Exclusive Features
Heavy Resistance: A Playlist of Hard-Rocking Protest Songs
Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen a sea change across the nation and throughout the world. Millions of people have taken to the streets to protest against systemic racism, and the impact has been powerful. In heavy music, protest songs have provided strong condemnations of racism, oppression, war, authoritarianism, and more. Protest songs in heavy metal date back to the genre’s godfathers, Black Sabbath, who released the anti-war track “War Pigs” in 1970. Throughout the years, heavy music has produced hundreds of memorable protest anthems, with punk rock acts like The Clash and Sex Pistols leading the charge in the late ’70s, and hardcore bands like Bad Brains and Black Flag bringing the rebellion in the ’80s. In the ’90s, Rage Against the Machine took protest music to the masse...
Top 5 Covers of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide”
The tale of Fleetwood Mac (the Reader’s Digest version, anyway) can be told in two parts. There’s the blues rock version of the band, which featured a revolving-door of guitarists and gradually transitioned into softer rock over several records, and then there’s the pop powerhouse the band became famous as once guitarist-singer Lindsey Buckingham and vocalist Stevie Nicks joined for the outfit’s self-titled 1975 record. It’s the landmark album that would give the band its first huge success in America and result in several fan favorites like “Rhiannon” and “Landslide”. The album began a string of records lasting into the late ’80s, including Rumours in ’77, where the group, despite plenty of inner turmoil, could seemingly do no wrong musically. [embedded content] Though not originally a si...
Song of the Week: Kid Cudi and Eminem Get Real on “The Adventures of Moon Man & Slim Shady”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify New Sounds playlist. Music hasn’t pussyfooted around in 2020. Nor has it turned a blind eye to what’s going on in the world. More and more, artists are tackling the topics we see in our daily media feeds and on our nightly news programs, and they’re getting music into the hands — or at least ears — of listeners faster than ever. And that trend makes sense. In a time where artists reveal more about themselves than ever via social media platforms and the world never sits still for longer than a news cycle, listeners are not only demanding that songs address their needs — something to march to, dance to, or lean on — but that they do so in as close to rea...
The Sword’s J.D. Cronise Talks New Compilations, Bootlegging Rare Clutch Tracks, and His Band’s Future
Modern stoner rock owes a major debt to The Sword. Formed in 2003 in Austin, the band’s propensity for Black Sabbath-influenced doom and desert grooves predated the subculture that suddenly emerged from the stoner rock scene in the 2010s. Suddenly, remote fans of bands like Sleep and Electric Wizard were connected by the familiar churning sounds of these bands. The Sword played a vital role in this movement, with their 2006 debut album, Age of Winters, and its lead single, the now legendary “Freya”, cementing their place in doom metal lore. It was a time of resurgence for classic rock, a new era of teenagers were discovering Led Zeppelin and Sabbath, and “Freya” garnered The Sword a cult audience of eager rock fans. Their music even reached Lars Ulrich of Metallica, who would eventually ta...
Back to the Future Is Fueled by Huey Lewis and “The Power of Love”
Songs That Made Movies Classics is a feature in which we analyze how the use of a single song helped make a film a modern classic. Today, we go back in time all the way to 1985 … time circuits on. The story behind how Back to the Future got green-lit might actually be a longer and stranger journey than Marty McFly’s own adventures through time. No, the idea for the movie didn’t come to writer-producer Bob Gale while standing on his toilet trying to hang a clock. The creative jolt came when Gale found his father’s senior high school yearbook while rummaging through his parents’ basement during a visit. Intrigued by Gale’s premise, filmmaker Robert Zemeckis, yet to have a film project not flop at the box office, teamed with him in late 1980 on an initial script deal with Columbia Pictures. L...
July Album Anniversaries Every Music Fan Should Know About
As we enter July and leave the first half of 2020, we’re more than happy to look forward. Hopefully, that means returning to some level of normalcy (masks on, peeps), continuing to push for racial justice across society, and, of course, new music. As always, though, to know where we’re headed, we’re keeping one eye and both ears to our past. And there are plenty of groundbreaking records celebrating major anniversaries this month. Read on for a rundown of the albums we’ll be revisiting all month long and information on some of the pieces we’ll be featuring in correlation with these must-know anniversaries. Foo Fighters – Foo Fighters (1995) <img data-attachment-id="548547" data-permalink="https://consequenceofsound.net/2014/11/faces-dave-grohl/foo-fighters-foo-fighters-al...
