Now through Saturday, Logan Square Mutual Aid (LSMA) is looking for volunteers. Today and tomorrow, the group needs help calling or texting families to arrange the week’s food deliveries. Friday they’re looking for help sorting food and packing bags for Saturday’s drop-off (work shifts from 2-4 PM and/or 4-7 PM; work space at LSMA’s free […]
Tag: heavy metal
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Experimental metal trio Locrian break their seven-year silence with the exploratory New Catastrophism
Experimental metal trio Locrian have spent the past 17 years branching out into unknown realms, but lately they’ve been reexamining their roots. Formed in Chicago in 2005 by guitarist André Foisy and keyboardist Terence Hannum, Locrian started out mining darkness from their bleak soundscapes by layering grimy, pitch-black, doomy ambient noise with swaths of sounds […]
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Sumac headline a night of dynamic, heavy music
The title track of Sumac’s latest album, 2020’s May You Be Held (Thrill Jockey), is a tough-love affirmation built for trying times, when soothing sounds just don’t cut it anymore and you need self-care that’s more like the cathartic group therapy you might find in a Klingon gladiatorial arena. The postmetal power trio use punky, […]
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Chicago’s Huntsmen delve deeper into their lush metal storytelling on The Dying Pines
Huntsmen’s distinctive, delicious sound mixes turbocharged gothic country with sophisticated, dynamic doom metal wrapped in horror-tinged Americana atmospheres. Following two EPs, 2014’s Post War and 2016’s The Colonel, the Chicago band received rave reviews for their 2018 debut full-length, American Scrap. Their epic 80-minute concept album Mandala of Fear, about a battle-scarred veteran trying to […]
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Four Chicago venues join forces for a celebration of local rock, metal, and punk
Update, January 10: The Save the Rock ‘n’ Roll Festival has been postponed. The new dates are Friday, April 29, through Sunday, May 1. In April 2020, just weeks after COVID-19 shut down the live-music industry, four Chicago venue operators—Louie Mendicino of Cobra Lounge, Herb Rosen of Liar’s Club, Robby Glick of Reggies, and Dave Hornyak […]
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Yautja perfect their maximalist metal on The Lurch
Nashville metal trio Yautja are a great example of how the old adage “less is more” doesn’t always apply. For ten years now, these three dudes—whose band name is also the species name of the fictional extraterrestrial hunters in the Predator franchise—have been throwing everything into their maximalist music, and getting better and better results. […]
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Madison stoner giants Bongzilla blaze through the Badger State on Weedsconsin
It’s hard to believe it’s been 16 years since Madison stoner giants Bongzilla dropped a studio album—surely at least a few people rocking out to their brand-new Weedsconsin LP were in diapers back then. The band, formed as a four-piece in 1995, had a lengthy run as one of the midwest’s finest purveyors of slow, […]
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Guitarist Hedvig Mollestad laces together jazz and metal with a sense of play
Norwegian guitarist Hedvig Mollestad has an uncanny ability to merge rock and jazz in arrangements that transcend the cliches of both genres. On her new album, Ding Dong. You’re Dead. (Rune Grammofon), this hybrid sound is defined in no small part by a sense of play. She returns to her long-running trio following the 2020 […]
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Prolific Japanese artists Boris and Merzbow bid farewell to 2020 together
I tried to tally up the total number of releases by noise wizard Masami Akita, better known as Merzbow, and polymorphous metal trio Boris before I started writing about their new joint album, but it proved to be a fool’s errand. These Japanese artists are among the most prolific musicians in modern history, and their […]
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Katatonia make the most of a year without tours with the ‘live’ album Dead Air
Katatonia were fresh off a hiatus when they dropped their 11th studio album, City Burials, in April, but the pandemic meant they couldn’t stage the triumphant return tour it merited. In May, the nearly 30-year-old Swedish metal outfit appeased their fans and assuaged their own frustration with a livestreamed concert. More than six months later—with […]
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Sour hearken back to thrash metal’s glory days on their self-titled debut
If you blindfolded me and played me the self-titled debut from Aurora thrash band Sour, I’d totally believe it’d been recorded in 1984 with a cassette four-track in a dusty garage. They recall thrash metal’s glory days with guitar shredding that makes you want to skateboard off your roof, drumming that erupts with cavalcades of […]
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Crusty metal six-piece Ilsa call out cruelty and corruption through the story of an 80s murderer
Even if you buy into the idea that musicians should stay out of politics, how do you overlook the politics baked into everything around you? Take the COVID-19 pandemic: What’s more destructive, the virus or the leaders who don’t even try to get it under control? Preyer, the new album from D.C. six-piece Ilsa, was […]
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Chicago extreme music pioneers Macabre release their first album in nearly a decade
Carnival of Killers, the first album by south-side heavy-music pioneers Macabre in nearly a decade, is pretty much exactly what I hoped it would be. The trio, who haven’t had a lineup change since forming in 1985, have built a global following with what they call “murder metal”—that is, songs about serial killers and other […]
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Finnish metal explorers Dark Buddha Rising conjure serenity within the storm on Mathreyata
Of all the albums I’ve covered since the Reader adapted to the pandemic by trading concert previews for record reviews, the new release from Finnish metal explorers Dark Buddha Rising is probably the best one I could’ve picked to help me stay grounded and focused during our agonizing election week. Psych, drone, and doom are […]
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Spirit Adrift show us the timelessness and future of classic metal on Enlightened in Eternity
Listening to modern traditional metal can sometimes be a little like meeting up with a special old flame. It’s a blast until you’re eventually reminded why it didn’t work out for the long haul—you moved on with your life while they seemed to stay suspended in time, and the little things you once adored now […]