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Mining Metal: The Best Underground Albums We Missed in 2021
Mining Metal is a monthly column from Heavy Consequence writers Joseph Schafer and Langdon Hickman. The focus is on noteworthy new music emerging from the non-mainstream metal scene, highlighting releases from small and independent labels — or even releases from unsigned acts. Inevitably, we come across albums that we’d like to cover but don’t. More than eight good underground metal albums come out during most months, even when the scope of “underground” is narrowed to labels without dedicated distribution. But not every month. January is typically a fallow season for metal records, as people recuperate from the holiday season and begin planning their upcoming year. Because we dedicated December to our annual best-of list, we decided to spend this column covering a few bits and bobs we mis...
Maybe It’s a Bad Thing That The Book of Boba Fett’s Fifth Episode Was So Good
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for The Book of Boba Fett, “Chapter 5: Return of the Mandalorian.”] This week’s episode of The Book of Boba Fett delivered a hell of a twist: It wasn’t about Boba Fett. Instead, the Mandalorian spinoff went ahead and became an episode of The Mandalorian, bringing back everyone’s favorite Space Dad (Pedro Pascal) and catching us up with what he’s been up to since surrendering sweet young Baby Yoda Grogu to Luke Skywalker for Jedi training. “Chapter 5: Return of the Mandalorian” did eventually connect to the events of Boba Fett so far, but it served more value in reintroducing a character who perhaps we didn’t realize we missed so much. The system shock of Din’s return ended up highlighting what’s been missing from the series: An actual emotion...
Neil Young Vs. Spotify: Where Do We Go From Here?
On Monday, rock legend Neil Young published an open letter to his label and management on his own website asking that all his music (over 40 studio albums and many more live albums and compilations) be removed from the streaming service Spotify. Citing Spotify-exclusive podcast The Joe Rogan Experience and Rogan’s role as a voice of COVID-19 misinformation and vaccine skepticism, Young made an ultimatum: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.” The letter has since been deleted from Young’s website, but it appears that he’s sticking to his guns. By the end of the day on Wednesday, his albums were all gone from Spotify. All that remains on his artist page are a scattered array of collaborations and compilation tracks, the most popular of which is a 1992 live recording of Young, Bob Dy...
Beyond the Boys’ Club: Lena Scissorhands of Infected Rain
Beyond the Boys’ Club is a monthly column from journalist and radio host Anne Erickson, focusing on women in the heavy music genres, as they offer their perspectives on the music industry and discuss their personal experiences. Erickson is also a music artist herself and will release a new single, “Scars,” on February 4th with Upon Wings. This month’s piece features an interview with Lena Scissorhands of Infected Rain. Moldovan metal band Infected Rain released their fifth studio album, Ecdysis, on January 7th. Created during lockdown, the new record covers the gamut of themes, from the strength and power of the female experience (“Fighter”) to tumultuous world events that took place during pandemic (“The Realm of Chaos”). Infected Rain also just announced that they’re returning to North A...
5 Lessons From Elon Musk the Music Industry Should Follow
Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk is a fearless leader. With a tank full of rocket fuel and an electrifying personality, these are many lessons musicians can follow from the self-proclaimed “Technoking of Tesla.” Originally from Pretoria, South Africa, Musk was born to be an entrepreneur. He developed and sold his first video game, Blastar, at the age of 12. Musk became infatuated by inventions and innovation so much that his parents and doctors ordered hearing tests. He went on to obtain a Bachelor’s degree in economics and physics and then moved to California to pursue a Ph.D in energy physics, but dropped out to catch a wave during the internet boom. Alongside his brother Kimbal, Musk in 1995 co-founded Zip2 Corporation, an online city guide providing content for The Ne...