20 Years Ago, Deftones Unleash Their Magnum Opus White Pony
Though it wasn’t so apparent on their 1995 debut album Adrenaline, Deftones screeched onto the scene with an instinct towards perpetual expansion that was practically encoded in the band’s creative DNA. At first, the Deftones brand was basically synonymous with the nu metal movement the Sacramento, California, outfit seemed to fit so well. By 1997’s sophomore effort Around the Fur, it was clear that Deftones were straining against the stylistic confines they’d initially seemed comfortable working within. The hip-hop, groove metal, and thrashy influences were still there, but the music was now undergirded by an emphasis on dynamics, mood, and atmosphere. But when the band released its third album, White Pony, six months into the new millennium (June 20th, 2000), Deftones effectively rendere...
20 Reasons We Still Love Deftones’ White Pony
Gimme a Reason takes classic albums celebrating major anniversaries and breaks down song by song the reasons we still love them so many years later. This week, we celebrate 20 years of Deftones’ White Pony. In 2000, nu metal ruled the airwaves. It’s then-novel mixture of alternative rock choruses, heavy metal riffs tuned lower than ever before, and hip-hop verses and rhythms had been on a half-decade growth streak. It’s juggernaut acts, like Korn and Limp Bizkit, were ubiquitous. One of the genre’s most forward-thinking devotees, a cadre of Sacramento upstarts known as Deftones seemed hot on their tails, thanks to the success of the singles “My Own Summer (Shove It)” and “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)” from their 1997 album Around the Fur. However, rather than be keep following the p...
GWAR’s Blothar: Oderus Urungus Wouldn’t Have Wanted His Statue Next to a “Row of Losers”
Over the past week or so, a petition to replace a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, with one of late GWAR frontman Oderus Urungus has garnered more than 55,000 signatures. While it would be cool for scumdogs everywhere to see their fallen leader honored, current GWAR singer Blothar the Berserker tells us that Oderus wouldn’t want a statue of himself alongside a “row of losers.” As controversial statues continue to get toppled amid worldwide protests, the petition calls Robert E. Lee a “failed war general that supported a racist cause” while touting Oderus as a “great local leader.” While Oderus may have come from the planet Scumdogia and settled in Antarctica, his alter ego, Dave Brockie (who passed away in 2014), called Richmond his home. Blothar beamed in...
Heavy Culture: Musicians Recount Early Experiences of Racism
Heavy Culture is a monthly column from journalist Liz Ramanand, focusing on artists of different cultural backgrounds in heavy music as they offer their perspectives on race, society, and more as it intersects with and affects their music. The latest installment of this column features multiple rock and metal musicians recounting their early experiences of racism. Racism is real. Colorism is real. Implicit biases are real. Injustice is real. It is rooted in ignorance. As a Caribbean woman, the first time I experienced racism was a vivid memory in the first grade. A white, female classmate, the same age as me — about 6 or 7 years old — told me I was dirty, ugly, and that I did not deserve the new stationery my mom bought for me. Even as a child, I felt that this classmate had disdain for me...
The Legacy of Whitney Houston in 10 Duets
Subscribe now to our ongoing Whitney Houston season of The Opus. You can also prep for the experience by listening to Whitney Houston via all major streaming services or enter to win a copy of Vinyl Me, Please’s 35th anniversary Whitney Houston box set. Spotify | Google Play | Stitcher | Radio Public | RSS Follow on Facebook | Podchaser The term “diva” was not coined or derived for Whitney Houston. That being said, nobody’s ever been more worthy than her to don that honorific. Our best memories of Houston recall a performer with grace, humor, and a voice that could leave a crowd speechless with both its power and range. However, the images of Houston burned in our mind — in true diva fashion — don’t see her often sharing a stage. The hits that’ll go on long af...
10 Back to the Future Quotes You Probably Say All the Time
Thirty years ago, the Back to the Future trilogy came to an end. Marty McFly finally made it back home in Hill Valley circa 1985, Doc Brown went off with his family (not to mention, that creepy kid), and the Delorean, well, let’s move on. Since then, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale’s time-traveling misadventures have become an essential part of our own space time continuum. We still watch the flicks, we still turn up Huey Lewis, and we still have crushes on Michael J. Fox. We also never stop quoting the damn thing. Hell, even amidst the pandemic, we’ve found a way to wield Gale’s prose to our own advantage. And given how we’re living in Biff Tannen’s America, the memes have just been nonstop. Editors’ Picks So, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Back to the Future Part III, which stea...
