JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 72nd anniversary of AC/DC co-founder Malcolm Young’s birth.
Tag: heavy metal
Throwback: Happy 79th Birthday, John Paul Jones!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates John Paul Jones’ 79th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 61st Birthday, Lars Ulrich!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Metallica co-founder Lars Ulrich’s 61st birthday.
Throwback: Happy 79th Birthday, Lemmy!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 79th anniversary of Lemmy’s birth.
Throwback: Happy 66th Birthday, Nikki Sixx!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Nikki Sixx’s 66th birthday.
New Video: Inside The Trojan Horse Shares Bruising and Urgent “Stay Alive”
Inside The Trojan Horse — founding members NoOne and NoThing, along with NoBody — can trace their origins back to when its founding members were a member of Loser, an act that featured Motley Crüe‘s John 5. When Loser split up, NoOne and NoThing began honing their writing and recording with a series of projects and on their own.
While on tour with Gemini Syndrome, NoThing crossed paths with NoBody as he and NoOne had started to sow the early seeds of their latest project together, Inside The Trojan Horse. Eventually, the band’s founding duo reached out to NoBody to finalize the band’s lineup.
While drawing from Soundgarden, Audioslave, Tool, Deftones, Underoath, Periphery and Tesseract, the trio have developed a signature sound and aesthetic that sets them apart in a crowded hard rock/nu-metal field. Their fourth single “Stay Alive” is a bruising track anchored around thunderous drumming, rumbling down-tuned bass, howled vocals and some scorching guitar work. “Stay Alive” at its core, is a desperate and urgent desire and need to survive at all cost, while facing omnipresent threats; but it also evokes the zero-sum game of surviving at all costs.
The self-directed video for “Stay Alive” follows the mysterious band, clad in business suits and masks, as they rock out to the song in a nondescript van and mosh and kick around a presumably Californian suburb.
New Audio: Uppsala’s Big Fish Shares Brutal and Forceful “Snö”
Back in 1988, four Uppsala, Sweden-based teens decided to start a band after returning from a trip to West Berlin. Heavily inspired by the avant garde scene there, Big Fish‘s original lineup featured vocals, upright bass, samplers and scrap metal percussion. With the addition of a guitarist in 1990, the newly-minted quintet became part of an emerging local scene that would subsequently birth acts like Watain, Misery Loves Co., Lost Souls, Malaise and Defleshed.
Throughout the better part of the 1990s, the Swedish outfit recorded three studio albums, including 1996’s Micheal Blair-produced Andar i Halsen, which they supported with frequently touring across Scandinavia, playing over 500 shows.
The band broke up in 1997 after its members left Uppsala for work and studies. But their fanbase’s clamoring demand for hearing their material live resulted in the Swedish band playing a handful of reunion shows in 2016.
2022’s surprise fourth album, Kalla döda drömmar was released to critical praise and was supported by extensive touring across their native Sweden. The band spent the next year writing and recording material, including a six planned singles which will appear on the band’s forthcoming fifth album, Frya liter stoft (Four liters of dust) slated for release next year.
Frya liter stoft‘s third and latest single “SNÖ” (Snow) is a brutally forceful and thrashing ripper, anchored around down-tuned and rumbling bass, fuzzy power chords and thunderous syncopated drumming, rousingly anthemic and enormous hook and chorus paired with urgent and punchily delivered vocals singing lyrics in Swedish describing a return from a bleak metaphorical winter of isolation — or perhaps intoxication — and discovering that nothing is left.
“SNÖ” manages to capture the uneasy brutal nature of our bleak, mad, mad existence. All is very dire now, y’all.
Throwback: Happy 76th Birthday, Ozzy Osbourne!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Ozzy Osbourne’s 76th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 64th Birthday, Rick Savage!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Def Leppard’s Rick Savage’s 64th birthday.
New Audio: 802 Returns with Disco-Tinged Ripper “Princess”
Andreas “Slowoff” Asingh was one of the most critically acclaimed electronic artists in Denmark, working with internationally renowned artists like Raekwon while touring the world. Eventually, life’s twist and turns took Asingh back to his roots, the Danish countryside of Mols Bjerge.
Back in 2022, Asingh met Emil Sørensen and Kristian Holbæk, two young dudes making names for themselves in the country’s underground metal scene. Although the the members of 802 weren’t an obvious creative musical match, they bonded over their desire to create a sound that meshes elements of classic heavy metal, hazy shoegazer textures and ghostly synth pop with unashamedly catchy melodies. According to the band, the 802 world is ruled by musical anarchy and is a place for headbangers and pop lovers to unite.
The trio’s first ever show was at last year’s New Colossus Festival. And since then they’ve released three singles that received attention internationally: “My Girl,” and “22 (Velvet Vampire),” which were featured in award-winning horror shorts and “1986.” “1986” saw the Danish trio firmly cementing their sound: dense layers of crunchy metal riffage and thunderous drumming reminiscent of Kill ‘Em All, Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets-era Metallica, dreamy and incredibly catchy melodies, the sort of twinkling and atmospheric synths that will remind some of shoegazers like Chicago‘s Lightfoils, BLACKSTONE RNGRS, Hong Kong‘s Lucid Express and Montréal-based JOVM mainstays Bodywash paired some rousingly anthemic, raise-your-beer-in-the-air-and-shout-along worthy hooks.
