Exclusive Interview - Rebecca Vernon (SubRosa)

This past weekend, comrade Durf and I were lucky enough to catch Salt Lake City's own SubRosa as they were playing the very last show of their tour opening for Wovenhand. The band has garnered plenty of notoriety over the past few years. 2013's More Constant Than the Gods and last year's For This We Fought the Battle of Ages have paved new paths for creating a different kind of heaviness within the doom metal genre; giving their compositions more emotional weight than just audible weight. We sat down with guitarist/singer Rebecca Vernon and just by chance drummer Andy Patterson to talk shop about the band's beginnings, their development over the years, and the tight-knit Salt Lake City music community.

Read the full interview after the break!

SubRosa - For This We Fought The Battle of Ages

In my experience, metal of the doom variety has more often than not boasted thunderous walls of guitar and drum rhythms that are so excruciatingly drawn out and slowed down over the course of an album that "serene" is the last descriptor that would immediately come to mind. Cue in SubRosa, a band that I happened to stumble across three years ago with the release of their last album, More Constant Than the Gods. Through harnessing the harmonious vocals of Rebecca Vernon along with layered violin work, I was blown away by how they incorporated these elements with the aforementioned doom metal tendencies. The result is a sound that can be as morose as it is blissfully uplifting. Despite the heavier aspects of SubRosa's sound taking the heft of the experimentation on For This We Fought the Battle of Ages, the spirit of this placid sound is still very much carried on in in their latest effort.

Mick's Top 15 Albums of 2013

2013 has been one heck of a year for all of us...mainly because we relaunched Brutalitopia earlier in the spring and are now back in full force with a renewed sense of purpose. Thanks to everyone who's made that possible by supporting us in their respective ways.

And now time for everyone's favorite time of year...the end of it. Check out what albums I thought were awesome enough to recognize after the break!