So it's been about two weeks since I've had a stable internet connection anywhere between traveling and people whose internet I leech off of moving so I haven't been very connected to the interweb as of late. I'm at a coffee shop right now, however, like a real tried-and-true blogger, enjoying a muffin, and rocking out to Ganon's "As Above, So Below.

First off, COOL band name.

I'm going to take a brief detour here to explain how dorky I was as a kid.

I'm currently doing the conferencing, working, and visiting thing in Seattle, which is very cool, but also has been tiring and not left me with time or inclination to update.

That, and I haven't really had internet access, so that kind of prevents the whole update thing.

But now I'm sitting in a cafe that specializes in chai listening to an electronic duo who is currently mixing up some hip-hop and Godspeed You! Black Emperor with limited success (Seattle seems a bit hippie to my Chicago eyes...) and I wanted to give a field update.

So I just got home from a sweet show featuring Chicago stalwarts Indian, Psilocin, the sweet new band with some of the guys from Raise the Red Lantern, and the mighty Deadbird, so I thought this would be a good time to add a review of their show/record to my little series here.

In the middle of this series on heavy music, no less, it has been brought to my attention that Kris from the Angelic Process has passed away, according to their MySpace page.

Okay... now I realize that given that they're a doom band, Esoteric don't quite fit into what I'm trying to do with this series, but I want to review them anyway, because,

a) I'm SUPER stoked on this record, and
b) I really think they're pushing the boundaries of this kind of music, which I appreciate.

They could, perhaps, reasonably be considered a "type 1" heavy band in my ecology, but fuck it... I digress.

Today I'm taking a look at Three Steps to the Ocean's self titled EP. Three steps to the Ocean are the exact kind of band I want to highlight with this summer series I'm doing. They're the kind of band that, despite being pretty good, won't get a lot of love from a lot of people who review records. Why? Because they fit into that whole "there are too many bands that sound like this" narrative.

ToMyDeepestEgo are an Italian instru-metal band on Subsound Records, the label who sent us the pleasant surprise Deflore, and KNVBI Records, who has given us a bunch of good stuff. ToMyDeepestEgo is another pleasant surprise, and they're going to be the first review in my summer series on heavy bands you should check out.

Given that I'm doing this series on heavy music this summer I thought it might be useful to explain what I'm talking about, given that there's not really a good genre name for it. I've seen the kind of music I'm talking about called post-rock (good term, used to the point where it has no meaning), post-metal (but how can you call a band that's STILL metal "post-metal"?), and "avant-garde metal" (I'm not even going to touch that one) so there's obviously some disagreement on what, exactly, we're talking about.

I've been out of town for about a week but now, resulting in the lack of new stuff up here, but I'm back with a vengeance and ready to tackle my summer project for the site: a series on awesome, new, heavy music.

This has come about because I can't help but notice that a lot of internet music "critics" (for lack of a better term) like to talk shit about heavy bands. The narrative which is most often invoked is something along the lines of "oh look, another slow, heavy band, just like Neurosis and Isis. There's too many bands like this now, therefore, this record sucks."

I was pretty into Dark Empire's debut EP "Distant Tides," so I've been pretty psyched about hearing this CD. I like their combination of different flavors of traditional metal to create something which I tend to think is pretty fun.