Over the summer, the Danish outfit took their hook-driven mesh of metal and pop to some of Scandinavia’s biggest festival, including Copenhell and Roskilde. The band has also received New Artist of the Year and New Live Artist of the Year nominations at the Danish metal awards, Den Hårde Tone. Building upon the growing momentum surrounding the band, the rising trio share their fourth single “Princess.” “Princess” sees the band pairing a relentlessly propulsive, Metallica-like chug with glistening synth arpeggios and the band’s penchant for enormous, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.
Throwback: Happy 62nd Birthday, Kirk Hammett!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Metallica’s Kirt Hamett’s 62nd birthday.
New Video: Babel Map Shares Stormy “Pazuzu”
Initially started as s solo, trip-hop/electronic music project of then-Philadelphia-based singer/songwriter and musician Jessica Drummer, Babel Map became a full-fledged band when Drummer relocated to Harrisburg, PA in 2015. Upon her arrival to the commonwealth’s capital, Drummer started playing live shows, networking and playing with other musicians.
After a series of lineup changes, the band’s lineup settled with the addition of Steph Warner (guitar) and Michael Stipe (bass). The lineup change saw the band’s creative process becoming much more collaborative, and that was quickly followed by a decided change in sonic direction towards a sound that incorporated elements of shoegaze, post-metal and trance.
The trio recorded their full-length debut, 2020’s Raw Tomato, My Heart with Ian Scheila at Philadelphia-based Headroom Studios while cutting their teeth as a live unit, until COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and shutdowns. During the shutdowns, the band wrote their sophomore album, 2022’s CANCEL THIS!, which was recorded right after restrictions were lifted.
Slated for a Friday release through Lost Future Records, the band’s soon-to-be released third album Teeth was originally written last year with electronic drums as a result of another lineup change. The band’s newest member Brian Doherty (drums, percussion) later joined the Harrisburg-based outfit and began writing and producing drums and percussion parts for the album’s material. Babel Map explains the symbolism behind the title, as it is both about “showing your teeth,” but also “leaving a permanent piece of yourself behind for the world to reflect on.”
Recorded with God City Studio‘s Kurt Ballou, Teeth captures the band at a new creative chapter: They explain that the lineup change allowed for a progressive increase in experimentation in terms of song structure and arrangements. Their previously released efforts were written, refined and recorded mostly from playing in a live setting. But for Teeth, the newly constituted quartet came together with no preconceived notions, pressed record and slowly built songs. Once the album’s material was complete, the band began practicing as a quartet to prepare for recording and eventually live shows.
Teeth single “Pazuzu,” is an expansive, deeply brooding and forceful ripper that pairs swirling shoegazer textures and atmospheric keys with enormous stoner rock-like riffage, thunderous drumming serving as a stormy bed for rousingly anthemic hooks and Drummer’s expressive, powerhouse delivery.
The accompanying video fittingly focuses on spooky season tropes, beginning with the video’s protagonist in a creepy house with demons and witches while also nodding at 120 Minutes-era MTV alt-rock-like visuals.
New Video: Sheer Division Shares a Bruising Ripper
French metal outfit Sheer Division — Xavier Chaquet (guitar), Simonian Jérôme (vocals, guitar, programming) and Marie Helene Rattin (bass) — formed last year in Valence, where the band’s Jérôme worked as a sound engineer at the city’s concert venue, Mistral Palace.
The French trio describe their sound a mix of of stoner rock, punk, grunge and metal paired with lyrics inspired by sci-fi and fantasy writers like Asimov, Lovecraft, Drullet — with a bit of black humor and nihilism.
Their just released EP Saalammbö, features EP title track “Saalammbö.,” a blistering and forceful ripper that sounds like a gritty synthesis of Deftones, Queens of the Stone Age and Soundgarden, anchored around enormous, arena rock friendly hooks and choruses. Play at eardrum shattering volume.
The accompanying animated video is fittingly a dystopian and apocalyptic sci-fi visual that’s captures a world on fire and in endless war, almost like ours.
Throwback: Happy 70th Birthday, David Lee Roth!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates David Lee Roth’s 70th birthday.
Initially started as a solo electronic/indie sleaze project out of an Atlanta dorm room, Gothlantastan grew into an indiecore/alt rock band featuring brothers Ethan and Colin Schnapp, before expanding into a quintet with the additions of Spencer Mjehovich (baas) and Gianni Summa (guitar) and Aiden Prince (guitar).
The Atlanta-based outfit’s latest single “Life’s Misery’s Pain” is a pummeling, eardrum shattering, abrasive and forceful ripper featuring scorching riffage, thunderous drumming and howled vocals paired with mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses. While sounding as though it could have been released through RidingEasy Records, “Life’s Misery’s Pain,” is a howl into an indifferent and unceasing void, with the band explaining that the song is about helplessness and aging.