Mining Steel is a month-to-month column from Heavy Consequence contributing writers Langdon Hickman and Colin Dempsey. The main focus is on noteworthy new music rising from the non-mainstream metallic scene, highlighting releases from small and impartial labels — and even releases from unsigned acts.
Chris Jericho is just not in anybody’s good graces in 2024. He’s 53 years previous, a recently-dethroned FTW Champion in AEW, has been embroiled in allegations for sketchy habits, and acquired chants like “Go Away Jericho” from followers at reside reveals. That’s all from an expert wrestling standpoint. An equally important a part of his life is Fozzy. In contrast to Jericho, who’s rightfully touted as one of many biggest and most adaptable skilled wrestlers of all time, Fozzy are finest described as only a onerous rock band. Jericho has all the time had a greater thoughts for professional wrestling than music, with Fozzy sounding like hype package deal fodder. Even when he had no prior engagement with professional wrestling, it’d nonetheless make sense for songs like “Martyr No Extra,” “Judas,” and “Painless” to function the official theme songs for WWE pay-per-views primarily based on their vibe alone.
Jericho writes music the identical approach that he wrestles. He needs you to put money into the motion, characters, and narrative. He ought to’ve observed this by now, however wrestling is just not music. Wrestling needs to be bombastic and even its subtleties must be surface-level as a result of they’re performing to arenas (hopefully) stuffed to the nosebleeds. The intricate particulars aren’t seen to individuals sitting within the a hundredth row, so wrestling makes use of huge facial expressions, huge bodily actions, and massive impacts to promote their story. It’s a holdover from wrestling’s pre-television days that retains its allure and id, even when it’s often overzealous. Why do wrestlers take so lengthy to rise up after a transfer? Why do they crawl so slowly to their tag group companion? Why do they all the time taunt after they may pin their opponent? As a result of it’s not about them — it’s concerning the viewers’s funding in them, and to achieve that funding, you should pander to them.
Music is completely different. You’ll be able to simply take heed to or play music. Audiences assist, however they’re not important in the identical approach they’re with wrestling. Return and watch any WWE or AEW match from the COVID lockdown when no audiences had been current and it’ll really feel like a moist, goofy fart. Jericho has not taken this to coronary heart, and as such, Fozzy performs as if they should get a response out of you. Mix this with their curdled milk strategy to onerous rock, an unsavory pastiche of ‘80s area rock and unhealthy sensibilities, and it comes off as corny.
Given all of this, it’s unbelievable that not solely do Fozzy have a fantastic tune, however that it’s their 13-minute progressive rock opus, “Wormwood.” It retells the story of the titular star crashing into the earth, poisoning a 3rd of the planet’s water, and thus killing a 3rd of all people. It’s not one thing Fozzy may simply slot into their model in the identical approach that they might chants about how they “be coming.” You would stretch “Wormwood” right into a metaphor about relationships or somebody stabbing you within the again, however Fozzy advised the story straight. They noticed it wouldn’t neatly match the confines of a five-minute onerous rock piece, in order that they pushed themselves to develop a framework that would maintain the story.
Correctly, Fozzy convey the whole thing of the Wormwood story and work in service of it, giving every part its personal weight. That construction guides them and is a greater high quality filter than Jericho ever was. There’s a foreboding, backmasked spoken phrase intro and an earned, satisfying closing stretch. These riffs are each a number of the finest Fozzy have ever recorded and thematically essential to convey the load of the scenario, which is the load of a star crashing into the earth. Even the goofy growled vocals and the characteristic by Lord Nelson as “The Revelator” succeed as an eerie spiritual sermon. The organs add to that, although they’re performed modestly reasonably than shoved to the forefront.
There’s no extra modest part of “Wormwood” than Jericho himself, who’s concurrently Fozzy’s most essential member and its weakest hyperlink as a result of he’s not a fantastic singer. His voice simply isn’t as highly effective as he imagines it to be, and thus, it comes off as skinny. On “Wormwood,” he not often reaches his outer limits, as a substitute working inside a throatier and extra pure timbre. For these acquainted with his work contained in the ring, it’s nearer to his 2008 character function wherein he traded rock and roll hollering for reservation. He’s additionally not the point of interest of “Wormwood.” The highlight is best located on the tune reasonably than the performers right here.
“Wormwood” has held up higher than something off of Chasing the Grail, maybe as a result of it’s a weight-reduction plan model of progressive rock from 30 years earlier than its launch and thus not tied to any purported “cool” aesthetics like most of Fozzy’s shtick. It’s many issues that Fozzy isn’t; atmospheric, fascinating, and rewarding. Had Fozzy adopted this route, it’s unlikely they might’ve scored options from M. Shadows or graced the Cobra Kai soundtrack. It’s onerous to extrapolate what would’ve occurred to them as a result of “Wormwood” is untapped potential, a imaginative and prescient of Jericho’s nice thoughts efficiently adapting to a brand new medium, reinventing himself as he’s performed a number of occasions all through his tenure in skilled wrestling. Maybe that’s why Fozzy by no means made one other monitor prefer it once more — it’s the least “Jericho” factor Jericho has ever performed.
– Colin Dempsey
Evilyn – Mondestrunken
Ever since I heard Gorguts and Demilich, I’ve been obsessive about demise metallic that feels really alien. It has ruined my once-fervent and life-shaping love of science fiction, tilting me towards a fanged noumenal psychedelia, the type that feels prefer it rots inside your mind. So it’s not a shock to me that this report known as to me most of all of the demise metallic that got here out this month (even nudging out tight competitors from Fulci, who dropped one other very sturdy report price your consideration). This isn’t technical and progressive in a way of limitless noodling however as a substitute, like their contemporaries in Diskord or Nithing, as a way of making a soundscape that feels inhuman, unusual, bewildering. It’s like being misplaced in a shifting nightmare, the place partitions flip to glowering faces and you can not discover the door. That is what I need from demise metallic. Purchase it on Bandcamp. – Langdon Hickman
Föhn – Condescending
An ideal hazard of listening to a lot music over so lengthy a span is that sense of dilution. What as soon as was heavy begins to really feel trite and passé; what as soon as was thrilling bores you to tears. Oh, the miseries of immortality! This album sits like a stone in my stomach. The saxophone and avant-garde compositions feels extra foreboding and threatening than most black metallic I’ve heard this yr, rimmed with a way of despair that’s deeper than most doom I’ve heard too. An excessive amount of heavy metallic makes an attempt to easily be a style train. Condescending is riven with feeling. It feels much less like Föhn got down to make a funeral doom report as a lot as they got down to produce sure feelings and pictures and wielded the instruments they wanted to take action. Is that this simply my despair speaking? However what higher emotion is there from which to guage doom? Purchase it on Bandcamp. – Langdon Hickman