McKeever (Heavy Halo)
photo by Michelle Lobianco
What are your top five albums that were released in 2025? (In order 1-5)
Deafheaven - Lonely People with Power
Gorgeous, brutal, transcendent. Continues and expands upon the legacy of Sunbather.
Pixel Grip - Percepticide: The Death of Reality
Banger after banger, with the perfect amount of more introspective tracks peppered in, buckle up for the ride…
GODHANDUSA - Godhand Volume 2
The production in this album sounds super fresh. It has a crunchy lofi feeling and punk ethos, but all that is obviously an intentional decision in the sound design. The flows in the raps have a throwback feel which is different from the mumble rap sound that has been around for a while now.
Youth Code - Yours With Malice EP
My favorite modern industrial band delivers once again, combining scream-along hardcore hooks with devastating but fascinatingly melancholic production.
Deftones - Private Music
30 years into their career, Deftones are more alive and influential than ever, crazy they’re still pushing it and dropping music this fiery.
What band did you discover in 2025 (can be a brand new band or an older band) that had an impact on your life? How so?
This year I dove headfirst into the hallucinatory ocean that is the Boards of Canada discography. I love their mixed-fidelity approach to production where elements that sound extracted from the grimiest cassette can brush up against powerful Moog basses and radiant high-fidelity pads.
Nowadays everyone can slap a lofi plug-in onto a track to make it sound like crappy vinyl or tape but in the '90s BoC had to use the real deal, employing arduous methods to process their sounds, making their music that much deeper and more of an achievement.
Most importantly, the music is highly evocative, pulling you backwards into the recesses of your nostalgia but with an eye towards the glistening future…
How will you remember 2025 (in terms of music)?
I will remember 2025 as the beginning of industrial’s revenge on the music industry. So many pivotal releases from vital bands dropped this year and it feels like the dark underbelly of the goth/industrial scene is bubbling up and infiltrating bigger stages and platforms.
What can we look forward to from you in 2026?
We are extremely excited to announce that we will be joining My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult on the next leg of the DELICATE TERROR Tour. The lineup is psychotic, also featuring the epic Light Asylum, Die Sexual, and Devora. This is the biggest tour of our musical lives thus far and we can’t wait for the adventure. We’d love to see you out there (tickets here).
We are also hard at work and quite far along on our 3rd album…
What records are you looking forward to most in 2026?
There was an official announcement that MC Ride and Zach Hill are working on a new Death Grips album. After fearing that they had disbanded, I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing where they pilot their apocalypse warship next.
Singles rule the music scene right now. How has that affected you as a band or label? Has it influenced your approach to new releases or touring?
We released our album DAMAGED DREAM over the course of 10 months, spacing it out and dropping a single every month. We looked at this as a creative opportunity to make a full music video or lyric video for every song in addition to putting together unique artwork for each track.
We definitely feel like this was the “best of both worlds” approach as it allowed us to zoom in on the themes of each individual song and explore those concepts fully but also weld them together into an album with a cohesive flow.
McKeever – social media links
- Instagram: @heavyhalo.nyc
