Friday Heavy: April 1, 2022

Cliff: What’s up, everybody. Welcome back to Friday. Heavy your guide to the world of abrasive and aggressive, loud music. Just loud, loud, loud music. And it’s brought to you by the folks behind tuned deg. So I’m cliff. Thank God. thanks Kyle. So every episode we cover three things. We cover a brand new release and why we think it will be worth a spin.

We cover one playlist that we’ve curated to explore a heavy sub genre or an artist or an idea. We’ve got another killer one today. And then we also cover one organization doing critical and culture impacting work in their community so that you can do something with all the energy that I should. Hope you have a, if your eyeballs are open from time to time at all, so let’s get into it, this week.

Kyle, why don’t you take it away? Tell us what. 

Kyle: We are talking about a guided tour through Khalif’s mind, palace, AKA immutable, the new album from it’s out today, April 1st, not an April fool’s joke, mistook his ninth album immutable on atomic fire. It was like almost hilariously either. They, they were where the bar was. And I was like, is there anything more compelling than my sugar to cover this week?

Nope. Let’s talk about my sugar and to be a little bit self-congratulatory, which I was, I’ve been very good about my whole life. Friday heavy is two for two so far on pics. If you’ll recall, we point you in the direction of a release before we’ve heard the whole thing, because we released the episode the same day as the new album and both NFM a month ago and soul glow two weeks ago, ended up being even better than we anticipated.

so not to pat ourselves on the back, but to pat heavy music on the back because the, those, if we’re at an every two week clip of albums of that quality. Then things are going pretty well. In having music, not on earth, there’s normally an inverse curve there. 

Cliff: Yeah. 

Kyle: cliff said before the episode, if we’re batting a thousand on this thing, and both at bats have been home runs, this is a blatant, intentional walk.

And that’s because you almost get option paralysis from the multitude of fantastical explanations of why my sugar is so important. Let’s use a quote from revolver just by way of. For the uninitiated, Michigan, aren’t like other bands. They’ve written some of the most complex unrelenting and terrifying songs in the history of metal they tour.

When they see fit, enter the studio on their own schedule and work only when they feel creative, their efforts haven’t been rewarded, great wealth, but their originality and savagery have inspired countless other groups, including count them, Deftones, Dillinger, escape, plan, a life once lost and has earned them an in-depth.

Architectonic analysis in the academic 

journal music theory spectrum in 2007. 

Cliff: that pronunciation dude 

on. 

Kyle: Architectonic 

sounds like a song by the ocean.

Cliff: You said it was a tour of my brain, but Deftones, Dillinger escape plan and a life once loss is a pretty good triangulation of yours too. 

Kyle: Yup. Yup. All of those bands are like me trying to make cliff type music. Like we try to do something far out and then we still wind up 

on sort of blues groove.

Cliff: That’s not a bad way to 

go.

Kyle: Yeah. 

Cliff: Yeah, that’s this is for sure. The tip of the iceberg, why it is worth checking out Mississauga, if you haven’t. If you do want to know how true that is I don’t know that the Tuneday cinematic universe is going to have tremendous crossover like this always going forward.

But you’re going to have,

over an hour of discussion coming up for you next Friday, on the regular tune dig podcast feed because we covered there 2008 release OBS and, uh, and you’ll, you’ll get the full, like Meshuggah gospel there. So if this is interesting to you, because you already like it or interesting to you, because you’re willing to hear a little bit more seriously, go over there and check out an entire conversation about it.

Cause today we just want you to make sure that you’re going to spin it. Now

that it’s coming out, this new release at least. And so for now, we’ll summarize that by just saying this band is quite literally like, as all this Kyle and me are, uh, as existing humans on this planet, as far as we know, based on linear time.

And if you love heavy music. like th There is something to be found in, Michigan for you, even if you don’t end up loving the band itself, there’s something for you to learn here and experiment with something that makes you think 

differently. 

Kyle: The thesis of next week’s whole episode is even in, especially if you don’t like having music, Misha is the band to open a new door in your brain about the way you think about music there. They’re just an interesting lens, musically 

period.

