Heathen Harvest was an

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

blog devoted to

music criticism ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' defines music criticism as "the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres". In this sense, it is a branch of mus ...

, music news, and interviews. It focused on

underground Underground most commonly refers to: * Subterranea (geography), the regions beneath the surface of the Earth Underground may also refer to: Places * The Underground (Boston), a music club in the Allston neighborhood of Boston * The Underground (S ...

and

post-industrial music Industrial music is a form of experimental music which emerged in the 1970s. In the 1980s, industrial splintered into a range of offshoots, sometimes collectively named post-industrial music. This list details some of these offshoots, including f ...

, including

ambient Ambient or Ambiance or Ambience may refer to: Music and sound * Ambience (sound recording), also known as atmospheres or backgrounds * Ambient music, a genre of music that puts an emphasis on tone and atmosphere * ''Ambient'' (album), by Moby * ...

, heavy metal,

gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

, and

industrial music Industrial music is a genre of music that draws on harsh, mechanical, transgressive or provocative sounds and themes. AllMusic defines industrial music as the "most abrasive and aggressive fusion of rock and electronic music" that was "initiall ...

. The site, which was established in 2003, was one of the longest-running webzines of its kind and has been dubbed "one of the leading online magazines for post-industrial music" and "the internet's foremost authority on

neofolk Neofolk, also known as apocalyptic folk, is a form of experimental music blending elements of folk and industrial music, which emerged in punk rock circles in the 1980s. Neofolk may either be solely acoustic or combine acoustic folk instrumenta ...

." The website temporarily closed in June 2010 but was relaunched in July 2011 at a different domain. The staff stopped publishing new content in August 2019, without explanation, and by January 2020, the domain had expired.

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. ''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 San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

to pursue a quieter life away from the city in

Trinity County, California Trinity County is a List of counties in California, county located in the northwestern portion of the U.S. state of California. Trinity County is rugged, mountainous, heavily forested, and lies along the Trinity River (California), Trinity River ...

and wanted to share his

high-school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

influences through

with the

Radical Faeries The Radical Faeries are a loosely affiliated worldwide network and countercultural movement seeking to redefine queer consciousness through secular spirituality. Sometimes deemed a form of modern Paganism, the movement also adopts elements from an ...

community. In December 2006, the site design was overhauled and the magazine began publishing on a bi-monthly basis. 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. 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". 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".

Closure, relaunch, and final closure

In June 2010, Thorn announced that issue 84 of ''Heathen Harvest'' was to be the final issue, 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 A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

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 Domain may refer to: Mathematics *Domain of a function, the set of input values for which the (total) function is defined **Domain of definition of a partial function **Natural domain of a partial function **Domain of holomorphy of a function * Do ...

''heathenharvest.org''. The site worked mostly with digital review media and became more selective over what it reviewed. The old site, ''heathenharvest.com'', remained online for archival purposes until 2013. In early 2020, ''heathenharvest.org'' went offline. A user on the

power electronics Power electronics is the application of electronics to the control and conversion of electric power. The first high-power electronic devices were made using mercury-arc valves. In modern systems, the conversion is performed with semiconducto ...

''Special Interests'' forum relayed that the site had been shut down intentionally. There was no official announcement of the closure. An archive of the site's posts made between 2011 and 2016 remains online at the old Heathen Harvest

References

External links

The Heathen Harvest Periodical (now offline)Archive of the old Heathen Harvest blog site
{{Authority control Music review websites Online music magazines published in the United States Internet properties established in 2003 Radical Faeries