It may not be very metal to admit this, but I’ll pretend to be kvlt and not give a f*ck what you think – I go running several times a week. It’s a pastime that I actually quite enjoy. I do it as much for getting rid of anger and aggression as the calories I accrue from regular consumption of booze and lard, and for this reason heavy music is the perfect accompaniment to this solitary activity.

However, not any old heavy music will do for a good power jog. I listen to music while running for several reasons:

1. Distraction – it really helps me to forget about any pain or exhaustion and get into the meditative state
2. Noise – I find hearing my own breathing is a real reminder of the energy I’m expending which makes it feel more taxing
3. Passing the time – simply, it makes the time pass more quickly
4. Keeping rhythm and pace – it’s this I want to discuss in more detail

The music best suited for running needs to be a fairly constant, driving mid-tempo. This is because I tend to subconsciously match my pace to the beat of the music. Too slow and the effect is lost, and I generally find slows me down overall. Too fast and I risk tiring myself out too quickly, or simply not being able to match the pace. So Cathedral’s Forest Equilibrium is out, as is Slayer’s Angel of Death. Also, a very changeable tempo renders the overall effect useless. Subtle tempo shifts across longer tracks, or between tracks are very welcome (especially if you’re doing aerobic/anaerobic alternation), but spazzy stuff like Grindcore or the constant ebb and flow of Opeth is simply not up to the job, no matter how much I like it at any other time.

The other attribute I find helps immeasurably is aggression. Yes I could stick on a dance mix and achieve roughly the same effect with regards to tempo, but nothing beats balls to the wall angst to get you pounding the pavement.

What I’ve discovered is punk/hardcore is great for running to, as well as standard old school heavy metal and some hard/classic rock. Avoid anything drone or extremely down tempo and most doom, stoner, death, black.

Here’s my playlist for a 25 – 30 minute power jog. I start off slightly down tempo to get warmed up, and slowly wind up – this is how I like to structure my run (I find it easier to push myself at the end when the endorphins are flowing). The idea is to match your footfall to the tempo of the track.

The moderate start

High on Fire – Fury Whip

Ghost of a Thousand – Bright Lights

The mid-paced midsection

The Dillinger Escape Plan – Milk Lizard

Refused – Summerholidays vs Punk Routine

The sprint to the finish

Carcass – Heartwork

Black Sabbath – Neon Knights

(Disclaimer: I’m neither a fitness expert nor a personal trainer. I accept no responsibility for any damage you may do to yourself while using this playlist during recreational exercise. If you’re not an experienced runner, you should probably try and find other tracks of a similar tempo to tracks 1 and 2)

If anyone else has any recommendations of songs to run to then please let me know!

Revocation’s hype stateside has failed to translate into a particularly big splash either side of the Atlantic. Their confusing mix of thrash/death and guitar god faux-eclecticism may go some way to explaining this. Broken into its constituent parts it’s very convincing indeed, and perhaps this is why Cosmo Lee mistook them for “the next great metal band” – they may well be at some point, but they ain’t there yet.

There’s some riffery to die for here driving some brutal thrash that will turn the head of even the most sceptical. But from beneath the maelstrom seeps a latent melody that sets them apart from the Death pack, although it’s often flattened by unsubtle sub-death vocals – competent, but perhaps the least impressive part of Revocation’s armoury.

Then there’s the godlike guitar virtuosity from new kid on the block David Davidson who any point he sounds like Satriani, Petrucci, Vai, Bettencourt (yes, you heard me right) among others, each with their respective stylistic ensemble. This is lovely, it really is. However, on too many occasions these virtuoso passages are clumsily tacked on the end of, or shoved into the middle of songs that they have no right to be in. Occasionally this works, but for the most part it just makes you think “That’s really cool, but why did you put it there?” This is not a merging of styles, it’s different songs being clumsily selotaped together, and it’s just a distraction from the main event – state of the art metal.

I commend Revocation’s efforts to do something different, however it just doesn’t hold together. Davidson needs to go exorcise his frustrated guitar god and make a solo album, then concentrate on making Revocation the great band they could be.