Cliff: 100%. We don’t well, we don’t normally care. I think too much, or won’t care too much about early reviews. And when people do get advances of the stuff, but I think it’s interesting to call.

out here that I read a few early reviews from folks who did get advanced copies. And it sounds like immutable is maybe going to have some range that the singles are not necessarily going to indicate to you, but we’ve still got plenty to work with.

from three singles, because three Misha singles is a 15 minute EAP by itself.

so walking through them real fast, the first single was the abysmal I, uh, and that dropped a while back and had a music video. Uh, We’re just going to show the latest two singles in this episode.

uh, after that was light, the shortening fuse, which you will now be treated to a, and if you’ve never heard my sugar, this is the moment where something is going to go very right or very wrong.

 

 

Cliff: And so that’s a pretty immediately recognizable, like 100% authentic brand name.

like Ms. Sugar products. Okay. what we do here that’s new about this is Maybe a new

production approach that potentially is going to make listening to this album a little bit more bearable on the whole.

It’s something we discuss a lot.

is that’s a tall order to listen to these albums all the way through 

sometimes. 

Kyle: And I do think abysmal lie is the most thing that you’re going to get of these three, for sure. Smart to release that one first, it’s got that intense double bass, like for the fans of bleed for the drum, cover people on YouTube and a really intense sort of TAPI solo. So very like thrash type Meshuggah then light the shortening fuse.

I texted you the week that single came out and I was like, I have had this one song. Pretty much all day. Cause it’s got that really cool swing and then it’s got an interesting bridge part where miss sugar would normally put the riff underneath and then do the sort of atonal jazz solo thing.

Yeah. So songs of the humpback whale. But they sort of take a different approach. Like they have written an entirely different bridge part and and it’s, it’s just like an unusual thing that they do there. they’re pushing for breadth where you would expect sort of a signature sugar thing in certain places.

Like the shortening fuse is one of the examples. Oh, okay. I’m into that. That, that feels an all feels totally natural. Like you don’t think about it until the fifth, sixth, seventh. Listen. Even if you’re a, a deeply 

initiated sugar listener,

Cliff: Absolutely. And then the latest single, you know, it, especially inside this format where we’re showing people 30 seconds of like a five or six or seven minutes, super complex song w what we have to offer you C is kind of what those first 30 seconds are going to show. So the latest single called.

Thirst kicks off with more of the like slow March groove that they’ve really been evolving towards as a band, Especially

in recent years. Um, so again, that’s the thing that’s going to make almost zero sense to you if you don’t love this band yet, but if you do everything I said, just clicks everything we just talked about just makes total, like you hear the risks, the kind of patterns start to slot in, and you can imagine not only what this is supposed to sound. like, but then to Kyle’s point.

You can start to hear the places where.

they’re very intentionally doing something different because it requires a little bit of commitment to get there with 

this 

band. 

 

Kyle: So there are two things for the uninitiated that might be interesting. And maybe you start with, I am that thirst if you’ve never listened to the span. Cause I wrote down. Up up, down, down left, left, right, right. AB AB whatever. Uh, the verse riff. And I am that thirst kind of sounds like if they tried to notate a riff with video game controls, like it just, it bins at weird angles and it’s not quite like anything else I’ve ever heard.

So that’s an interesting way to think about writing a riff. And then I don’t know that there are that many miss sugar breakdowns and towards the end of the song, it, it straight up does that. It does. Oh, hardcore slowdown thing. It sort of goes back to the tempo of the first part of the song, but it was like, oh, and I haven’t had a chance to even texts you about that yet.

But I finally made it all the way through that brand new single, and was like, this is different. I’m excited. So I’m like, I’m, carving out time in my weekend to listen 

to this full album sort of immediately.

Cliff: Absolutely. Yeah, it sounds like it’s going to be the theme a bit that they’re kind of bringing in other elements of metal. When my sugar is usually a band who specifically doesn’t show any cracks or edges towards anyone other than exactly what 

they’ve 

done. 

