The Iron Lotus is my corner of Chicago's Northwest Suburbs, built for the bands the industry forgot and the scenes that never needed it in the first place. Rooted in local metal with raw honesty and deep respect for the artists keeping heavy music alive. Every now and then, it steps back in time too, shining a light on the pieces of Chicago metal history that the industry never knew or has long since forgotten. Big or small, local or worldwide, if it's heavy and it matters, it belongs here.
Search This Blog
A Post‑Hardcore Odyssey in Three Movements: The Skies Are Shifting - Mind Awake // Body Asleep: Acts 1-3 (A Three Part EP Review) Released: Act 1 (2022), Act 2 (2023) & Act 3 (2025)
From the Chicago area’s ever‑shifting post‑hardcore landscape, The Skies Are Shifting, consisting of Jay Smooth, Brad V Earl, Mike Pittacora, and Jack Emery, have spent the last several years crafting one of the more ambitious narrative arcs in their scene. Their three‑part EP series, Mind Awake // Body Asleep, unfolds like a slow‑burning psychological journey, each act deepening the tension between clarity and collapse.
Act I (2022): The first installment introduces the trilogy with a sense of restless momentum. Act I feels like the moment consciousness begins to fracture with sharp math‑rock edges cut through atmospheric post‑hardcore textures, creating a sound that’s both intricate and emotionally unsettled. The band leans into angular rhythms and shifting time signatures, but never at the expense of feeling. There’s a sense of awakening here, but it’s uneasy, like the first jolt out of a dream you weren’t ready to leave.
Act II (2023): Act II expands the world dramatically. Where the first EP hinted at internal conflict, this chapter dives headfirst into it. The songwriting becomes more dynamic, the structures more fluid, the emotional stakes higher. The Skies Are Shifting stretch their progressive tendencies further, weaving tension and release with a precision that feels intentional rather than ornamental. It’s the sound of a band growing bolder, not louder, but more confident in the spaces between the noise. If Act I was the spark, Act II is the fire catching oxygen.
Act III (2025): The final act arrives with the weight of resolution, but not the kind that ties everything neatly together. Instead, Act III feels reflective, almost cinematic. The band’s post‑hardcore foundation remains intact, but the edges soften just enough to let the emotional core shine through. Themes introduced in the earlier chapters return in new forms, like memories refracted through a different lens. It’s a fitting conclusion, not triumphant, not defeated, but honest. The trilogy ends the way real internal journeys do: with clarity, but not certainty.
Taken as a whole, Mind Awake // Body Asleep is less a collection of EPs and more a long‑form meditation on consciousness, tension, and transformation. The Skies Are Shifting blends math‑rock intricacy with progressive post‑hardcore atmosphere in a way that feels purposeful rather than performative. Across three releases and three years, they’ve built a narrative that rewards patience, attention, and repeat listens. For fans of bands who treat heaviness as a tool rather than a destination, this trilogy stands as one of the more compelling multi‑year projects to emerge from the Midwest scene. If you want to experience the full arc, all three acts are streaming now, and they’re best taken in order, from the first spark of Act I to the final exhale of Act III.
Here is No Knock, No Doorbell from Mind Awake//Body Asleep: Act 2:
Saving Vice is the embodiment of metalcore excellence and a powerhouse rising out of New England, specifically Burlington, Vermont, and they've never been afraid to get confrontational, but “Straw Dogs” is the band at their most venomous, theatrical, and unapologetically hostile. Consisting of Tyler Small, Robbie Litchfield, Alex Chan, and Sam Willey, the band channels pure contempt into a track that feels like a ritual execution set to music. If Saving Vice’s catalog is a gallery of emotional extremes, “Straw Dogs” is the piece where the frame catches fire. This song in particular revolves around a single yet brutal idea: some people are built of nothing but dry straw, and all it takes is a spark to expose how hollow they really are. The narrator tears into a target who poses as powerful but collapses under scrutiny, and this is someone loud, insecure, and inflated by their own myth. The imagery is vicious: boiling blood, collapsing thrones, paper crowns, inbred worms, a few co...
Some songs ease you in, and then some songs grab you by the throat before you even realize what's happening. "TEETH" by LYCVNS is firmly the latter. From the very first line: I'll make you fucking swallow teeth, this track makes its intentions crystal clear, and it never once blinks, never once softens, never once apologizes for what it is. This is heavy music made by people who aren't playing a character. This is the real thing. LYCVNS arrives with a lineup that feels assembled with a specific kind of violence in mind. Erin Medrano (Fallen Condition) leads on vocals, and what immediately separates him from the pack is that nothing about his delivery feels performed. There's no posturing here, no calculated aggression for the sake of fitting a mold. Every line he delivers sounds like it's coming from somewhere genuine and unresolved, like he's pulling these words out of something he's been carrying for a long time. That authenticity is rare...
Lexington, Kentucky, isn't exactly the first city that comes to mind when you think of the sludge and stoner metal underground, but Stormtoker seems intent on changing that. Their EP These Edibles Ain't Shit arrives like a slow, crushing wave of amplifier worship and chemically-assisted existential dread, and it makes a compelling case that the Bluegrass State has something mean and heavy brewing beneath its surface. Stormtoker is a fierce, impassioned force of nature, a band that feels like devout disciples of Ozzy Osbourne who came of age at the turn of the millennium but refused to let the roots of heavy metal die. With sonic DNA tracing back to Cream, Hendrix, King Crimson, and even Arthur Brown, they summon an alluring sound that entrances as much as it pummels. This is a band equally at home in the sludge pit and the alt-rock headspace, a melodic restlessness running beneath the downtuned grime that keeps things unpredictable and owing as much to the 90s alternative u...
Comments
Post a Comment