Gray Area: the place where Black Metal and White Light/White Heat come together.

These guys are pretty great.

When I first conceived this column, I didn’t have Venom or the Velvet Underground in mind. But both bands sort of staked out new territory that their peers weren’t quite sonically keen to, and ultimately, the new Gray Area is the space between metal and hardcore that can’t quite be musically defined. That was the original idea for the column, and television and movies quickly fell in line as well.

When talking about the Gray Area of music, two labels that stand out are Seventh Rule and Hydra Head. Both labels were founded in the Great American independent tradition, by folks who loved music, and might just need an outlet for their future material. And while Hydra Head has really come into it’s own these past few years as one of the ultimate frontrunners in metal music, Seventh Rule has been rising steadily from a part-time Chicago based label to the signing of Kongh, the label’s first international band, out of Sweden. Fitting, then, that Kongh’s debut should coincide with that of Harvey Milk on Hydra Head. Both albums pull from doom metal and sludge in entirely different ways, and I couldn’t think of two better bands from two better labels in which to write about for this week.

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