The Bad Penny (beta)

Do you remember Joudy, the Venezuelan band that has more courage than all of us put together as demonstrated by the escape they pulled off from their homeland to New York in order to escape drug cartel violence? No? Then shame on you for not reading every installment in The Bad Penny‘s ongoing On Tyranny series, which provides musicians with a space where they can talk about the threats that fascism poses to artists. (The Joudy installment is here.)

Apparently Diego Ramirez, frontman of the three-piece, enjoyed our conversation so much that he return for a second round of talks with The Bad Penny. This time, we covered an entirely different topic, which you’ve probably pieced together by now. A few weeks ago, we started touching base with musicians in countries around the world to ask them what heavy bands they consider to be the bee’s knees in their respective countries.

The series has quickly become one of the most popular in the 16-year history of this website, so in light of the positive reception, we’re gonna keep trotting around the globe (figuratively) to confer with native musicians about what great bands us foreigners aren’t paying enough attention to in their homelands. As a bonus, this project is doubling up as a rebuttal to Spotify and algorithms telling us what we should listen to; The Bad Penny continues to value recommendations that come from human beings as opposed to AI.

Without further ado, what follows is Ramirez’s list of the best heavy bands hailing from Venezuela. (Ramirez is clearly a guy who goes the extra mile, because he also notated what he considers to be each band’s best record.)