Friday Heavy: June 24, 2022

Cliff: Welcome to Friday heavy your guide to the world of aggressive and abrasive and loud, loud, loud music brought to you by the two people behind tune dig. I’m cliff.

Kyle: And I’m Kyle, each episode, we cover three things. for those of you who are just joining us for the first time, first one brand new release in the world of all things heavy and weird, and why we think it’ll be worth a spin. Secondly, probably my favorite part EV every time, cuz it’s an excuse to put a playlist in the world.

one playlist we’ve curated to explore a heavy sub-genre or artist or scene. And we got a banger for you today. And third, and certainly most importantly, one organization doing critical culture impacting work in their community, cuz after all that’s what punk rock is all about. So cliff let’s get into it.

What is our release of the wheat?

Cliff: Whew. we are comfortably back in minimally accessible territory. Uh, it feels like home. Uh, one of those fine moments where you get to be intentionally obtuse and weird to everybody and tell them about a band that you know, that nine out of 10 people are not gonna love, but the one outta 10 are about to slam on this and it’s gonna be awesome.

Kyle: Like play it with the windows down. When you pull up at Walgreens and scare all the people, getting their prescriptions.

Cliff: yep. Just sitting in traffic on Ponce and scaring. The people who drove in from Dunwoody, this week’s feature new release is heaven is here by the band candy. This is their debut record on relapse. And, uh, we are extremely here for this band getting the support of a bigger

Kyle: Yeah. Hell yeah.

Cliff: Yeah. Cuz it . This is noise punk, chaos that has a love for death metal and goes.

Virtually every direction at once, which you’ll see from from 60 seconds of singles alone much less what we anticipate from this album being released. And so this band is still on a tear they’re young. They just came out with their debut LP in the last few years, but let’s take a quote from Candy’s band camp bio, just to give you an idea of how this band, self co conceptualize.

Kyle: As a professional copywriter, these are always fun. Most of like almost unequivocally. I hate it. When people get paid to write about bands, cuz it’s bad and the harder they try to make it good. It’s bad. So without further ado, let’s hear from candy,

Cliff: it’s usually just the basis who within the last two days has Googled. How do I write in the third person?

Kyle: got the furthest in their core curriculum of college classes before they dropped out, they took the most English classes.

Cliff: Yeah, you can throw a rock and hit a band full of English majors. So I’m sure somebody can figure it out. so from this bio they say heaven is here, puts together so many disparate elements with the confidence and care to graft their relativities together. Under what sounds like extreme Dures. That was one sentence, second sentence candy, specifically strives to replicate moments of impact and anxiety, obsessive compulsive thinking, and extreme cynicism, aiming to provide the listener with an oral journey that allows for an outlet for these overwhelming feelings, um, at once.

What and why. And then also that’s really not a bad description.

Kyle: I know I want to be mad at it, but they’re like, do you feel this way? Here’s the answer. Play it extremely loud.

Cliff: I do, I do feel that way. And going back to their debut record from 2018, called good to feel that also pulled no punches and got them some credibility early. Which, leads to them doing their second

Kyle: I, I started playing that record on Spotify specifically because of the album title, because the album cover is so insane looking and I was like having such cognitive dissonance and then you launch into the title track of that record and immediately you’re rewarded. It’s great. if you want to, you could maybe even start with good to feel before heaven is here.

Cliff: Yeah. It’s nine songs in under 18 minutes. And

it’s

it.

Kyle: to speed quick.

Cliff: And but even worse than your usual punk or grind record, that’s under 20 minutes inside of that span. You’re gonna navigate noise and grind and DBE and hardcore and a bunch of other stuff really quickly. Like if you skipped through the album, you’d hit a trap, them riff, then code orange and one of their weird interludes, 30 seconds later, then back to a power trip course.

Kyle: you couldn’t be blamed for thinking you maybe accidentally stumbled onto like a comp record. I mean that in a hugely complimentary way.

Cliff: So, without further ado, let’s just let’s play these singles, cuz they’re gonna quickly illuminate what or we have Sadly tried to approach verbally here. They’ve released three single so far. We’re gonna sample two of them here. First up we’re gonna play human condition above human opinion, and we’re gonna hop in 25 seconds in because well, the first 30 seconds would literally just be noise.

we want you to be able to, to touch on the tunes a bit.

Cliff: Okay, you’re welcome. So next is transcend to wet, which will basically attack you from the moment that we hit play. There’s no reason to drag this out.

