Biography from Last.fm
Will Haven is a sludge / noise metal band from Sacramento, CA, USA that formed in 1995. The band was formed from members of Sock, a band that was formed with Shaun Lopez of Far, and is named after a fictional, self created character. Will Haven's debut self-titled seven-track EP was released in 1996 to positive reviews. A year later the quartet was signed to Revelation. Singer Grady Avenell guested on two Far tracks - 9 Miles, and a cover of Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas Time? with Chino Moreno of Deftones. Read more on Last.fm
Look, we bloody love Christmas. If you’re not on board with that, then it’s probably a good idea to stop reading now.
For those of you who are left, you’ve probably noticed that over the past week we’ve been posting daily videos on Facebook and Twitter of some of our favourite Christmas-themed songs. And we’re going to keep doing it right up until Christmas Eve. We’re only going and doing a whole bloody Advent Calendar, aren’t we!
As much as we like our role as a mouthy internet wordspout, we like it when bands we love put out podcasts of their members just shooting their mouths off at each other. It’s ultimately the purist way of hearing what really goes on inside bands – you get to hear the band talking with themselves without the filter of a journalist getting involved, and without bands putting themselves on their best behaviour because they’ve had some media training and a PR person is standing behind them to make sure they don’t say something terrible.
That’s why we’re enjoying Will Haven‘s new WHVN Podcast so much.
It’s December. It’s Christmas. So for this week’s Midweek Bootleg we’re getting all festive with curious cover c/o Far and a couple of their pals from Deftones and Will Haven.
Yeah, we’re those annoying pricks who get really, really, REALLY into Christmas. We’re the pricks who insist on organising the office Secret Santa. We’re the ones drinking nothing but eggnog and mulled wine for the next five weeks. We’re the ones posting weird Christmas cover songs in our (mostly) weekly Midweek Bootleg feature. Yep, we are those guys.
It’s a short and (not so) sweet podcast from Raz and Hugh this week, looking at some last minute controversies surrounding Hevy Festival, the consequences of British metal bands moving to major labels, and what the impact will be of Terror deciding to boycott the Czech Republic on their forthcoming European tour in support of Randy Blythe. We might’ve been too busy being drunk and watching the Olympics this last week to prattle on for as long as usual, but that doesn’t stop it degenerating into a discussion regarding the quality of a naked arse pinned to the wall of Raz’s office. What on Earth does that mean? We guess you’re going to have to download the podcast to find out.
The Thrash Hits Podcast 008: Small But Perfectly Formed
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We were half tempted to make a sports-themed Slaylist this week – what with the Olympics kicking off in our home city of London and all that – but then we realised that other than ‘Running Free’ and a handful of other tracks, we’d really be scraping the barrel when it came to coming up with valid tracks for it. So instead we fell back on an old favourite: the festival Slaylist. Given that Hevy Festival 2012 is a mere five days away, it was the obvious candidate.
It’s probably a good thing that the new Will Haven album came out on a Friday night. While technically it’s isn’t NSFW, if you watch it over the weekend, you’ll be able to dodge having to explain to your co-workers (and more importantly, your boss) why you’re watching a video of blood-smeared men stalking and being stalked by animal-masked strangers in a forest.
Hevy Festival has announced its first fifteen bands for 2012 – they are Converge, Will Haven, Protest The Hero, Deaf Havana, Verse, The Chariot, A Wilhelm Scream, Deez Nuts, Set Your Goals, Trapped Under Ice, Pianos Become The Teeth, Balance and Composure, Sharks, Last Witness, and Crocus. Sweeeeeeet.
I’ve spent 2011 harping on about one band: Trap Them. It’s unlikely you could have had a conversation with me about music without me saying “Darker” and “Handcraft” at some point. I may have just spoilt the incredible fun of reading my list. Anyway… the other nine albums on this list are wicked as well. Buy them all.
Raz
When we wrote the intro to our Deputy Editor’s Top 10 Records last year, we joked that he’s a surly so-and-so who doesn’t like anything and enjoys nothing. This isn’t true. This year, for example, he took a worrying amount of pleasure from the torrent of abuse levelled at him by fans of Five Finger Death Punch. He also liked far, far more records than our strict album-of-the-year voting rules would allow, but after much deliberation he narrowed them down to this – his Top 10 Records of 2011.
The votes are in, the arguments have been settled, and the fights concluded without too much bloodshed – The Thrash Hits Top 20 Albums of 2011 list is here. We polled all of our writers, photographers, and contributors as to what their favourite records of the year have been, and through a series of complex mathematical formulae, we’ve calculated the 20 albums that have come out on top.