Flying On Clipped Wings

​ In the second edition of Song Of The Day, we're sticking in the punk realm, but with a song I feel more of ye might actually give a listen as it's not screamy af, it's  RVIVR's Wrong Way/One Way . It's a brilliant rough edged pop punk jam, but also one of the songs that validates just why this genre, punk is one of the most important artistic things our species has been able to create. Punk was created by misfits, the drug addled, the ethnic minorities, the working class, the alienated, the ones aware of how shit everything was and wanting to change that. Yet despite all of this history, it's still been a really hostile and reactionary place for a lot of people, especially if you're queer or gender non conforming, like one of this band's vocalists, Mattie, formerly of Latterman, another sick rough edged melodic punk band. They've put themselves on the line, not only by writing songs about these issues and talking about them, but by pressing

I'm a sad person a lot of the time, but there's a few songs out there that make me very happy indeed, and I'm going to share them with all you lovely readers here. They may not be your typical example of a "happy song", but they do make me smile at times when it feels like my facial muscles can't contort themselves into that shape. 1: tricot: Omotenashi First off we have Japanese all girl math rock quartet tricot, purveyors of the most lovely, warm, technical, beautiful, comfy yet powerful math-pop-rock in existence, This is a track off both an EP and their debut record,  T.H.E. , and honestly picking just one song is a difficult task, but it's a more straightforward cut, my first introduction to the band, and it packs such a punch. 2: Crossfaith: Wildfire Staying in Japan for this next song, we have Japanese electro-metalcore warriors Crossfaith. Despite how that genre description might sound, they do have a grasp of how to write songs, and pr

This is a new thing I'm trying with my blog, an idea ripped off from one of my favourite podcasts, where I ramble on for however long about a specific song, why it means as much as it does, what works about it musically, and why its lodged so firmly in my heart. If you're a member of any marginalised community, you're probably pretty familiar with respectability politics, maybe not with that phrase, but definitely having to seem nice and accepting and accommodating to the dominant group, just so your basic humanity will be respected. You see it with feminism, with people struggling for racial equality, and an area I'm pretty familiar with, the LGBTQ movement. We're told to not be so aggressive, to blindly stand behind our prominent public figures no matter how many valid issues can be had with them (Ru Paul, Leo Vradkar, Panti Bliss), to hide away our bi and trans comrades when the marriage referendum came around because it was "too confusing for middle Ir

Ah yes, what is screamo? Well if you’re reading this you probably have your own conclusion made about what the term means, given how abused it’s been in terms of describing any music with harsh vocals. However in this case I’m using screamo in its truest sense, that blend of hardcore punk and emo, well emocore back when it was Rites Of Spring and the Revolution Summer of 1985. It’s a multifaceted, intense genre of music, and I’m going to talk you through my journey of discovery with it, how I came to love it so much. Even if you don’t walk away from this article buying the entire Majority Rule or WristMeetRazor discographies off eBay, at least you’ll have insight into a genre which is often deliberately inaccessible. I first found out what screamo was through trawling Wikipedia, as I was prone to doing once I discovered the internet, yet in terms of listening to it, that came in 2011. Free CDs with a magazine I read regularly introduced me to The Saddest Landscape, Touché Amor

"Mathcore, what's that?" I hear you ask. "Genre names are getting too complex these days, do the bands sing about mathematical constructs?" you type in the comments section of a Facebook post mentioning The Number 12 Looks Like You to get three likes and a haha react. The truth is that mathcore is one of the most interesting and technically complex offshoots of heavy music. It's characterised by weird time signatures, odd rhythms, experimentation, dissonance is used quite a bit too. Its earliest roots are in the experiments on Black Flag's seminal  My War  album, but it became a fully fledged thing in its own right with the rise of metalcore in the 1990s, Deadguy kicking things off with their noisy, dissonant, off kilter metalcore, Botch throwing down the gauntlet for technical complexity in a sea of bad Earth Crisis clones, and in 1999 the world was forever changed by the incendiary  Calculating Infinity  by the sadly departed Dillinger Escape Plan

"Who taught you how to hate your self? Who forced you to confide in spell?" - The Hotelier,  Life in Drag . It's a subject I've touched on quite a bit on my twitter, it's a core part of my identity, and yet I've never written a long form post about it. Perhaps it was fear of what people would say, how they'd look at me differently, the sneers of attention seeker I can see a few people making. Perhaps it was just not knowing what to say, the exact expression, the exact terminology is still something I'm trying to work out. All I have are a set of pronouns, they/them. The default when gender is unknown. An umbrella identity: non binary. Neither male nor female, but an other. I have occasional bursts of extreme facial hair, because some people tell me I can pull it off, marking me as mask. I lack the delicate features and high voice one might attribute to their idea of what androgyny is. I have makeup as a signifier, the black nails, black lipstick

2017 has been a terrible year on most fronts, however for heavy music it has actually been one of the strongest years for the genre. What stands out most about heavy music is just how many new bands rose to prominence, and how many bands were able to achieve both artistic and commercial success while staying true to their artistic integrity. It's a brave new era, and while I'm excited to see what 2018 brings, here we will be getting reacquainted with the best albums of 2017. 1: Counterparts: You're Not You Anymore "YANA AOTY" was a bit of a meme this year, but in the case of Counterparts, that is more than justified in my opinion. They've always been one of the most distinctive bands within their vein of melodic hardcore, blending together the roughness of the early '00s metalcore scene with intricate technicality, a really intuitive sense of melody threaded throughout the chaos, and a whole lot of passion. Despite losing a few members, they'