• Interview: Rabid Bitch of the North

    January 15, 2016 - By 

    Ahead of the launch their ‘Green Eyes’ 7″ single at Belfast’s Voodoo on Saturday night (January 16), Belfast metallers Rabid Bitch of the North chat to Liam Doyle about the progression of their sound, releasing music on tape and what it means to support local music. Can you tell us how Rabid Bitch of the North got started? It’s pretty much the same old story of a garage band that started in our school years. Gerry Mulholland (our guitarist) and me (Joe McDonnell) started what would become Rabid Bitch Of The North while still at school. Gerry got a guitar…

  • TUSKS – Embers

    December 4, 2015 - By 

    2015 has almost reached its midnight, and filthy, down-tuned rock n’ roll bands are sold in packs of six.  The last five years have been particularly fertile for all things loud, heavy, and based firmly in the blues, and the excitement that would once volleyball around a new act has started to wane and sag. The summer of sludge is over. It is heartening, then, when a group self-identifying as heavy fuzz rock come around to remind you that earth-shuddering grooves are not seasonal, but all-year round. TUSKS from Belfast are one such group. Robbing the swampy casket of the late…

  • Wizards of Firetop Mountain – Wizards of Firetop Mountain

    December 1, 2015 - By 

    Having been a staple part of the Irish rock food pyramid for many years, gigging religiously and opening up for titans such as Boris, Sleep, and Red Fang, to name but a few, when Wizards of Firetop Mountain announced their debut LP would finally materialize this November, many would be slapping their knees and roaring “it’s about time!” The band have well proven their mettle over the last four years on the back of a demo, double-sided single, a popular Youtube video, and of course, their rise to furniture-level recurrence in music venues all around the country.  With many of…

  • The Hefty Fog: A Flag Worth Flying?

    August 4, 2015 - By 

    It’s hardly worth reiterating the connection between Heavy Metal and dark, often upsetting imagery. The artwork used to push records and merchandise has always been the first talking point in any critique of extreme music and this has both served and damaged its legitimacy in the larger public eye. While the moral outrage has all but fizzled out since the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and contemporary bands now enjoy the kind of immunity not afforded to their peacockish forebears, the recent controversy in the USA regarding the Confederate flag has forced a previously unchallenged theme in Metal to surface,…

  • The Hefty Fog: Growing Out of Metal

    July 16, 2015 - By 

    The metal internet collectively lost its shit recently when Mastodon’s Brent Hinds (pictured) admitted that he never really liked metal and has been, in his own words; “trying to get Mastodon to not be such a heavy metal band.” And so it was that every Mastodon fan would experience that same feeling of blighting abandonment we have all gone through at one time or another in our early years. Some have claimed that Hinds is taking the piss to an extent, that it’s unthinkable for someone to do something they don’t truly enjoy for as long as he has. I…

  • The Hefty Fog: Naked Aggression

    June 19, 2015 - By 

    If the sight of a fully-grown man’s bare arse bathed in blue LED light has you shuddering with disgust, then you simply aren’t acculturated to the ways of Metal. If you are willing to sit through songs detailing gruesome acts of murder and purchase merchandise emblazoned with decapitated infants, but you suddenly become grossed out as a lead singer’s testicle peeps at you momentarily from its loin cloth, you’ve got a long way to go, kid. Impetuous Ritual’s performance in Dublin earlier in the month raised a few questions about the visual effect that nudity has on the overall presentation…

  • The Hefty Fog: Metal Is Gay

    May 17, 2015 - By 

    Heavy Metal has never and will never be a bastion for political correctness, nor should it. It’s all about hyperbole on steroids, and if you don’t get it, you don’t get it. You’ll fail horribly trying to change it. However, through all the goat cults, slopping entrails, corpse-bothering, and general rhubarb, the only thing that still shocks me about it all is the homophobia. Now, Metal fans aren’t especially homophobic, but when it does show up on the odd forum or comments box, it’s pretty ugly, and it’s hard to wrap your head around it. If anyone could for the…

  • Q+A: Tell No Foxx

    May 15, 2015 - By 

    Wicklow soundscapers Tell No Foxx have been thrust into the public eyes and ears the past few weeks following the release of their well-received single ‘Dust’ last March. Living somewhere between kaleidoscopic and melancholic, their massive pop sound has earned them the applause of fans and critics alike. Liam Doyle caught up with the lads ahead of their supporting slot this Sunday with Indiana at the Workman’s Club in Dublin to get the low down on ‘Dust’ as well as their plans for the future. It looks like it’s been a busy year for Tell No Foxx, any personal highlights…

  • Hefty Fog: Director’s Cvlt

    May 5, 2015 - By 

    Just when you think that the stick has finally broken, after its loyal years of splintering across the body of the dead horse, someone comes along with a claw hammer and changes the game entirely. The story of Norwegian Black Metal has been told numerous times over numerous formats, in books, magazines, documentaries, Youtube parodies – it is the one story in the history of heavy metal that seems to resonate with everyone, fans or otherwise. The murder, the arson, the music, but mostly the murder, are all what sets it apart from the usual Led Zeppelin fishmongering of rock…

  • The Hefty Fog: Retrospect Is Vital

    April 21, 2015 - By 

    Retrospect is the cruellest of inner dialogues because it’s always haunted by those most biting verbs, ‘should’, ‘could’, and ‘would’. So when a Christian music venue in Orlando FL, booked the blatantly anti-Christian, pro-Satan Vital Remains for a show, one has to wonder what kind of shoulds, coulds, and woulds were floating around when frontman Brian Werner decided that a crucifix hanging above the stage wasn’t the most appropriate ornament for the proceedings.  It’s no surprise that Werner’s humbling of the son of god didn’t go down very well with the organizer, who, the footage itself testifies, looks exactly like…