Kyle: You know, it’s become a bit of a motif when we cover younger bands on the podcast that there’s some deliberate and aggressive genre pushing or outright genre rejection at play. And hopefully you’ve heard just now that’s definitely Candy’s Mo and that’s one of the really exciting things I would implore anybody who’ stumbled across this podcast and is, you know, a little older and grumpy and Beat up physically from all those years in the pit.

If you’re in a place where you feel like maybe things aren’t as good as they used to be musically, I would. Strongly implore you. And I think I speak for both of us when I say things are in about as good, a place in heavy music as they’ve possibly ever been. It’s because of bands like candy pushing the boundaries and going places that we’ve never been before.

It’s very exciting. And bands like candy are the reason that we started an offshoot devoted to heavy music, cuz it’s a real good time. it’s a real good time and otherwise bad time. You know what I mean?

Cliff: Totally. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Boundary pushers, like to me, what come to mind as well are bands like carbo pushing boundaries in like technical metal, and just kind of creating this, constellation of, people pushing in really weird directions, even, uh, fond limbs. Like their last record that came out was just kind of art ,

Kyle: Yeah.

Cliff: caught everything off guard.

Kyle: or like chat pile where you don’t, you, straight up don’t know what you’re listening to, which it’s such a thrilling feeling to be all these years and hours of. Enjoyment. And, um, so thank you to candy. Heaven is here is out today on relapse. go listen to it however you want. Uh, and then send this band, your money through shows.

They’re they’re doing some hell some touring over the summer and fall. They’re gonna do a short headline run, and then they’re gonna link up with vein FM whose incredible new record. Speaking of genre pushers, we covered an earlier episode. So we’re gonna be lucky enough. To see ’em twice over the next few months, which is awesome.

So go see him at shows, pick up some merch or DM them, say, what’s your Venmo, can we direct donate to

Cliff: All right. So definitely play that. And then I pretty much guarantee this playlist is about to kick a ton of ass, uh, without really even trying Kyle, you told me that one thing that kind of tipped you off in a direction for this one was that candy kind of feels different. Uh, like it just quite literally, it kind of hits different.

And so you wanted to kind of differentiate the playlist that way. What’d you end up coming.

Kyle: Yeah. You know, there’s something kind of below the surface that makes him smarter than your average bear. I read an interview like I, I was rewarded on the first page of search results with this band. I, read an interview with, uh, their guitarist Michael quick, who apparently is nickname cheddar. Um, which cool, uh, about his love of Brit pop and specifically creation records, which is home to bands like primal scream, Jesus and Mary chain and

Cliff: Two

Kyle: yes.

Oasis. Yeah.

So the, I should have called this playlist anyway, anyway, here’s wonder wall. but that, interview reinforced how artists and heavy music tend to have much broader influences than fans. Of heavy music. And that’s one of the ways that you can start to differentiate one, a cool heavy music fan, but also a cool kind of cut above heavy band, cuz they’re not just drawing from like an inward facing insular type of scene.

Then in another interview with a revolver, they’re a vocalist that queer said of their approach to punk. I thought this was really interesting for the most part. Hardcore has been based off the same four or five bands for 30 years. People were regurgitating the same four songs that youth of today played in the eighties gets pretty old.

Don’t get me wrong. I love youth of today, but I wanna play music. That’s interesting to people who might love youth of today and might also love my bloody Valentine or the stone roses. I think that’s hard to do with the hardcore scene, but we try to do it cuz that’s the shit we like, like there’s no more punk attitude than yeah.

We’re just gonna do exactly what we want. He also said. Uh, when you know, pressing on hardcore a little more, everything goes back to the Crow mags. They were one of the first old hardcore bands. Anyone showed me. I hope people can tell we have some Crow mags influence. I mean, you can’t talk about hardcore without ’em, which is

it’s. Yeah. Sick. cheddar also mentions like a huge primal scream, influence and, and talks extensively in that interview about them. And he talks about how he first heard a primal scream song in a Tony Hawk, pro skater. Game. so I think that’s good con all that’s good contact setting for this playlist, which is basically the goal was just to cut a wide enough S SWAT to make you the coolest kid at the skate park or the scariest kid at the house party.

Um, so there’s some really gnarly shit. On here there’s some old converge, which, you know, we don’t venture into as much, but we just saw them play locus, rain live. And it was, top of mind. there’s some cold cave on here. I can’t believe that I’m getting to put a stone roses song in one of these playlists, and straight up put, uh, Cheddar’s what he self described as his favorite Oasis song on there. There’s a lot of stuff that falls in the range of like, it’s not quite grunge, it’s not quite postpone. It’s not quite shoe gaze. It’s just weird, like kind of gnarly, almost buzz saw. It’s like, uh, if Andy Warhol got an Hm, two, a lot of, a lot of bands like that, there’s a, cows cover that cursed does on here.

