For a Heavy Spirit

New hopes, new demonstrations

Hello, reader. Welcome.

I fell out of love with heavy music at some point around 2016 because after a 15-year obsession, it felt to me like the wheels had come off of the industry in a way I didn't really understand. The explosion of breakthrough metal music in the early 2000s gave way almost immediately to a frantic and massively creative revolution in alternative music, that to my mind, began to run out of oxygen post 2015. I don't think there was no good music; but I do think that the industry was going through a different revolution of its own - between major alternative movements that hadn't properly landed. A lot of the major acts of the previous 10 years were calling time or hiatus. Bands, management, labels and media companies were scrambling to work out what social media meant in the next wave of artistry. The kinds of rugged ambition, innovation and passion that the scene had been built upon and needed had felt muted for reasons that are still not clear to me and I am not yet sure I will ever work out.

I am sure that this also coincided with various junctures in my life where the alternative music scene became something less relevant to my life than it once was. Politically, we were beginning to fully lock into a climate that to this day has ended up occupying much more of my mental energy than was healthy or productive. I was focused in on my career in various unhelpful ways that ran me down on time. The arts took a secondary role in my life. This common constellation meant I almost completely unplugged from music. But seeking, finding and listening to less music made my life worse in ways that were as obvious to me then as they are now.

People who have said 'there is no good music out' any point in the last 25 years have been wrong every time they've said it. You know what it's like. What they mean is 'music was better, when I was younger, and maybe fitter, and maybe freer', and it's the second portion of the sentence that they're subconsciously dialing in on. But it's also not their fault. The natural rhythm of a changing life, new responsibilities, the business of being an 'adult', will do this. Listening habits have changed and continue to change without settling; the delivery of music to the listener has informed the delivery of musical projects from artist to distributor, and algorithmic discovery across streaming and social is both a profound miracle and equal disaster depending on how much energy (and cash) you have to engage with it (and honestly, how lucky you are as an artist or listener).

But make no mistake. In 2025, we are experiencing a deluge of creativity in heavy music that I can't personally remember since the mid '10s. There is so much good music out, across all genres, arriving in such volume, that it is practically impossible to account for all of it. On the other side of 2020, for all it's pain and disenchantment, there is a revolution in heavy metal, shoegaze and hard / alternative crossovers that I am desperate to share with you. I am absolutely certain we are at the beginning of the next great wave in musical subculture and because of that, we need to lift it up and talk about it.

It has been one of the great joys of my life to feel this reawakening in recorded and live music in the second half of my 30s, and it has illuminated to me to all of the full joy that I felt growing up, as a kid for whom heavy music was a home and lifeblood and refuge from a world that regularly felt like a hostile and isolating place.

Heavy Spirit is a project designed to help me share this new old joy with other people who are also trying to re-find their relationship with energetic, creative, ambitious and intense music.

What is Heavy Spirit?

I'm hoping to do an eclectic mixture of stuff here, including:

• Curated music; a bunch of playlists.
• Spotlights on new / emerging bands.
• Ideas on specific movements / moments in the genres breaking through.
• Opinions on records, performance, genre and the crossovers between hard music and political outlook that always exist in moments of tension.
• Other dispatches of things that I think are cool as hell and we should support.

It's possible to both be a free and paid (cheap) subscriber. Exactly what the promise of the paid subscription will become is yet to become clear (I have a bunch of ideas) but it's really just to fund hosting costs and a decent cup of coffee.

First Light

The first thing I'm gonna whip up and put out is a short playlist of songs I've found cool in the last couple weeks. A mean new split from Invent Animate & Silent Planet. A ripper of new record from Underoath, who as poster-boys of 00's post-hardcore have taken some path through addiction, religion and the road to still be here today. New shit from the brand new full-length from Kentucky's Gates to Hell, and something ridiculous from Kardashev, a band so talented and creative that it's impossible that they aren't destined for their own place in extreme metal crossover. Deafheaven landed a ferocious new record and Amethyst is a central slow-burn that is ambient, lush and intense.

A lot of this is brand new, out in the last few weeks. Some of it goes just a little farther back. All of it's got something about it. I hope you'll get into it.

(I am at some point soon going to work out how to make these playlists support more than just one streaming service. I need to think about that a bit.)

So, yes. Welcome. Get in the car. We've got a lot to listen to. 🕶️ 🖤