Kyle: And then in typical Swedish humor, they call it immutable, unable to change. I li I like, I love them. I just, the more you press in on this band, they become sort of impossible not to love. So nine, nine albums in more excited than 

I’ve ever been for any release from them

Cliff: Yup. And they love what they do and they care about it and they. Of time, and energy and love and effort into it. So it’s awesome. So check out, immutable out today on atomic fire. records, I just want to call out the atomic fire is from the.

founder of, of nuclear blast. There’s a really interesting story on all that but we love when new labels, especially new indie labels get spun up and bands can come over and release what they really want and have a focus on great physical products in merchant, all that.

So as we like to remind you go stream this thing, however you want. And then just go send the band of money through way more effective means than streaming it once or twice on a service. Okay. Go to shows, uh, Michelle is going on tour this year, for sure. We’re going to be 

there. 

Kyle: We will see you at the Atlanta show. If you 

Cliff: Yup. Go to shows by Merck or just send them money. Cause that’s always something worth considering. So that’s the new release and we nailed it. because there’s no way really not to nail that. But We got a good curated playlist this week, and honestly, I’m pretty jacked up about it. I mean, 

Kyle: So called this one, OBS infinity you, there’s no way to make a good playlist of bands that want to be . Cause that would just be a jet. And if that’s your deal then fine, whatever go. Just Google that there’s a Spotify playlist for that I’m sure. But my sugar isn’t equitable. So instead of recognizing imitators, we made a playlist to celebrate innovators.

So. I would describe this as other bands who also have been rifts in weird ways, all the way back into an aura, Boris of a sort of four, four groove. They’re all like Meshuggah and spirit. I E they’re singular. So you have a life once lost on here. You have the Deftones on here. You have bands that we could never find a way to.

Probably celebrate on tune, dig in a meaningful way, like coalesce or the handshake, murderers bands that go way deep for us, but are like sort of way way in a niche. This play lists rules. This is maybe my favorite one that we’ve made so far. I would have thought for sure, the punk one for soul glow would have been my favorite, but this is like, you can stay in sort of a transi groove with this whole thing.

The longer that 

you put it on. So enjoy.

Cliff: oh, I love everything here So much. 

So 

we also cover every episode, one organization and to check out, uh, we try to make sure that you got somewhere, all that.

time and thought and energy. Cause we want to encourage each other to actually do things about the things that matter to us and happen around because music is great.

But we are the people who are alive and have to actually do things to make life better for other people. Let’s talk this week about community bail funds. And we’re going to talk about.

them for two reasons. And I’m going to call it both of these reasons because they could be organizations that we cover in the future themselves.

They’re their own topic, but there are a couple of kind of concentric circles that are important to pay attention to here because they impact you, whoever you are right now, listening to if you are in America.

specifically, literally impacts you. If you’re around the world, it impacts you indirectly, but it still matters.

Now, first of all right now.

The city and state of New York specific politicians inside of them are making a lot of noise about bail reform. And the reason that,

noise is coming up is because key political figures who, who want something who want to do something need a real. That the current systems aren’t working or the current reforms aren’t working so they can you know, add police drones or something. So these figures want to blame bail reform and other reforms like that for the kind of ever exaggerated.

crime problem. Um, which, you know, w we could probably spend a while talking about that big air quotes, crime problem. But 

th 

the 

Kyle: Producers reminder it is an election year. There’s no depths to what’s. They will, stoop

Cliff: That’s right. Crime is always going up in an election year. but secondly, okay. bills are popping up in American state legislatures right now, that directly.

limit your ability to protest, um, in including one that’s in the state of Georgia right now, that looks like it’s probably going to kind of sail through on party lines.

The government, especially loves to put you in jail.

for protesting. Even though it is definitely the clearest. Transparently open, right? For every human being that exists inside of that system of government. And so we were losing our rights on top of that. And so we see that both of these have in common. is this underlying concept actually, of cash bail.

