Salvo

Salvo is a new heavy metal publication from veteran music journalist Kim Kelly. Founded in response to the lack of outlets for high-quality, thoughtful metal journalism, Salvo features in-depth, longform interviews and artist profiles on both established metal legends and the best of the underground. It's a shot across the bow, and a testament to the enduring love we all share for this complex, global, ever-evolving genre. Heavy metal is art, and it deserves to be treated with care and respect.

Kim Kelly got her start as a music journalist when she was 15 years old, and has since written about metal for everyone from Decibel, Metal Maniacs, Terrorizer, and Metalsucks to the New York Times, NPR, and Pitchfork. Throughout her long career in the metal world, Kelly has also worked as a touring merch person, a roadie, a publicist, and a promoter; in January 2019, she launched Black Flags Over Brooklyn, the first explicitly antifascist metal festival in U.S. history. She also spent five years as the heavy metal editor at Noisey, VICE's former music and culture site, before striking out on her own in 2019.

While many who follow her work now are more familiar with her labor reporting and her critically acclaimed 2022 book, FIGHT LIKE HELL: The Untold History of American Labor, Kelly sold her soul to rock'n'roll long ago. Salvo is a new project, but it is also a return to form for a lifelong hesher who has, quite frankly, missed writing about metal. Those who have appreciated Kelly's decades of coverage of the extreme metal underground and championing of marginalized artists will find much to their taste here; those who think it is somehow preferable (let alone possible) to "keep politics out of metal" are welcome to keep on walking. If you are a false, do not entry: you will find no clickbait, no pink slime, no regurgitated press releases or soulless soundbites here. Thank you for supporting independent metal media!