Just as inevitable as death and taxes is the fact that, one day, your favourite band will stop making music. The luckiest people won’t have to wrestle with that until their idols have been around for many years and made dozens of albums, but followers of the British metal scene haven’t had that kind of fortune lately.
In the last ninemonths, three standard-bearers of heaviness – stoner metal veterans Orange Goblin, post-metal adventurers Svalbard and metalcore crusaders Ithaca – have all announced their impending break-ups. Though uniquely personal, some of their reasons combine to paint a worrying picture: that trying to make ends meet as a touring metal musician in the UK has become tricky to impossible.
