• 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…

  • 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…