​I'll be leaving for a long weekend tomorrow, so I won't get to a weekly music recap in tomorrow. But I still want to share a few miscellaneous thoughts as the week draws to an end.

• The video above from Jeff Nippard has some great exercises to consider adding into your routine. 
• Miracle Blood, one of the first bands I covered for my concert recap series, has a new live EP coming out on November 6th. It will be fun! The first live track dropped on YouTube a couple months back. 
• The first wave of lineup announcements for Prepare the Ground and Roadburn 2026 have dropped. Prepare the Ground scored a rare North American set from Oranssi Pazuzu and the only Svalbard North American set ever. Roadburn has an even bigger score - an Oathbreaker reunion. I'd given up any hope on ever seeing them live. I still probably won't! But a guy can dream.
• It's October, so you are required by law to listen to The Evil One by Roky Erickson, the most perfect Halloween album of all time.

By Josh Burke

This was my third time in Austin for Ripplefest Texas, a celebration of desert rock and stoner metal. It bills itself as a “family reunion” and of all the festivals I’ve been to, it really does feel the most like home in a lot of ways. I have made many friends at this festival and it’s great to see a lot of the same faces year after year. It’s also a small festival - while the capacity for the main venue is 2,000 people, I would guess the actual attendance is closer to 500. I don’t know how the financials work with this size of a crowd, but I love the intimacy. You can pretty much guarantee that you’ll be standing next to the bands playing the festival and I love getting the chance to meet and have real conversations with some of my favorite artists.

I've seen exactly two concerts with my older brother, both of which were in the last year. Along with my youngest brother, we saw the BEAT Tour last November (who dropped an excellent live album last Friday!), and last night the three us saw Bruce Dickinson together. My youngest brother and I have seen a bunch of shows together, but our tastes never really aligned with our older brother's taste until he started discovering some hard rock/heavy metal that spoke to him in the last few years. We had a great time together at BEAT last fall, so I couldn't really say no when he suggested that we go see the Iron Maiden singer's solo tour.

Sometimes, when you buy a concert ticket months in advance, your excitement for the show builds and builds. Other times, as it creeps closer, it starts to feel more like a looming obligation rather than an exciting event. And, full disclosure, this is how I was feeling about the Bruce Dickinson show as it approached. 

Last night I put on my $10 Mares of Thrace hoodie and joined some friends at Minneapolis venue Zhora Darling for a show I've been looking forward to for months, Conan and Mares of Thrace. But, let's be honest: I was there for Mares of Thrace. As I wrote in the linked post, I checked out the Canadian sludge duo earlier this year for the first time and was immediately hooked. But does their live experience live up to their recorded works? Read on to find out!

Some weeks, I struggle to find new music to write about for my Friday post. This week has been an unusual one, in that there have been a steady stream of great new music all week. Hopefully, I'm not screwing myself by leaving nothing to write about on Friday, but I had to call out these great tunes. Hopefully this means Friday will be equally stacked!

As I mentioned yesterday, I just finished reading Geddy Lee's autobiography, My Effin' Life. I also mentioned that I've never been a particularly big Rush fan, but the book made me interested in spending more time with their music. This is just one of several rock biographies I've read in recent months, and I've compiled some thoughts on each below.

My header image says "Metal. Fitness. Miscellaneous Nonsense." I've delivered posts on both of the first two, and have yet to write anything that falls into the third category. Until now!

There may not be a lot of big name releases that are jumping out at me, but a pretty big week for new music nevertheless! I don't know if any of the records on this list are going to make it into my regular rotation, but they're all interesting enough to recommend you check out. 

I am very excited to share the very first guest post on Both Kinds of Heavy! My friend Josh Burke (pictured above) recently experienced the ArcTanGent Festival ​for the first time, and was kind enough to share some in-depth thoughts on the experience. All words after the break were written by Josh, and he captured all photos in this post. Thanks for letting us host this festival recap, Josh!