s event, The incredible, truly one-of-a-kind Devin Townsend will be closing out the whole festival on the main stage, Saturday night. The festival will be taking place between August 16th through to August 19th, at Fernhill Farm, a short drive from Bristol City Centre. Also announced today include Haken, Yourcodenameis:Milo, Ashenspire, Clt Drp, The Guru Guru, and many more. Acts already announced include Heilung, Converge, Deafheaven (playing ‘Sunbather’ in full as a UK exclusive), Swans, Empire State Bastard, Sikth, The Fall Of Troy, Cave In, Igorrr, Pigs7, Elder, Russian Circles, Chat Pile, Svalbard, Jaga Jazzist, Brutus, Loathe, Rolo Tomassi, Svalbard, and many more.Continue reading
Following their 2020 Grave of a Dog debut which happened to feature a certain Kristin Hayter (Lingua Ignota), Sightless Pit (duo Lee Buford of The Body and Dylan Walker from Full of Hell) return (sans Hayter) with sophomore release Lockstep Bloodwar (Thrill Jockey).