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.
I’ve been engaged on this column for 3 years as of this month after Langdon prolonged a proposal to me to affix them, noting my insistence to not “depart them alone” as “an indication of a persistence in a single’s work ethic.” In that point, I’ve solely develop into extra distanced from the general form of mainstream metallic. It largely options two camps; the headlining class of yesteryear’s metallic acts and the “-core” periphery, an deliberately amorphous time period referring to the descendants of metalcore that dominate streaming platforms. In 2025, inside a two-month timeframe, each events could have skilled a definitive occasion. Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath’s retirement gig will happen on July fifth, and earlier this month, Sleep Token went quantity No. 1 on the Billboard charts with Even in Arcadia.
I don’t suppose Sabbath retiring mere months after Sleep Token asserted streaming supremacy is an indication of metallic’s decline any greater than it’s a humorous coincidence, however what’s attention-grabbing is that they symbolize a special actuality than the one usually present in underground metallic. Doug Moore (whose newly launched report you’ll examine under) identified it on Bluesky, writing, “A lot of up to date metallic tradition is folks being nostalgic for shit they didn’t reside via within the first place.” As broad as his phrases are, and as a lot as nuance dies underneath any character restrict, he’s appropriate, when you acknowledge that the phrase that’s lifting 95% of the assertion’s weight is “nostalgic.” That’s what kills innovation.
Nostalgia implies pining for the pleasures of a particular time with out contemplating its thorns. It’s revisionism. And, as somebody who routinely forages via Steel-Archives for brand spanking new releases, too many bands revise by choosing their favourite features from sure eras and calling it a day. It’s what offers rise to groove metallic bands that sound like 5 Finger Loss of life Punch employed an Exhorder roadie as a songwriter, or how a band can name themselves “avant-garde loss of life metallic” however sound like P.O.D. It’s taking a look at singular features of a piece and plucking them with no framework by which they’ll thrive. The concepts are there, they usually could also be nicely executed, however a lot of it seems like upholding a relic somewhat than digging deeper into its sinews, placing it in a brand new gentle, embellishing it with new ideas, or, hell, throwing in some blast beats.
And I’m not so dense to see that we’ve lined albums that don’t inch a style ahead however as a substitute execute their premises extraordinarily nicely. That is the place the excellence between nostalgia versus reverence arises. It’s minor in scale however crucial in follow. It’s in the best way the artist dictates the shape somewhat than the opposite approach round, in that the traits of a revived fashion should bend to the talents of the musician somewhat than the musician arching their again to limbo underneath a style’s stringent guidelines. Most good OSDM bands, like early Tomb Mould, understood this, and it’s why they succeeded past simply providing you with a touch of the nice ol’ days. They made music that roughly match that mildew and added passages and deviations that weren’t being made in loss of life metallic’s old-school heyday.
What’s ironic about all this pontificating is that, for probably the most half, Could’s greatest metallic albums haven’t merely been exemplary executions of a framework. Drouth’s The Tooth of Time would be the exception, but it surely’s not trying backwards a lot as it’s sharpening melodic black metallic. As a substitute, Could has celebrated thought-provoking and forward-thinking releases that exist with out the pretense of “pushing their style ahead.” They state their instances on particular person ranges, moreso exploring terrains that you just surprise why extra artists don’t additionally enterprise into. It’s a much less horny however extra sustainable type of progress, the type that in the end results in tangible outcomes.
— Colin Dempsey