Heathen Harvest

Heathen Harvest
Type of site
 Music webzine
Available in English
Owner Sage Weatherford
Created by Malahki Thorn
Slogan(s) Illuminating the Post-Industrial Underground
Website heathenharvest.org
Commercial No
Registration No
Launched 2003
Current status Active

Heathen Harvest is an Internet blog devoted to music criticism, music news and interviews. Its focus is on underground and post-industrial music, including ambient, heavy metal, gothic, and industrial music.

The site, which was established in 2003, is one of the longest-running webzines of its kind and has been dubbed "one of the leading online magazines for post-industrial music" [1] and "the internet's foremost authority on neofolk." [2] The website closed in June 2010 but was relaunched in July 2011 at a different domain.

History

Heathen Harvest has given support to many underground artists and rarely features mainstream bands. It has a current review archive of over 4,800 individual reviews of underground music albums.[3] Heathen Harvest originally began as the Heathen Harvest Music Review, written by Malahki Thorn for RFD Magazine in 2002. Thorn had moved from San Francisco to pursue a quieter life away from the city in Trinity County, California[4] and wanted to share his high-school influences through post-industrial music with the Radical Faeries community.

In December 2006 the site design was overhauled and the magazine began publishing on a bi-monthly basis.[5] Multiple journalists collectively contributed over one hundred articles per month, such as Nick Quarm, Sage L. Weatherford, Patrick O’sullivan and Elena ZG, who would make up the core of the magazine for most of this period.[6]

Soon more journalists were welcomed onboard but eventually (with the exception of Sage L. Weatherford, Patrick O’sullivan, and Elena ZG), all of this original group left or were dismissed. A handful of new writers entered Heathen Harvest, but gradually those running the webzine began to burn out due to the amount of money and time it was taking to process the immense amount of material submitted.

The US record label First Fallen Star said of the webzine, "amid an ocean of pathetic websites offering up poorly written one-paragraph reviews merely to justify turning around and selling the albums on eBay for profit, Heathen Harvest was always, and continues to be, a site diligently maintained by a group of serious people, writing serious reviews of the music we all love".[7] Heathen Harvest has been entirely self-financed and non-profit since its foundation, being driven purely by volunteer staff "motivated by their love of music and art".[8]

Closure and relaunch

In June 2010, Thorn announced that issue 84 of Heathen Harvest was to be the final issue,[9] citing financial concerns as the reason for the closure. At the start of 2011, a collective of the old Heathen Harvest staff assembled to officially restart the webzine in a blog format on a different server. It took several months to restart the webzine and the new site was finally launched on 4 July 2011 under the name of The Heathen Harvest Periodical to distinguish it from the old site, and under the new domain heathenharvest.org. The site now works mostly with digital review media and is more selective over what it reviews.[10] The old site, heathenharvest.com, remained online for archival purposes until 2013.

Criticism

In 2009 Heathen Harvest came under fire from jazz musician Geoff Leigh for promoting far-right politics due to supposed symbolism employed on heathenharvest.com. Leigh criticized the webzine calling its staff Neo-nazis and suggesting that its name was code for "Heil Hitler". The magazine responded by saying it was "an international organisation of all peoples, beliefs, and political views" and called the accusation that its staff were practicing Neo-Nazis "absurd".[11]

References

  1. ↑ "Side-Line Magazine reference". Retrieved 19 July 2011.
  2. ↑ "Pyhä Kuolema premieres new track on HeathenHarvest.org". Retrieved 5 September 2013.
  3. ↑ Heathen Harvest review archive Retrieved 19 July 2011
  4. ↑ "Wolf Pack". Heathen Harvest. Retrieved 18 July 2011.
  5. ↑ Heathen Harvest new design Retrieved 19 July 2011
  6. ↑ "History". Heathen Harvest. Retrieved 26 September 2011.
  7. ↑ "First Fallen Star reference". Retrieved 3 April 2012.
  8. ↑ "About Us". Retrieved 19 July 2010.
  9. ↑ "Issue 84 - The Final Issue". Heathen Harvest. Retrieved 18 July 2011.
  10. ↑ "Sending music". Heathen Harvest. Retrieved 18 July 2011.
  11. ↑ A Bad Year for Bad Apples Retrieved 19 July 2011

External links

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