With a band name styled in ALL CAPS and “kvlt and tru” spelling, you know you’re going to have some sort of preconceived notion of the Des Moines-based metallers DIEZELEATER (Should it technically be DIEZELDRINKER?) and I won’t tell you mine.
Metal
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Anchoress — ‘Sugarsong’
Sugarsong by Anchoress. Iowa has been the birthplace of some incredible heavy music acts. Marshalltown’s Modern Life Is War are melodic hardcore royalty. Iowa City wrought Aseethe and their punishing doom metal and Dryad with their outstanding crusty black metal. Out of Dubuque, Telekinetic Yeti make stoned doom metal. Muscatine’s Closet Witch, by all rights, […]
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Album Review: Fungal Mass — ‘Psychedelic Poison’
“Fungal Mass,” the first track off Psychedelic Poison and named after the band itself, acts as something of a manifesto. Along with the use of second-person throughout the song, the lyrics further welcome the listener to continue their aural adventure with the group, who describe themselves as “an American Thrash Metal band originating from the small town of Wilton, Iowa.”
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Album Review: Pit Lord — ‘Massive Grilling Capacity’
There is a persistent conflict in heavy metal: that of silliness versus profound seriousness. Extreme metal sees the most self-serious, philosophical bands win critical favor and masked bands are, again, taking the top of the charts. The most complex and challenging musicians in the metal sphere are still prone to wearing corpse paint, writing songs […]
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Peak Iowa: The Clown prince of heavy metal reigns on, 25 years after Slipknot’s Safari Club debut
Since the release of their eponymous debut studio album in 1999, and the even more hellacious follow-up Iowa in 2001, the music and masked musicians of metal band Slipknot have resonated with irrefutable musical defiance for millions of “maggots,” as their fans proudly call themselves, the world over. It all started in Des Moines, hometown […]
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Japan’s BABYMETAL bring the ‘Metalverse’ to Waukee’s Vibrant Music Hall
BABYMETAL delivered a striking performance at Vibrant Music Hall in Waukee for their 2024 World Tour.
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Dan Hutchison’s Sump Pump Records is a hub for metal acts, DIY artists and vinyl nerds
Along with its wild abundance of musical talent, Iowa is also a treasure trove of top-notch record labels. As someone with a passion for lifting up local artists, I’ve been obsessed in recent years with discovering just what confluence of events has put all of these talented and discerning folk in positions to do just […]
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Political and personal strife fuels Closet Witch’s ferocious, ‘therapeutic’ shows
Of all the hardcore bands and DIY power violence outfits to emerge from Eastern Iowa in recent years, few have been able to channel sheer anger and emotion as effectively as Closet Witch. Forming a little over five years ago, the band is characterized by their aggression, both onstage and on-record. Guitarist and primary songwriter […]
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HIDE’s Heather Gabel is taking a chainsaw to rape culture
Heather Gabel, one-half of the Chicago-based industrial EDM duo HIDE, has an affinity for the haunting, empowering and confrontational. You may have seen Gabel between flashes of strobe lights and clouds of dry ice in the Yacht Club basement during Mission Creek Festival 2019: glimpses of black-smudged lips yelling
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Iowa City black metal band Dryad on fighting fascism, channeling Tolkien and consuming music responsibly
Anger and outrage can be expressed through any musical genre, but metal has proven particularly contentious: From its inception, it found a place in working class culture — but, as the 2016 election exemplified, the revolutionary anger and discontent of the working class is often pushed toward the political right and into racist, nationalist and misogynist
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Nebraska’s finest head to Gabe’s for a free night of metal and hardcore
Two Birds and a Stone by Relentless ApproachThings are getting heavy this Sunday, with four Nebraska-based metal and hardcore bands invading Gabe’s for…
Posted inAlbum Reviews, Arts & Entertainment
Album Review: Omens – Omens EP/No Dawn Casette
Metal never really did it for me. So much of it centered on contrived attitude and image. Growing up I was in the orchestra and AP English, and the metal fans were in Shop classes. While the gearhead kids were buying Sabbath and AC/DC, I was buying Coltrane and Kraftwerk. But a curious thing happened to my perception of metal, influenced by listening to industrial and noisier electronic music like noisecore and gabber: I started hearing what made all the metalheads so happy.