I’m not ready to publish my top 10 albums yet – I have to torture myself over this for a little while yet, plus there’s some bits and pieces that I’ve not heard yet that I wish to hear before making my choice.

These are my favourite tracks recorded this year as they stand right now. I have no doubt that this will change within minutes of me hitting publish, but I’ve got to stick a stake in the ground somewhere. They are in no particular order, as attempting to do so would certainly prove too much for my fragile musical sensibilities.

Here we go:

• Pelican – Glimmer (What We All Come To Need) – A gorgeous instrumental slow burner
• Om – Thebes (God is Good) – Hypnotic, epic, looooong
• Alice in Chains – Looking in View (Black Gives Way to Blue) – Like being sat on by a house
• The Devil’s Blood – The Anti-Kosmic Magik (The Time of No Time Evermore) – A guitar duel to die for
• The Devin Townsend Project – Heaven Send (Ki) – Wacky, but in a mature way
• Griftegard – Charles Taze Russell (Solemn Sacred Severe) – The album title pretty much describes this perfectly
• Photonic – Customer Loyalty (Recorded Contact) – Randomness from New Zealand
• Mastodon – The Czar (Crack in the Skye) – Epic, schizophrenic, progressive and loud
• Middle Class Rut – I Guess You Could Say (25 Years EP) – It’s shallow but cheerful
• No Made Sense – The Epillanic Chorigi (The Epillanic Chorigi) – Neurosis style progressive heaviness

Notable omissions:

Various other tracks from both Black Gives Way to Blue, Recorded Contact and Crack in the Skye could have made it in there, but I didn’t want to clutter it with multiple tracks from a single band. Baroness’s Blue Record deserves a mention – as a whole it’s a brilliant album, but individually none of the tracks stood out enough to warrant inclusion. Other top tracks include:

Lamb of God – Reclamation
Extreme – Run
Pixie Lott – Boys and Girls
Dycian Maze – The Hand Inside
TrippyWicked – Movin On

This is all very nice, but the fact is, I’ve had a year of musical discovery, so much of the stuff that I’ve loved this year wasn’t recorded this year, which is why I don’t feel very satisfied with this list…but I’ll save those for another post.

Calling British three piece TrippyWicked doom seems a little beside the point. Here there be big riffs, a singer that sounds like Ozzy bathed in the fountain of youth and given back his balls, and thundering laid back grooves. However, TrippyWicked & the Cosmic Children of the Knight (to use their full, somewhat silly, name) conjure the true spirit of early Sabbath – heavy heavy blues. The exclusion of pre-requisite occult posturing really slots this more into stoner territory, and indeed the spirit of Sleep and Monster Magnet lurks within these giant slabs of bluesy rock.

With monstrous, down-tuned riffs and melodic hooks aplenty, this presents a lighter, more mundane (in the lyrical sense) side of Doom. Indeed, at times TrippyWicked could be mistaken for a pure blues band, but creative flourishes like the brass section on Southern set them apart from either genre.

This is impressive stuff for a debut and is all the more so given that Movin On is entirely self released (check out this article on their blog for some tips on doing this). So lighten up brethren of doom, and allow TrippyWicked to introduce themselves.

Listen on Myspace

Buy on TrippyWicked.com

Supergroup. Say it out loud “Supergroup”. Does that word leave a bitter taste in your mouth? So many enterprises of exquisite promise, so much shattered hope. Approach all supergroups with scepticism, you say, and rightly so.

So is (Wino+Om+Neurosis+Melvins) > (Wino+Om+Neurosis+Melvins)? That remains to be seen, however it does add up to a stoner/doom/post-rock/prog party to which we should all turn up and revel. Shrinebuilder is a real meeting of minds. The various styles weave in and out of each other and melt, blend and bend to fit a new mould that overall is not quite any of them. It is at times, however, each of them. With Wino, Kelly and Cisneros all taking turns on the mic, you sometimes feel like you’re listening to 3 different bands, often in the same song.

