Listen: Could Black Moth Save Rock Radio?

I don’t wish to stick a neat band like Black Moth in the middle of my personal gripe, but I’m going to: With all the power of MetalSucks, you the Suckalo Nation, all our awesome industry people and bands, and my own big mouth, I most forcibly call on corporate rock radio stations to put bands like Black Moth in their rotation. Serious! Not the Green Day-type rock stations, but the Metallica and Ozzy ones, the ones now so hard-up for likeable jams from later than, oh, 15 years ago.

Look, I accept that America isn’t into extreme metal enough for it to make money for I Heart Media, so let’s take black and death metals et c. out of this discussion. What is delivered by Black Moth, Torche, that ex-Cathedral guy’s awesome band we talked about Wednesday, probably Clutch, and a half-dozen more is descended from radio staples Black Sabbath, ie. pop music played really heavy, organically, and wildly.

So it fits on the radio beside Sabbath. And it’s no scarier than “Mother” (so Midwest can handle it) and its songs arrive at the point much sooner than “Master Of Puppets” (so it’s catchy). It strikes fans of Heart (via badass vocals) and Iron Maiden (majesty); it hints at the vibe of huge ’90s hits that kinda revel in the weirdness of damaged humans (Garbage, Nine Inch Nails, every ’90s song on Active Rock radio) and is more conventional than Pearl Jam and Soundgarden’s long-winded singles. So this melodic stoner rock inconspicuously nestles into a place among radio’s go-to artists, but overlaps them too. It’s a perfect stopper in a gap that rock radio needs to fill cuz that yarl rock is not cutting it and anyway there’s basically zero presence on their stations of people aged under 40.

This is not a leap; no one’s proposing a playlist of The Devil’s Blood and Converge. It’s more like a step. I mean, fuck, can’t you just hear Black Moth (below) right between “Flying High Again” and “Paradise City”? And between “Whole Lotta Love” and “Sad But True”? Test out our little theory below and full stream here.

Black Moth’s Condemed To Hope is out now via New Heavy Sounds. Get it here and here.