Maybe it’s not cows, but it’s one of those, one word bands like that. and then There’s a burning spirits era, Japanese hardcore song on here. So again, this is a playlist that you can just take and absorb, and it’s a good past present and future of like weird. Indescribable uncategorizable stuff that just refuses to be pigeonholed. If you get a shirt from any one of these bands, uh, somebody somebody’s gonna be like, damn that person’s cool.

Cliff: Heck. Yeah. Sorry, I can’t get it outta my head that you still could have made the Oasis connection by doing wonder

Kyle: Well, I’m, I’m changing the playlist name to that right

Cliff: talk about . Let’s talk.

Kyle: As we speak during the recording.

Cliff: so let’s talk about in organization, doing impactful work in their community. As usual, we want to try to take the reality that we’re in and specifically the context of, uh, American and usually Southern politics and use that as a lens to see our communities and, and.

Actually happening and what can actually be done. Sometimes we’ve gotta take, uh, a couple of steps back in order to show how you can get involved and make something happen. So real quickly, we actually want to talk about. On school boards so there is a recent article called quote school boards are becoming the fiercest Battlefront for culture wars.

And while both sizing this shit by calling it culture wars is just like E editorially unacceptable. Um, the underlying premise of all of this is still really critical, nonetheless. Okay. School boards are worth focusing on right now in your community where you live, whether or not you have kids in the public school system.

I don’t. Okay. And so do a lot of other people or who listen to this podcast, right? You may never plan to have kids in a public school system. You still need to pay attention. Cause what’s happening is, and the reason we cite an article, so it’s not just like raw conjecture religious fascists are, are using them as a mechanism to attack an endanger LGBTQ plus youth and their families.

And they’re also, you know, doing that. Fuck shit. You’re aware of where they’re intentionally deploying terms like critical race theory incorrectly. To suppress history and, and threaten minorities in families. Okay. So, uh, just a quick quote from this article to talk about why it’s important in this moment to pay a little bit of attention.

And then we’re gonna show you an example of, some people powered solutions. Okay. So a quote from this article, While there’s nothing new about culture wars bleeding into local politics in schools, experts say this time is different due to coordinated campaigns, fueling these debates and the deeply partisan divide that has emerged on both sides.

And the fights also come at a time when the institution of public education itself struggles to navigate a post COVID world, right. Where a lot of stuff is going on in, and no one handled it well. one more quote, the, the level of coordination and the financing from outside groups, as well as the use of social media to spread a very consistent message is what makes this particular moment so different.

Yes, one answer to this is definitely to consider running for your local school board. And like, we want to encourage you to do so. if that catches your attention, you can work with an organization, like run for something to move in that direction if you want. Uh, but we really wanted to highlight another way to do it, cuz not everyone feels like that’s the way that they can contribute.

And another way that you can though is community based parent organizations. Uh, and so we wanna talk about one in particular and show the impact that they’ve.

Kyle: Yeah. The one that we wanna highlight is round rock black parents association, who describe themselves as a community engagement, empowerment network that unifies mobilizes and uplifts black parents, students, educators, and stakeholders. Cliff found out about this organization through their story of fighting book bands at school libraries in their community.

A story that neither of us can believe is a real thing happening in

the 2020s. Yeah. the organization successfully organized and petitioned their board to keep, uh, some books in question for the good of everyone. So we want to encourage you to read more about round rock black parents association.

Round rock black parents.org. you can learn more about their successes and their struggles and use it to understand how to advocate for youth in your community. Like we’ve said on so many episodes before, uh, there is probably a local equivalent in your community round rock is just is an exemplary example to point to.

and like cliff said, even if you don’t have kids yourself, they are a part of your community and you of theirs. Uh, remember that what happens in schools and what happens to public services for kids, both of them have a direct impact on you and on people that you care about in your community. So consider how you can get involved in creating a better future.

Cliff: And this is even one of those where if the organization doesn’t exist in your community yet, because it’s so hyper local, this is a good example of where you can just see that there, like there is power in organization. Literally go find other people who care about it. Start meeting together. Call yourself something, and then present what you want as a group, use the power of organization and the power of your voices together to make the change you want.

And I just found their story to be so inspirational in the sense of like, it was just an of course thing for them. Of course, we’ve gotta get together and solve this. And then they successfully did without a ton of organization funding or anything like that. So be encouraged to use this mechanism and technique to get your voice into your community and make change as well.

Kyle: All power to the people.

Cliff: Heck. Yeah, this has been Friday heavy. We’ll be back in two weeks.

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.