Posts tagged ‘Metal’

November 11, 2022

Friday 5×5

Friday 5×5 is our segment where we give you five new tracks to check out and give ourselves the challenge of describing said tracks in only five words.

Friday? More like Friyay amiright? It’s been a long week round these parts and we’re ready to wrap it up with five tunes so good they do the heavy lifting. Letting us kick our feet up and go ahhhhhhh. Thanks Paul Bäcklin, Gillian Stone, Awon, Peaceful Faces and Throne Of Iron for doing all the hard work. Employees of the month, all of ya.
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November 7, 2022

Week Starter – The Mörkret

Week Starter is our Monday column where we give you a new song to help you get on out of bed & help you power on through the working week.

Hey did you hear there’s going to be blood moon on election day here in the U.S.? Sounds like an ominous sign and good excuse to start the week off with some METAL. “Face the Train” by Swedish band The Mörkret lays out man’s battle to find a place in an ever increasing technology based world. Their weapons of choice are crushing riffs, soaring vocals and drum fills a plenty. The band finds a great balance between the heavy heavy and strong melodic choices and deliver it all in under four minutes. It’s a tight package but one that still has time for plenty of twists and turns. If you’re looking for something to bridge the gap between Ghost and Mastodon give this one a spin.

November 2, 2022

The Midweekly – The HU

The Midweekly is our column from Mike Jeffers; lead singer of Chicago punk stalwarts SCRAMmusic junkie and all around righteous dude.

Never ceases to amaze and delight how far hard rock can reach its corruptible influence. Blown across the Gobi desert, and echoed over the Mongolian steppe comes The HU, a folk metal band like no other. Rumble of Thunder is their second, and latest release, and every minute of it lives up to that title. Modern rock styles blend with retro, as in “a few centuries old” retro. The riffs and percussion are heavy, the vocals are guttural and booming, but most of the songs stay in more uplifting keys. But, the real stars of this production are the traditional Mongolian instruments, and the throat singing. It’s truly awesome, and with lyrics taken from war cries and poems it just adds another epic level to the whole thing. American stoner and doom metal bands have been trying to conjure images of horseback warriors and falconers for years, but here comes the real thing.

October 14, 2022

Friday 5×5

Friday 5×5 is our segment where we give you five new tracks to check out and give ourselves the challenge of describing said tracks in only five words.

You know the deal. Five songs that are so damn good that they don’t need all of our blah blah blah getting in the way. Just five words to pique your interest and point the way to pure audio enjoyment. Check out the lates from Scars of Solitude, Person, Play Dead, Tiny Ghosts and Oh Bummer!
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September 2, 2022

Friday 5×5

Friday 5×5 is our segment where we give you five new tracks to check out and give ourselves the challenge of describing said tracks in only five words.

Kick off the last few weeks of summer with five new tracks that they don’t need all the blah blah blah from yours truly. Check out songs so good they speak for themselves by Spectral Planet, Luke De-Scisco, Tripper and the Wild Things, Ruth Lyon and Valère Géron after the jump.
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August 5, 2022

Week Ender – Dust Biters

The Omega to the Week Starter Alpha, Week Ender is the song we want to send you into the weekend with.

“Progeny” from Chicago’s Dust Biters is a flammable mix of At the Drive In style post-hardcore and straight ahead hard rock riffs (and cowbell) that will light up your weekend. It’s loud, it’s fast and it vibes at the intersection of ambitious punk, greasy metal and righteous hardcore with a sound that we’re dubbing post-sleazecore. Suitable for opening up the pit, or standing in the back of the room with a cold one raised while you head bag un-ironically.

July 1, 2022

Week Ender – Jonathan Young

The Omega to the Week Starter Alpha, Week Ender is the song we want to send you into the weekend with.

