It is the first week of March, and that clarion marks a coming storm: it's the In Like a Lion issue, our yearly highlight of the heaviest music. For all who love hardcore, black metal, and doom—this week's squall carries a torrent of blood.

A storm is a manner of Earth's self-expression. Colliding pressures tear down barriers between potential and kinetic energies. Feelings caught turning themselves inside-out. A great storm has the same effect on me as a great piece of music—a mirror held up to my billowing feelings and thundering thoughts.

Noise has always been electric. Before we held the sky's secret power, we considered thunderheads in the distance. Jellyfish clouds teetered thousands of feet above town-less prairie. Lightning sprang down in yellow bullets, so close we could play cat’s cradle with the trails.

*tornado siren in distance* *clears throat into mic, takes reading glasses out of sweat-soaked khakis*

Once again, I had a large diatribe written out, raging against the corporations of the world on behalf of me, the beleaguered laborer, and once again, the news of today knocked some sense into me. I decided to tone it down a bit.