Having this big outsize impact on people cash. Bail is this kind of situation where lawfully innocent people can be indefinitely, until they can afford to pay the government some specific amount of money. and that’s always pretty arbitrary in the literal meaning of the sense based on wherever

you are, who you are, what the judge is and how they think about things.

And all of those laws are so different. And so opaque. And so there’s a lot to say about how terrible. The whole thing is, and it’s something that we should get rid of.

and we really can, and a lot of people have already figured out

how to do it and reforms are in fact working, but right now,

It’s not reformed in a lot of places right now.

It still does wrap people up in the system. Not 

only is the cash bail system ineffective, but it’s, it’s massively inflating the jail population in the U S and this is.

all related again, to kind of this Pretrial detention

idea where you have to pay to get out of jail before you’re actually proven guilty of anything that you’ve done in that that catches people up today.

Today, people are caught up in that cycle today. people are stuck in jail, because they can’t get out because of. Four to pay to get out and they need help today. So while we want to push for the changes that we want, we also have to acknowledge what’s happening now and figure out how to help people now.

So that’s where community bail funds come in. Uh, in one example, we want to give is the Bronx freedom fund because they’ve grown into an organization called the bail project and the project,

is a national nonprofit organization providing free bail assistance and pre-trial support to thousands of low income people every year.

And the bail project, is cool to highlight because they become nationwide They work in cities, across the us and partner with local.

organizations and public defender offices to identify people who are in need of that assistance And to then provide community based services,

and support upon release. If there is a way to do it, that is the way, find a way to get money to the right.

places, closer to the people who need it and into the community systems and services where people actually understand what’s necessary there. And So communities and cities often have their own local bail funds. So for me and Kyle those are the Atlanta solidarity. That’s the Georgia immigrant bond fund paying into these community bond funds means directly supporting the people who are caught up in this unjust system that we’re talking about.

And now it ties all the way,

back to your right to protest, which we brought up earlier because.

the immediate reflex of an intolerant government is it’s support you in jail for making noise. I mean, so quick, 

Many of us watched friends and family go to jail for protesting and specifically for protesting police brutality, which was just a layer of infuriating irony.

Uh, that was those really difficult to handle. And so you, as a lawful protester are immediately caught up in the cash bail system and that cash bail system ends up working as a means to suppress your. to speak out because as soon as you’re caught up in and I can promise you, you’re not going to want to go through it again.

So this really matters. It matters to change in the long-term and it matters

to support people now. so you can learn more about the bail [email protected] and consider making a donation to them, or your local community.

bond fund, because your money will make a real difference in somebody’s life.

Like a real literal, actual, meaningful one today. 

Kyle: was so hesitant about trying to work in that last section, like trying to tie a quote unquote heavy issue, but now that we’ve done a handful of them, I get more appreciative about your passion and clarity of thought around it each time. and I, I hope. That we can encourage you to pause and just give thanks for the gift of music and pay a little bit forward with the spirit and the energy that music has given you.

So just thanks, man. I’d like, I enjoy this exercise. It’s a quick get in, get out every other week. 

And I’m glad for this thing that we’re doing together,

Cliff: Absolutely. And I hope it’s helpful to other people.

and we’re open to feedback about it, but I mean, I’d encourage everyone, especially like the same way that we encourage you to think about bands as someone that you can just give some money to. It doesn’t have to be a ton. don’t have to be wealthy.

You don’t have to do it monthly. If you can spare some money for someone who’s done something for you. Give him the money. And so in this case, like we can highlight a nonprofit. And for me, it’s become a little bit easier to just say, you know what? I just learned about them. I may not be able to give them a thousand dollars every week or something like that, but I’m going to give you what I can today.

Cause I thought about you and I saw what you did, you know, and if more of us do that we can make some real 

impacts. 

Kyle: Thanks punk rock 

for teaching us how to use our energy. 

Cliff: Hell yeah. Community all the way, baby. All right. This has been Friday heavy. We’ll see you in a couple of. 

Kyle: Peace.  

Cliff: Go to tunedig.com or follow us on Instagram and Twitter for links to the new release, the playlist and the organization that we talked about today.