Metal Fans Rejoice: A 24/7 Heavy Music Radio Station Has Just Launched

Publicity doyen and all-round nice guy Tim Price — the man behind heavy music-focused PR company Collision Course — will be the toast of metal fans everywhere with the launch of The Faction, a 24/7 streaming radio station that puts the spotlight on local and international artists of a heavier bent than you'd usually find on the airwaves.

Available today on Android and web browsers (and iOS soon), The Faction is the culmination of nearly a year's work for Price and his collaborator Stephen Green, of Collision Course's parent company, SGC Media, who together conceived of the station during a company retreat at the end of 2016.

According to Price, the idea started as something of a "what if?" scenario, soon growing into a fully fleshed-out platform that entails not only a streaming component but includes centralised news sources, deals for fans, and more.

Speaking to The Music about the new service, Price explains, "It’s certainly not an attempt to replace anything that’s out there at the moment, or beat it or reinvent the wheel. It’s not something that’s not already out there, but it’s certainly, I think, unique in that we’ve got a fairly heavy focus on new stuff, on making sure that the radio isn’t just a folder full of tracks on shuffle.

"It’s curated in the same way that an FM radio station or a digital radio station is, and we’re actively championing new heavy music, new Australian heavy music, heavy music by people that don’t necessarily get a voice sometimes as well," he said. 

"So, we’re actively trying to make sure that we’re putting music out there into the world via our channel that we have now that’s good and that’s going to appeal to a fairly broad heavy music-loving audience … even though it’s a digital medium and it’s streaming online and through an app, it still has that focus like radio, and a focus on breaking songs in the heavy world as well." 

Price says that, in curating the playlist rotation for a 24/7 format, the biggest challenge has been finding a way to ensure the material sits next to each other in such a way that creates a sense of flow and, importantly, doesn't alienate listeners who may not necessarily see themselves as hardcore metal fans.

"What we’re really going for is something that appeals not only to just to straight-up metalheads but to someone who… might be into a couple of heavy bands, and this might actually be the thing that tips them over."

To that end, the playlist is segmented into high rotation tunes, which listeners can expect to hear "maybe three times a day", Price explains; classics — "absolute metal bangers, none of which are any younger than 10 years old … so, yeah, you're gonna hear One by Metallica maybe two/three times a week, definitely" — and "recurrent" tracks, which comprises "the bulk of the station; the library, essentially", he reveals.

"There’s everything from the most local of local bands through to huge tracks that didn’t necessarily end up in the rotation folders," he said, "but they’re still good and they’re worth playing on the station, you just might not hear them as regularly."

"What we’re really going for is something that appeals not only to just to straight-up metalheads but to someone who… might be into a couple of heavy bands, and this might actually be the thing that tips them over into that," he continued.

Although it's available worldwide, The Faction boasts a hard Australian bent to its playlist, as well as presently featuring a twice-daily rotation of interviews conducted by Paul Brown — a voice well-known to the local heavy community for his work with the similarly inspired Wall Of Sound podcast and website. And that's just for starters in terms of the station's human aspect.

"Every day at midday and 7pm, a 20-minute to 30-minute podcast interview plays on the radio, and so at the moment we’ve got his interviews with Corey Taylor, with Rex Brown (ex-Pantera), Joe from Grinspoon and Jess Margera from CKY, and they just go in rotation," he explained. 

"So, they pop up at midday. We’ve co-opted it and rebranded it to be called Matter Of Faction; at the moment that’s the human voice, as well as [that] we’ve got a lot of our bands that we’ve worked with and bands that are in the high rotation, where possible, we’ve got them doing stings for the radio station as well.

"So they come up in-between all of the songs, but yeah, definitely in the future I would really like to have curated genre shows or even a re-look at a classic album, where you go track by track. Who would do that, I don’t know, but I’ve chatted with a few people..."

As Price concedes, The Faction isn't looking to necessarily attempt to replace or impede on any existing voices in the heavy-music community; rather, he wants it to serve as a centralising force to provide fans of metal and its spiritual brethren a single place from which they can get their musical fix as well as stay informed about what's going on in the local and international heavy scene without having to hunt it down from myriad other places.

"I guess my hope for it is that it actually gives those people — who may not have been a hardcore member or a hardcore follower of heavy music — it might give them a place to find that news more readily, to find new music that they like more readily, and it becomes something that they come back to daily or weekly to find those new things," he said. 

"Through the app, we’ll actually be sending out weekly offers ... the hope is eventually that we will have exclusive discount codes that we’ll give out to our members for maybe presale tickets or discounted tickets or discounted vinyl or discounted merch to various stores or to bands’ tours or whatever, and we’ll be able to localise those to where those shows are happening or where the store might be, or whatever it is."

"I want it to feel like it’s something that just about anyone can feel ownership over or feel a part of."

Importantly — and this is something with which heavy genres do tend to struggle — he wants to make sure that everyone, regardless of gender or background, feels represented as part of the platform's operational ethos.

"I don’t want this to be a sausage party, I don’t want it to be an all-male thing; I want it to appeal across [genders]," he said. "It’s so important to have those voices as role models. To be a female metal fan or into heavy music in that way, you also want to hear voices like your own, so in that regard, I’ve made sure that I’m across as much of that as possible ... I’m trying my best to make sure that as many people [as possible] are getting a voice."

Ultimately, Price simply wants to strengthen the sense of community shared by the platform's users, to truly give them a new outlet through which they can embrace that sense of belonging with like-minded music fans across the globe — which is part and parcel of why he chose to name the service The Faction in the first place. 

"I want it to feel like it’s something that just about anyone can feel ownership over or feel a part of, and I guess that’s part of why we called it The Faction as well — because, really, the definition of The Faction, or a faction, is an organised, dissenting, small group within the majority, and that’s really what heavy music lovers are. They’re organised, they’re passionate, they’re loud, within the larger herd, and I think that’s sort of what it is."

For more information about The Faction, check its website, or search for The Faction app in the Apple and Google Play stores.