• The Hefty Fog: Lars Ulrich Killing Your Buzz

    April 7, 2015 - By 

    Have you ever had a dream where you’re lounging about in your living room with a few good friends and a few good beers, only to hear a commanding knock on your front door? You peel yourself from the seat and on your way to answer you wonder who it could be, you only invited a few from Celtic Studies, this was supposed to be low-key and casual, a real red plaid affair. Before you know it the door starts pounding, the panel splintering with each violent smack, and then it swings agape. The blood stiffens in your veins and…

  • The Hefty Fog: Sludge in 2015 – The Early Pickings

    March 9, 2015 - By 

    There’s a very noxious chemical present in sludge metal that separates it from all other forms of transgressive music. Even when placed side by side with contemporaries from every god-forsaken, drop-tuned fashion known to the underground, the crooked spoon fury of bands declaring themselves to be sludge stand out like a sore thumb. If punk rock is rebellion and heavy metal is hedonism, for instance, then sludge is a terrible nothingness that is all too human to recognize yet exemplified by sounds which are inhuman. That may sound like a bit of mental gymnastics, but no other subgenre of music has resonated with the…

  • The Hefty Fog: The Aussie Triumvirate

    February 20, 2015 - By 

    The latter half of the 00’s were, as far as underground Metal music was concerned, focused almost entirely on the advent and subsequent decline of ‘Slamming Brutal Death Metal’, or however many variants on that title had been adopted during the time. The grooves of the early to mid 90’s had resurfaced on a Death Metal scene that desperately needed some kind of facelift, lest the hardcore fans be doomed to relive the 80’s over and over again like some kind of Scott Burns-produced Groundhog Day. What we got in the end was a newly popularized strain of Death Metal…

  • Dead and Buried: The Black Metal/Punk Crossover.

    February 3, 2015 - By 

    It’s no secret that Black Metal, at least that which constitutes as both ‘trve’ and ‘kvlt’, has always been a very insular music with a positively colossal stick up its arse, writes Liam Doyle.With a certain percentage of its fan base snatching up cassette tape demos limited to exactly four copies, snarling at and baying for the blood of bands they deem ‘false’, and generally revelling in their own elite status, it’s a wonder the Black Metal sound ever began to expand and socialize as it has these past few years. With the new millennium seemed to come a new Black…

  • Run the Jewels – Run the Jewels 2

    November 10, 2014 - By 

    If you’ve been out of the loop with regards to hip-hop for the last number of years, if nothing from the genre has taken you by the scruff of the neck and pulled you into its roughneck world the way it may have before, then consider Run the Jewels 2 to be an assertive wake up call. This second collaborative effort from the duo of Killer Mike and El-P has had the Internet aflame with hype since its free release on October 24th of this year, and it has effortlessly hammered itself into the consciousness of both the underground and…

  • Electric Wizard – Time To Die

    October 2, 2014 - By 

    Rejoice, rosy-eyed Neanderthals, for your patience has been well rewarded. It’s been an age and a score (or four years to be precise) since last we were gifted with a new Electric Wizard LP, and anticipation has been boiling for months since it was announced that Wizard original, Mark Greening, would be taking a seat behind the drum kit for the first time since the trance-inducing Let Us Prey in 2002. It has already been an absolutely stellar year for doom metal with cumbersome offerings from favourites such as Conan and EyeHateGod, so it’s hard to not feel spoiled filthy…