Announcing SALVO

My new heavy metal newsletter, and the official closure of this blog

Hey there,

It’s been awhile since I’ve reached out with an update here, and that’s because I intentionally stopped using Substack several years ago (for a variety of reasons, but the site’s founders’ open indifference to transphobia and Nazis really sealed the deal). So why am I emailing you now, here? Simple: I wanted to give you a heads up that I’m moving this blog off Substack and totally reinventing it as a heavy metal newsletter.

I’ve been working on it for the past few months, and am super excited about it. On April 1st, I’ll be launching a new metal newsletter called Salvo (as always, shout out to Bolt Thrower). It’ll be focused on in-depth interviews with artists who are doing something awesome, audacious, or otherwise interesting within the amorphous confines of the heavy metal world. The first month will feature interviews with Terminal Nation, Fenriz, and Coffins—and I’m just getting started. 

My plan is to start out by publishing one interview per week, which will be delivered directly into subscribers’ inboxes—like a digital magazine parceled out in easily digestible pieces. There will also be a monthly roundup called Reaper’s Digest to spotlight new releases and general metal news, and depending how things go, a million other potential ideas.

I totally understand that most of you are here because of my labor reporting (which lives here now!), and might not be interested in sticking around for the blastbeats. However, I’m hoping you’ll be interested in supporting Salvo—it’s a project very near and dear to my heart, and a lot of the same themes you’ve seen in my other work will be present there, too. It would of course be a fantastic help if you’d consider sharing the subscriber link or Salvo website with your networks, and even more wonderful if you’d consider subscribing yourself. It’s only $5 a month, and you can probably write it off as a business expense while also helping a new independent metal media outlet grow and thrive—what a bargain, right? (And if not, it’s totally cool to just unsubscribe once the first issue hits your inbox—I get it!)

Writing artist profiles and conducting interviews have always been my favorite parts of being a metal journalist, and while my time in the labor movement has been life-changing in the best way possible, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the freedom I had back at Noisey to really go deep with an artist and write something that truly lasts. With Salvo, I’m hoping to get some of that magic back, and create something truly unique within the current metal media in the process. I hope you join me. 

Love,
Kim