That’s not to say that it doesn’t hang together. Some how they’ve made it sound like these 3 wildly different styles belong together. Underpinned by Cisneros’s hypnotic bass, and sheened with Neurosis style atmospherics and post-hardcore aggression, Wino’s trademark psychedelic guitars drive us through this eerie landscape. However, it’s the southern tinged post-rock soundscapes that really define the sound here so it transcends the component parts.

Almost a genre it itself, this is a singular debut and delivers the sort of quality and creativity that you’d expect from such an influential posse. It’s still too much of a sketch to really be the collective masterwork that these guys should be capable of, but if there’s a sense that Shrinebuilder are still finding their feet with this first offering, I absolutely can’t wait to see what happens when they do.

Buy on Amazon

Listen on Myspace

I found myself recently lecturing a non-metal fan, who harboured a preconception that metal is a narrow and one-dimensional genre, on what a diverse bunch we metalheads are. And boy does this show on this, the first ever Inevitable Nose Metal Mixtape. We have Classic Metal, d-beat punk, brutal thrash, doom, grunge, industrial, and even Nu-Metal.

Despite the overall washed out homogeneity of mainstream metal, the underground once again proves itself diverse and challenging. There’s something for most tastes here and perhaps a little something to broaden your horizons.

All tracks can be streamed in their entirety and most can be downloaded via the Soundcloud media player. Please post comments on what you thought of the tracks as I’m sure all the bands would value your (constrictive) criticism. Also, the Soundcloud player has a commenting function that allows you to comment on particular parts of the song that you liked (or hated).

Anyway, enough of this pointless chatter. Go forth and consume of the mixtape and feel your life infinitely enrichened.

The Inevitable Nose Metal Mixtape Volume 1

This is the second release from German label Ván this year that’s got me really excited. Whereas The Devil’s Blood take a playful approach to pagan rites, Griftegard cast an epic pall of quasi-religious, existential gloom – this is not a criticism, this is remarkable stuff.

Sacred.Solemn.Severe is the musical equivalent of a Doré etching, or perhaps a rainy day in Highgate Cemetery. Chants, hymns and histrionic, impassioned crooning tell of hatred of the flesh and solemn introspection. The overwhelming protestant puritanical aesthetic is both claustrophobic and apocalyptic – Griftegard wield Christian symbolism like a sledgehammer.

Unlike many doom acts who lurk on the periphery of parody with Hammer Horror theatrics, Griftegard emanate a sense of solemn, ernest duty – this is serious stuff, and at times is somewhat unsettling. This is underpinned by some exemplary song writing and haunting soulful melody. These 6 long songs end at with the ultimate finale – death, but there are undertones of rebirth or perhaps redemption, and you get the feeling that Griftegard have a lot more to say.

Griftegard display a depth, clarity and coherence that other Doom bands could only aspire to. A steamy breath of cold, dank winter air – both refreshing and unnerving.

Listen on Myspace

Buy from Amazon

Even more technomologically advanced than this!

While I seem to have found myself in the position of giving advice to aspiring bands on how best to use and abuse these new-fangled interwebs, I’ve yet to be particularly active in these pursuits myself. So in an attempt to ‘put my money where my mouth is’, so to speak, I’ve devised The Inevitable Nose Metal Mixtape. There’s nothing particularly new about the concept – a compilation of music from new bands – and the only ‘cutting edge’ thing involved is the use of Soundcloud (more on this in a later article). I merely intend to practise what I preach, and attempt to draw some attention to unsigned metal bands that are worthy of it.

So, demand permitting, I’m going to put together a regular mixtape of (mostly) downloadable tracks, which will also stream from this site, with ‘cover notes’ including a review of the band by your’s truly and links off to the bands’ sites/Myspaces. I’ll then employ all my best CRM, SEO and PPC strategies (and whatever other corporate marketing acronyms I can find) to drive some traffic to the mixtape.