When the world turns to shit it’s good to have the escape that is music, and sometimes you want the escape to be a bit more escapist than usual. It is in these times that we praise Jebus (or Hail Satan if you prefer) for over the top metal. Bombastic and soaring and if you buy in: totally badass. Jonathan Young steps up to save the day with “Wolf Within,” a symphonic metal banger that will have you putting your foot up on the office paper shredder like a monitor wedge and throwing horns while you give your voice a workout trying to sing along to the menacing lows and Dickinson-esque highs. Definitely in the wheelhouse of hook oriented metal like Ghost, but with a hint of 2000’s hard rock thrown in. Some music fans can’t get on board with this type of metal, saying that it’s a bit silly, but you know what else is silly? Bowie pretending to be from Mars, Dylan pretending he didn’t steal Woody Guthrie’s soul and Stevie Wonder pretending to be blind (jk – we’re not part of that internet conspiracy, which is an actual thing – google it). Our point is you will enjoy metal, and life in general, a lot more if you buy into things. Take the ride, have fun with it and start here with Jonathan Young.

June 1, 2022

The Midweekly – Carpenter Brut

The Midweekly is our column from Mike Jeffers; lead singer of Chicago punk stalwarts SCRAMmusic junkie and all around righteous dude.

Roaring out of the underworld in a retro hot rod, transforming into a starship bound for the cosmos, driven by a neon shadow. The soundtrack to this scene is Leather Terror, the latest from French synth lord Carpenter Brut. Somewhere between techno and metal, this record throbs with electro riffs and pounds with double kick beats. There’s an even darker theme than the music behind this release that involves violence, revenge, and toxicity (it’s the second installment in a trilogy to be exact). Joining CB on this horror inspired ride is a great collection of guests such as Greg Puciato (The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Black Queen), Ben Koller (Converge), Johannes Andersson (Tribulation), and fellow darksynth makers Gunship. Careful when jamming this one in your car at night. Supernatural forces might take over and send you chasing something imaginary into the darkness. 

March 16, 2022

The Midweekly – Rolo Tomassi

The Midweekly is our column from Mike Jeffers; lead singer of Chicago punk stalwarts SCRAMmusic junkie and all around righteous dude.

There are two souls in one body here in the band Rolo Tomassi. Sometimes in harmony with each other, and sometimes in conflict. The metal group from Sheffield, England know how to use both dynamics to their advantage on their recent release, Where Myth Becomes Memory. The first soul comes in the form of a dream pop ballad, with a beautiful, angelic voice from singer, and founding member, Eva Korman. Right alongside those vocals are the keys, both piano and synth, from other founding member, backing vox, and brother, James Spence. The keys are at the forefront during these parts, and together Korman and Spence create some lovely melodies. Now for the other side of things. That voice has now become a blood curdling scream, and with it comes a barrage of heavy guitar riffs and drums, both produced and stylized with mechanical precision. Dizzying time signatures give way to epic half time breakdowns, and vice versa. Lyrics about existential dread, and the search for enlightenment. It’s a fine slice of emo metal that RoTo has been perfecting for a decade and a half with their own DIY approach, and this new record presents great results. Maybe these two musical souls inside this band are really just one, but sometimes on this album it sounds like a legion. 

February 16, 2022

The Midweekly – Zeal & Ardor

The Midweekly is our column from Mike Jeffers; lead singer of Chicago punk stalwarts SCRAMmusic junkie and all around righteous dude.

Take an old sound from a young country, and a new sound from an old country. Build a bridge between them inspired by an ancestry from both. That’s what avant-garde metal heads Zeal & Ardor are all about, and what they continue to do on their latest self-titled release. That ancestry lives inside the lead singer, songwriter, and guitarist, Manuel Gagneux. The child of African-American and Swiss parents, both musicians themselves, Gagneux embraces the differing cultures, and transforms them into something new. Metal being the genre he grew up loving the most, it takes the front seat in Z&A, but almost every track has elements of blues, and old spirituals. A stomping, rhythmic beat, accompanied by hand claps and a woeful chant, reminding you of the American south, easily segues into lightning double kick drums, shredding guitar riffs, and monstrous shrieking out of the Nordic hinterlands. To give it all an extra touch of atmosphere, synths, piano, and even distorted horns play a key part in the production. The album’s lyrics for the most part are what you might expect from the genre. Reflections on the worst parts of humanity, controversial and otherwise. There are a few takes that get into the question of faith, or American hegemony, as well. All delivered through the dueling vocal ranges of either a soul singer, a grindcore screamer, or an amalgamation of both. Even bridging the languages of English and German. At the risk of becoming outliers, dismissed by the black metal scene, or scoffed at by blues aficionados, Zeal & Ardor forge ahead, taking their style of metal to new, and surprising places.

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