35 Most Anticipated Metal + Hard Rock Albums of 2022
The pop culture forecast for 2022 is looking mighty fine, and we’re previewing everything we’re excited about this year with a series of lists. Just so you have it all in one place, we’ve also published our Most Anticipated (Non-Heavy) Albums, Most Anticipated Films, Most Anticipated TV Shows and Rising Artists to Watch roundups. Every corner of the music industry has been affected by the pandemic, and the realms of heavy metal and hard rock were put in a precarious limbo following the lockdowns of 2020. For visceral genres so reliant on the energy of live performance, the lack of shows cast a malaise over the scene, resulting in an album drought. For many acts, it simply didn’t make sense to release an album they couldn’t support with a tour. Many, like Avenged Sevenfo...
Jeff Tweedy and His Sons Are the New Kings of ‘Dad Rock’ — And They Couldn’t Be Happier
It might be the oldest rock’n’roll cliche in the book: that being in a band is akin to being married, in a relationship or part of a family. When bands break up, the word “divorce” gets thrown around pretty regularly to describe the circumstances (in fact, it’s the word John Lennon used when he left The Beatles in 1969). That unavoidable and often uncomfortable interpersonal dynamic may explain why not many well-known bands prominently feature actual family members. Sure, there are a few outliers: 88-year-old Willie Nelson has been backed by his sons Lukas and Micah for two decades, while then-teenager Wolfgang Van Halen more than capably assumed bass playing duties alongside his guitar-slinging dad Eddie and drummer Uncle Alex when Van Halen reunited with David Lee Roth in 2007. But for W...
Digging for Gold: South Korean Hip-Hop and R&B
Digging for Gold is HYPEBEAST’s monthly playlist series that highlights regions across the world and the genres that come out of them. By putting together a mix of essentials and hidden gems, we hope to add to how you discover music and to deliver the thrill of finding new tracks. From K-pop to K-dramas, South Korea’s pop culture has conquered the world in an unprecedented fashion. While BTS and BLACKPINK have skyrocketed as international sensations, the spotlight on the country’s music exports has turned eyes and ears to its emerging hip-hop and R&B scene. As we make headway into 2022, we’re joining forces with HYPEBEAST Korea to discover the promising talents who are disrupting the industry and on the path to becoming global phenomena as well. As both genres take hold in the region, ...
The Future of Gig Work
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Sundance Review: Meet Me in the Bathroom Is a Time Capsule of 2000s Indie Rock
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: Pitched between the doomsday-prepping of Y2K and the existential horror of 9/11, 2000s New York was also home to another seismic change in American culture: the burgeoning indie-rock scene, where dingy clubs on the Lower East Side played home to acts like Interpol, The Strokes, The Moldy Peaches, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. That’s the hazy, deafening, beer-sticky stage on which Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace (who previously directed the LCD Soundsystem doc Shut Up and Play the Hits) operate for Meet Me in the Bathroom, less an adaptation of Lizzy Goodman’s 2017 oral history of the same name than a living companion piece. Related Video Comprised almost entirely of archival footage stitched together b...
Sundance Review: jeen-yuhs Paints a Humanizing Portrait of Kanye West’s Beginnings
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: Before his marriage to (and subsequent divorce from) Kim Kardashian, before his abortive 2020 presidential campaign, before the wild tweets and outrageous behavior that would define his public persona in the 2020s, there was just Kanye West and the music. From the beginning, the Atlanta-born, Chicago-raised producer turned rapper knew he was going to be one of the greatest musicians of all time; his first album, 2004’s The College Dropout, is studded with lines to that effect (“I was born to be different”). But it took the world a while to catch up with his ambition, and the problems didn’t stop there even after he finally broke through. By his side for the last twenty years was Clarence “Coodie” S...
Sundance Review: Director Amy Poehler Gets to the Heart of Two Entertainment Pioneers with Lucy and Desi
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: I Love Lucy is so inextricably tied to pop culture that many of its trademarks are still recognizable today, over seventy years since the show first aired. The central duo, brought to life by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, has been an object of fascination for almost as long — look at Aaron Sorkin‘s current project, Being the Ricardos, which has the edge in flashiness thanks to the star power of Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem. Director Amy Poehler‘s thoughtful documentary on the subject has one extremely important thing Sorkin’s series lacks, though — access to the real thing. Thanks to a treasure trove of audio tapes and home movies shared by the daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Lucie Arnaz, Luc...