Bands wishing to appear on the mixtape just need to commit to the inclusion of a single track, read the T&C’s and follow instructions here. The selection of tracks for the mixtape assumes a level of quality (both technically and artistically) so not everyone band submitted will make it on. There will be a broad range of styles and sub-genres but it will all be at the heavier end of the rock/metal/*core scale. Reviews will represent any tracks up on Myspace as well as the track submitted.

The first mixtape will be delivered as soon as I have 10 or so tracks of sufficient quality to release. Subscribers to my newsletter will receive notification when it’s available.

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However, for this to work, I need bands to submit themselves, so please pass this on to any bands that you think may be interested.

The classic rock revival, for the most part, has left me cold. Bands like The Answer and Stone Gods indulging in big riffs and big balls show such a lack of imagination. Dutch classic rockers The Devil’s Blood have snuck into the metal arena on the back of Doom Metal’s recent surge in popularity. Their occult leanings and intermittent Sabbath referencing appears to have endeared them to the Doom community perhaps on the lookout for some light relief, particularly with their feelgood hit of the late summer I’ll Be Your Ghost. But what a welcome interloper this is!

Delivering classic rock in the vain of Blue Oyster Cult and Coven with Sabbath and Thin Lizzy flourishes, The Devil’s Blood are retro, but have their own distinctive identity. The singer’s quivering vibrato may polarise listeners as it can get pretty grating, but is largely smoothed out by the silky multi-part vocal harmonies of which this album is awash. Their sound is darkly atmospheric and truly epic. Huge riffs and harmonised dual guitars cut through the dreamy sheen giving this album some real punch and there are some razor sharp and perfectly timed guitar solos displaying prodigious fret board agility without being too showy.

Final track The Ant-Kosmik Magick is surely one of the standout tracks of any band this year. This sublime psychedelic rocker concludes the album with the best Floydesque guitar duel since Opeth’s Burden or Coheed and Cambria’s The Final Cut (indeed this is one of many parallels with C&C’s retro prog).

This album is perfectly executed and immaculately timed. There there’s no fat here at all – every track is a stormer. Despite the dark lyrical themes of witchery and black magick, this album is ultimately uplifting. Backward leaning without every being a parody, showing contemporary flourishes and some exemplary pop songwriting smarts.

German label Ván appear to have hit paydirt having also signed superb Swedish doomsters Griftegård. This will be in my albums of the year. Go buy it, because these guys deserve to be very popular indeed.

Listen on Myspace

Buy on Amazon

Heavy

Do you ever get those “did I miss something?” moments? Perhaps you were still under the impression that the word ‘gay’ still meant ‘happy’ until you announced you were ‘feeling gay’ to your mates that time.

I’ve been having a slowly unfolding “did I miss something?” moment with the word ‘heavy’ when applied to metal music. You see, the understanding that I had of this term, in my 25 years of listening to metal music, was that it referred to music that is fantastically loud and aggressive. So if you asked me to name a song that personified ‘heavy’ I’d probably say Battery by Metallica or anything by Napalm Death – super fast, aggressive blast beats, screaming, you know, stuff that makes your nose bleed when you listen to it. But more recently I’ve heard it applied to bands like Electric Wizard or Earth (the early stuff) – in fact, doom in general and specifically anything that sounds like Sabbath. Now, these bands are almost the antithesis of what I would have previously considered ‘heavy’. They are slow, frequently have no drums or screaming – they’re more likely to cause the onset arthritis than a nosebleed. Now, I can see why this could be termed ‘heavy’, this term may well actually be more appropriate for that sort of music, it’s just not what I thought it meant.

I’d actually convinced myself that I had it wrong all these years and begun training myself into using this other meaning of the term, until I recently I started reading the fabulous book on the roots of Grindcore and Death Metal Choosing Death by Albert Mudrian. Here’s a bunch of folks talking about a period when the pursuit of speed and aggression superseded just about any other artistic value, and they’re all attributing these sonic properties to ‘heaviness’. These guys clearly understand the term in the same way that I always have.

So what changed? When did the word ‘heavy’ go from meaning aggression to depression? I’m actally genuinely confused about this. Someone please help.