INTERVIEWS
Passion, Perseverance, and Propaganda: Behind Pakistan’s Controversial Hunza Verse Music Festival
Before prohibition and religious radicalization under the rule of Zia Ul Haq in 1977, Pakistan’s nightlife was thriving. In the bustling metropolis of Karachi, clubs like Excelsior, Oasis, Samar, and Club 007 openly served alcohol, hosted American jazz musicians like Dizzie Gillespie and Duke Ellington, and attracted professional belly dancers from foreign cities like Beirut, Cairo, Tehran, and Istanbul. Sweeping conservatism shuttered Pakistan’s nightlife, thwarting any chance for dance music to enter the fold. In recent years, however, regional stability and tides of liberalism have birthed interest in electronic music beyond house parties and underground raves. Diplo performed in Islamabad in 2016 before returning in 2018 alongside Valentino Khan and Chrome Sparks for a Pakistani rendit...
Yola Walked Through Fire to Stand for Herself
There’s a staggering sentence in the bio that accompanied the sample of singer-songwriter Yola’s sophomore album, Stand For Myself. In discussing a perspective shift since the release of her 2019 Grammy-nominated debut, Walk Through Fire, she says she was persuaded from being her true self, sharing, “There was a little hiatus where I got brainwashed out of my own majesty, but a bitch is back.” With her bright voice, ear-to-ear smile, and face framed with big violet hair, it’s hard to imagine the 38-year-old British songstress as anything other than self-assured, even as she describes what it took for her to get to that place. “A big part of the brainwashing was just white supremacy. We all get the same brainwashing. So if you’re a white person, you’re totally valid in every space, regardle...
Rewatch Our Live Twitch Interview With Descendents Ahead of the Release of 9th & Walnut
Almost exactly two months ago, Bill Stevenson and Milo Aukerman of the Descendents joined our Twitch stream for a very special episode of our weekly rock ‘n roll interview show/therapy session, Noise Pollution. Normally, our streams stay on Twitch for the limit of two weeks and then disappear into the ether, but today, we brought back the very special appearance by the punk rock legends ahead of the release of their new album, 9th & Walnut (out July 23 via Epitaph Records). The album, which was recorded in both 2002 and 2020, features 18 of the band’s earliest songs from the late 1970s and is the final recording from late guitarist Frank Navetta as well as a decades-in-the-making reunion with both Navetta and original bassist Tony Lombardo. In the hour-long Twitch stream, Stevenso...
How Sensorium Galaxy Is Adopting EDM to Spearhead the Next Generation of Virtual Entertainment
Sensorium Galaxy’s behind-the scenes teasers are about to become the highlight reel of the live music industry. Despite devastating economic impact to the broader sector, the past 15 months could not have proven to be a better case study for one of the most powerful emerging startups at the intersection of music and tech. The stars are beginning to align for Sensorium Galaxy, a next-generation concert platform where users can explore virtual worlds while enjoying performances from their favorite artists in industry-leading, triple-A quality. The company has yet to launch its first digital concert environment, PRISM, but will do so later this year. Even so, a cascade of high quality teasers and headline generating talent acquisitions have hit the public eye over t...
Bartees Strange on Independent Venue Week, Upcoming Music
“I’m ready to move on to the next thing,” Bartees Strange tells SPIN. It’s a logical impulse, especially since his debut LP, 2020’s Live Forever, restlessly shuffles through genres — indie-rock, folk, emo, hip-hop, soul — like playing cards. October also wasn’t the most optimal time for a life-changing career move: With COVID-19 grinding live music to a halt, Strange couldn’t organically advance the momentum of his late-night spots or year-end accolades. Not that he’s complaining. “I’m just grateful,” he says. “Going into the pandemic, I was working a full-time job and trying to figure out how to do music more. Now I look at my calendar and it’s just music stuff. It’s incredible.” But now, knee-deep into recording another album, and with an actual tour launching in September, he’s ready to...
Coheed and Cambria’s Claudio Sanchez on Navigating the Pandemic, 2021 Tour, and New Music
Coheed and Cambria have kept busy during the past year, between launching a coffee line, collaborating with Rick Springfield on the song “Jessie’s Girl 2”, doing Twitch streams, and working on some musical side projects. “We each tried to be creative in our own unique ways apart from each other and navigate the isolation as best we knew how,” frontman Claudio Sanchez tells Heavy Consequence. Sanchez caught up with Heavy Consequence to discuss Coheed and Cambria’s upcoming tour with The Used, how he and the band navigated the pandemic, and various other projects. He also gave us a hint as to what fans can expect as far as new Coheed music. Advertisement Related Video Pick up tickets to Coheed and Cambria’s tour with The Used via Ticketmaster, and purchase Coheed’s line of Coffee Roasters pr...
