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!

As ever I’m hopelessly behind the times on new releases, but there’s a couple of new tracks from a couple of bands that I truly adore that I wanted to share with you.

First, the mighty Torche are soon to release a split with the intermittently excellent Boris. Here’s the video of King Beef from that finding them sounding a bit like Baroness, which is no bad thing at all in my book.

Then there’s return of the mighty Dillinger Escape Plan. I’m not interested in all the old stuff versus new stuff bickering. Dillinger write amazing songs and consistently push the boundries while still giving the mainstream a run for their money. Farewell Mona Lisa is epic, aggressive, melodic and absolutely fan-fecking-tastic. It’s a departure from the straightforward abruptness of Ire Works. Dillinger will absolutely own 2010.

So stop grumbling about having to go back to work after Christmas (you skived off because of the snow anyway didn’t you) and prepare yourself for the brutal musical onslaught of 2010 – it’s gonna be another goodun.

Having virtually created the mathcore genre with their revered debut full-length album Calculating Infinity, The Dillinger Escape Plan had to set about reinventing the wheel. A band not satisfied with continually repeating former glories, there is the stench of reinvention about Miss Machine. That’s not to say that Dillinger had morphed into a jazz-funk fusion, or indeed the more obvious route of sloping down the emo stadium filler route we all know that they’re capable of (and have strayed uncomfortably towards with Unretrofied, and several tracks on follow-up Ire Works).

After parting ways with their original singer Dimitri Minakakis and collaborated with (ex-Faith No More singer and musical alchemist) Mike Patton, among others, on the EP Irony is a Dead Scene, Dillinger finally recruited Greg Puciato after hearing an audition tape sent in response to an advert on the band’s website. Puciato brought with him a greater vocal range than Minakakis and a melodic pop sensibility which inflated the band’s chaotic, claustrophobic sound into a jazz-metal-punk-industrial chimera. The edgy industrial stylings and commercial smarts outraged the fanbase, as the band knew it would, but evolution is a fact of life in Dillinger’s universe – stagnation is the death of art.

Miss Machine’s opener, Panasonic Youth is like a sledgehammer to the face – an anarchic statement of intent that both celebrates Dillinger’s intricate staccato violence and ushering in a new dynamic and cinematic sound. There is no chorus here; the song barely repeats. Despite the fact that this is not in the slightest radio friendly this was the first single from the album.

Clearly a message to the old guard Puciato states with unarguable gusto “Evolution gave us a clock that’s always winding down” in full knowledge that they were winding it up once more; Dillinger is dead, long live Dillinger!

This quick-and-to-the-point first taster from their forthcoming album New Junk Aesthetic is not a great departure from their previous offering The Big Dirty. This frantic southern hardcore rock-out includes (somewhat muted) backing vocals from none other than The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato. Does this add anything to the recording? Other than aiding the ability for it to shift more copies, no. However, if the new album is all like this, it can’t be a bad thing.