Thursday, October 17, 2024

HEAVY HALO - "Damage Me"


HEAVY HALO: NYC duo releases industrialized alt-rock anthem "Damage Me" (feat. Georgi), announces new album Damaged Dream


Heavy Halo has released new single "Damage Me," featuring guest vocals by Georgi.

The track will appear on the band's upcoming new album, Damaged Dream, to be released in 2025 on Silent Pendulum Records.

Stream the official "Damage Me" music video, here: https://www.revolvermag.com/music/hear-heavy-halos-masochistic-industrial-banger-damage-me/

Pre-order Damaged Dream, here: https://silentpendulumrecords.com/collections/heavy-halo

From New York City, Heavy Halo is the duo of vocalist McKeever and producer Gosteffects. Together, the two conjure an industrialized strain of alt-rock that unites human and machine in highly compelling ways. "A raw human core encased in a exoskeleton of dense layers of futuristic electronics," is McKeever's description of Heavy Halo's approach. "This contrast is what excites us," he declares.

A marriage of industrial-techno rhythms and soaring hooks, Heavy Halo's fusion
 triggers visions of NYC's clubland heyday, when the walls of The Limelight thrummed with bass and sex into the morning hours. Jagged guitars and raw electronics reference the likes of Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, and The Prodigy, while yearning melodic vocals reflect childhoods spent wallowing in the angst of Smashing Pumpkins and The Cure. 

Despite its reverence for '90s aesthetics, this is music of the future. Heavy Halo lands in the same warehouse as current, forward-thinking artists such as HEALTH and Poppy whose work revels in the intersection of human emotion and cyber power.

A perfectly odd couple, the native New Yorker McKeever is a Columbia University-educated composer and vocalist who spent a decade entrenched in Brooklyn's indie rock scene, while Gosteffects cut his teeth DJ'ing and promoting illegal raves in Oklahoma. The unlikely pair met at a goth party in Brooklyn and instantly put their chemistry to action. "Our collaboration feels natural," says McKeever. "I have more of a singer-songwriter background and Gosteffects has produced electronic music since he was in his early teens, so we are able to meet in the middle and fill in any gaps. We aim to combine the human and the synthetic, the melodic and the noisy, the loud and the quiet, and analog and the digital."

McKeever and Gosteffects' initial collab resulted in Heavy Halo's 2022 self-titled debut album, recorded, mixed and mastered entirely at Gosteffects' studio, Spellsound Studios, where he has also created official remixes for the likes of Duran Duran. The album earned these words from Alternative Press: "With a pounding bassline and adrenaline-inducing vocals... Heavy Halo took the spirit of angst present in the alternative and industrial music scenes and created their own unique sound." A slew of underground luminaries, including Alex Empire of Atari Teenage Riot, Xavier Swafford of 3TEETH, Kontravoid, and Pictureplane, jumped on board to remix tracks.

Signing to Brooklyn-based label Silent Pendulum Records this year, Heavy Halo is now putting the finishing touches on its sophomore album. Titled Damaged Dream, the album will see a 2025 release. "Damaged Dream is what you’re left with when the ideals you hold shatter," 
states McKeever. "Cruel reality brings the hammer down on the purity of innocence, energy, joy, youth, love, creativity, optimism. But while the dream is damaged, it is not completely destroyed. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and you can use the longing spark deep within you as fuel to wage war against the negative forces pulling you down. You can reject nihilism and strive to reclaim your agency and meaning in a chaotic world. The first Heavy Halo album is in hell, mired in the dark murk. Damaged Dream is purgatory. Pushing harder to dig out of that hole. It lashes out like a wounded animal, refusing to go down without a fight. "

Revealing the first taste of the new album to the world, Heavy Halo presents first single, "Damage Me," featuring guest vocals by producer/DJ/chanteuse Georgi. McKeever gives this statement about the song: "'Damage Me' is a song about fucking each other because the world is fucked up. Escaping the guillotine of reality by diving into each other in mutual ecstatic servitude. I had all the lyrics except the hook but then I went to a grimy Bushwick punk show, saw a bunch of beautiful people in spikes and chains, and wanted someone to 'damage me.'"

Inspired by films such as Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and Aronofsky's Pi, the "Damage Me" video was created by director Max Nova using circuit-bent vintage analog video equipment.

Damaged Dream tracklist: 
1) Erase Yr Fate 
2) Damage Me (feat. Georgi) 
3) New Blood 
4) Lost in Heaven 
5) Lies 
6) Bloodrush 
7) The Poisoning 
8) Justified 
9) Failure.
10) Final Fall 

Lineup: 
McKeever - vocals, guitar, synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, bass, Ableton 
Gosteffects - synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, Ableton, mixing, mastering

Photo by Michelle Lobianco

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