Like Post-Hardcore Wine, Fiddlehead Is Getting Better With Age
Pat Flynn knows the nightmare of being in a full-time band. He’s lived on the road and in studios. He’s depended on album sales to pay his bills. And he’s watched as the need for commercial viability and stable income helped to tear apart his 2000s hardcore band Have Heart after they’d finally risen out of the Massachusetts punk scene. But that’s only part of why the Fiddlehead vocalist maintains his day job as a history teacher. In addition to providing a financial backbone for him, it’s the perfect excuse for only touring on weekends and school vacations. Of course, it also helps that he can connect with both his students and his younger fans because he still very much remembers being the problematic teenager who founded Have Heart nearly 20 years ago. “I [was] a very troubled teenager w...
Don Krez Opens Up About His New Single, Post-Pandemic Mindset, and Love for His Fans
Electronic music artist Don Krez is primed for a year as roaring as his new single, the heavy-hitting trap banger “Bernie Sanders.” Having worked with the likes of Ski Mask The Slump God, Smokepurpp, and the late XXXTENTACION, among other major hip-hop artists, Krez is no stranger to heavy-hitting sonics. “Bernie Sanders” belongs on the mainstage, a head-banging ode to the politician and inspired by the ubiquitous “Cold Bernie” meme. The track kicks off with haunting keys, which sound as if they were plucked out of a Chucky film. They lead into an eerie bassline, which eventually builds and culminates in a robust trap trap that turns back the clock to the genre’s SoundCloud boom of yesteryear. We caught up with Krez about the in...
Nigerian airlines list conditions for full refund to passengers after two-hour flight delay
Following the pronouncement of the Federal Government that airline operators must refund the full cost of travel tickets to passengers after a two-hour delay, commercial airlines have listed the conditions for such reimbursement. The airline operators made this known in separate interviews with newsmen. The Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, had, on Thursday at the weekly State House briefing in Aso Villa, Abuja, read out some of the rights of air passengers as enshrined in Part 19 of the Consumer Protection Regulations of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Regulations (2015) and charged them to demand their rights whenever they were being trampled upon by airlines. “On domestic flights, for delay beyond one hour, carrier should provide refreshment, and one telephone call, or one SMS, or one e-ma...
Artist of the Month Tkay Maidza Dissects New EP Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 3 Track by Track: Exclusive
With our Track by Track feature, artists get the chance to take listeners through each song on their latest offering. Today, our July Artist of the Month Tkay Maidza wraps up her EP trilogy with Last Year Was Werid, Vol. 3. Our freshly minted July Artist of the Month Tkay Maidza has uncorked her new EP Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 3. Stream it below via Apple Music or Spotify, followed by a complete Track by Track breakdown of the seven-song effort. The Australian-by-way-of-Zimbabwe rapper dropped Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 1 in 2018, and she followed that with Vol. 2 in 2020. But this is the first EP to arrive after a year of lockdowns, and Last Year Was Weird has never been more true. Vol. 3 completes the trilogy with production from longtime...
Inhaler Are Blazing Their Way to Stardom
Playing blisteringly tight, searingly good, and crowd-drenching sweat-filled live sets were giving Dublin’s Inhaler an old-fashioned breakout-in-the-making buzz, that is until the pandemic put a halt to just about everything. They were on the eve of their biggest tour yet in America, set to play sold-out venues, extra added dates, and had landed a sweet spot at Southern California’s Ohana Festival, where they were going to take the stage a handful of acts before headliner Eddie Vedder, performing what could have been one of those legendary, L.A.-conquering performances that cemented things for them for years stateside. So, when the world stops for a once-in-a-century pandemic, what’s a live-loving, live-living, live-breathing band of 20 year-olds meant to do? Follow the rules, of course, a...
APC insists Governor Matawalle is Zamfara party leader
The All Progressives Congress on Friday reiterated its conferment of the leadership of the Zamfara State chapter of the party on Governor Bello Matawalle. This is coming on the heels of the rejection of the governor’s leadership by former governor Abdelaziz Yari, and a party stalwart, Senator Kabiru Marafa. The Chairman, Caretaker/Extraordinary National Convention Planning Committee of the party, Governor Mai Mala Buni, had while welcoming Matawalle into the party, dissolved the APC state executive committee and announced Matawalle as the new party leader. However, Yari and Marafa had in separate interviews with the Hausa Service of the BBC, rejected Buni’s declaration, insisting that negotiations were still ongoing. When contacted, via the telephone, on Friday, the National Secretary of t...
