"I’ve seen women headlining heavy music festivals. Media coverage is better. There’s more visibility and influence." - Emma Ruth Rundle says in a Consequence interview about women in heavy music. "You have really incredible artists who have crashed down these walls. I was just featured in a guitar magazine, and Ani DiFranco was on the cover, and that magazine when I was a kid would have been full of half-dressed women. There was a huge shift in the past few years. Watching artists like Chelsea Wolfe pushing the boundaries of what heavy music is and owning it, I feel a respect and sense of place that I didn’t feel when I was in my 20s".

Mikau release an interesting metal/hyper-pop song, or as they describe it - mallcore 'At The Edge of Fading Consciousness'; Irish singer/rapper Denise Chaila flaunts an impressive flow in 'Anseo'; hardcore band Stick To Your Guns share an acoustic version of their song 'Amber'; Chelsea Wolfe & Emma Ruth Rundle are on the verge of bursting in 'Anhedonia'.

Billie Eilish and Rosalía release their dramatic pop ballad 'Lo Vas a Olvidar'; Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou follow their last year's debut collaboration with a new EP - 'Orphan Limbs' is the stand-out track from it; Forhist of Blut Aus Nord shares a sympho/black-metal song 'II'; Vast Aire of Cannibal Ox bites hard on 'Good Fuel'; NYC rapper Marlon Craft releases a melancholic albeit determined political song 'State of the Union'.

Space-jazz masters The Comet Is Coming released their hybrid new single 'Imminent' featuring MC Joshua Idehen; Thou & Emma Ruth Rundle released a mighty cover of Cranberries' 'Hollywood'; screamo boys For Your Health released 'Birthday Candles in the Effigy' with a ballerina dancing to it in a sinister video; Burial, Four Tet, and Thom Yorke collaborated on two new moody songs 'Her Revolution' and 'His Rope'.

"An absorbing modern shoegaze classic" - Louder writes in review of 'The Great Dismal', adding the new Nothing record is "an intense and unflinching album which embraces life’s chaotic absurdity and weighs heavily long after its final riffs fade to black". Dark singer/songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle and crushingly heavy sludge metal band Thou "feed off each other in a way where they create something none of them could have done on their own" - Brooklyn Vegan writes about their collaborative new album 'May Our Chambers Be Full'.

Pine Barons released a catchy indie rock 'Sputter'; RZA and Ghostface Killah are in classic Wu-Tang mood with 'Fighting for Equality'; some big careers started off with covers - new hardcore strength Gulch might be on that same path with 'Sin in my Heart'; Open Mike Eagle went groovy-jazzy in 'Bucciarati'; Thou and Emma Ruth Rundle released melodic doom goth 'Ancestral Recall'; Mina Tindle, Kate Stables, Emma Broughton, Melissa Laveaux re-sang Nina Simone's '22nd Century'; Carcass are back with a metal banger 'The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue', their first new song in 7 years.

Emma Ruth Rundle leads a mighty pack - Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher, YOB’s Aaron Rieseberg, and Old Man Gloom’s Santos Montano - covering Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill', a strange, serious-funny song; Jack Colwell's 'Conversion Therapy' is a dramatic pop song with a strong message; 'Lovers Fool' is a smooth jazzy rap from Osquello self-produced debut album; Bent Arcana is a supergroup featuring members of Oh Sees, TV on the Radio and others - their first single 'The Gate' goes into prog, kraut-rock, experimental ambient music; Travis were a late Brit-pop band, they still do what they did, but hey, 'A Ghost' is a good song.