Metal's Blistering Comeback Might Just Save The World

"Only the good die young, all the evil seems to live forever," Bruce Dickinson once wailed. 

Sounds about right for 2017 doesn't it? Given the rise global neo-fascism, colluding superpowers and multinationals entrenching and deepening their already obscene wealth amid economic stagnation, Twitter, etcetera, et-bloody-cetera, we should probably all be listening to some feel-good music, right? Wrong. James Brown's I Feel Good is the last thing you should listen to in a moral vacuum. Although you'd expect metal to rise when the chips are down - along with wages, outcomes and all reasonable prospects of hope - research has surprisingly shown that metal is more popular in countries that are wealthier, better educated and happier with life. This is achieved by regulating negative emotions and enhancing positive ones. Hell's bells, metal even promotes fidelity for Heaven's pity's sake. Looks like a little Cherry Pie isn't bad for you after all.

Heading the next wave and playing their first headline tour of Australia will be Al Jourgensen's Ministry, who against all reasonable odds will release their 14th album AmeriKKKant soon. You can be sure they will be sounding as creatively fertile and virulent as ever with an uncompromising assault made of formidable walls of sound, savage political invectives and gloriously bad taste. Or in other words, an overbearing juggernaut of industrial metal hellbent on flattening you where you stand. Anyone who doesn't sustain substantial frontal lobe trauma should probably ask for their money back. Moreover, it may also be one of those 'once in a lifetime' opportunities. Jourgensen, who's been declared dead on three separate occasions by medics, has already terminated Ministry twice, in 2008 and 2013, and there's no guarantee the band can match their main man's death-cheating stamina on a fatality for fatality basis.

Enduring doom explorers Paradise Lost will also return with their grand vision that has touched on gothly orchestras, keyboards and studio know-how. Drummers aside, Paradise Lost have essentially had an unchanged line-up since their inception in 1988 and are a bunch of tough old buzzards that have only become more gnarly and guileful with age. The red pointy tailed one has guided them through different movements and styles, from tyrannical death-doom to synthpop and back again.

Also rampaging our way will be famed stickman for Dream Theater, Mike Portnoy, bringing his Shattered Fortress project Down Under to perform the almost-one-hour-long 12 Step Suite in full plus some other prime DT cuts. Expect brain-boiling complexity that overlays many-forked emotional undercurrents. Clearing the way for him will be decorated thrash veterans Kreator who continue to score #1 albums in their homeland of Germany. Exhibiting technical chops that your average grindcore outfit would have wet dreams over, it will be a rare delight to witness thrash, a genre to which many aspire towards but few nail, well and truly hammered.

But there are plenty of Aussie metal battlers lurking on your doorstep with malicious intent who can hold their own with the big boys, even if they haven't yet scored international recognition. Heavier than a plutonium dinosaur, Perth's Drowning Horse are one of the most challenging experiences in volume you can put yourself through. Live, they are so loud that even if you have no ears, you can still hear them through the skin of your face.

Over in Hobart, Departe blast out a blackened hybrid of deathly post-metal that falls on your ears in sheets of sound like never-ending rain. Last year's Failure, Subside proved these upstart Tassies have talent and ambition by the bloody bucketload. Meanwhile in Brissie, Impetuous Ritual, a splinter faction of the much beloved/feared Portal, proved there's no such thing as too extreme on their recent Blight Upon Martyred Sentience album, carving a bone-chilling path through horrific noise and berserker riffs.  

Back on the West Coast, arising from the ashes of Chainsaw Hookers (not often you get to say that) Ohm Rune are a riotous two-piece that have more fun onstage than anyone fully clothed has a right to. They've only been in existence for a year, but expectations are nonetheless soaring.

Whatever the score, the metal pandemic is showing no signs of abating and further evidence is manifest in the legions of barnstorming bands heading our way. This year towering Swedish technical overlords Messuggah, adventurous doom innovators Pallbearer, mystical black-metal shoegazers Alcest and post-metal pioneers Neurosis have engulfed our fair shores like a heaving tidal wave of molten metal; not to mention Japanese mavericks Boris who annihilated eardrums during their  tenth anniversary  re-enactments of their breakthrough Pink album. Amid the brightly coloured psychedelic meltdowns, it was heartwarming to witness how they have developed from somewhat shy performers to rabble-rousers with genuine stage presence.

So, given the ongoing national foofaraw and international turmoil, it's clear that anyone who wants to make Australia great again, or at least somewhere where fewer atrocities are committed, should do the honourable, respectable thing and get their metal ass down to some to some of these brutal noisefests. Consider it your civic duty.