Recent reviews

Our latest album reviews, featuring the records we've most enjoyed (or not) over the past few weeks.

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Browse our album reviews according to score: Highest (9.5/10 or more) or Lowest (2/10 or less)

Blitzen Trapper

Wild Mountain Nation
LidKerCow Ltd. (2007)

When I'm on a road trip, I get this undeniable urge to listen to All-American music. We're talking CCR and we're talking Skynyrd and Tom Petty, and we're talking Violent Femmes and Pavement and Modest Mouse. Something about that western scenery. Just like you can hear the British in an Ozzy or Kinks' record, you can hear the American in everything these bands put out. They exhibit varying levels of weirdness (basically they got weirder as time progressed), but they share a certain kind of melody writing, a certain kind of fuck-off fun. The All-American Club isn't very exclusive - that's part of its charm - but we can tell who's faking it, and the fakers are most definitely out. I want to extend a conditional invitation to Blitzen Trapper. Blitzen Trapper will get their full privileges when they stop sounding like The [sucky] Shins. There, I said it. Look, sounding like The Shins doesn't even really work for The Shins. And for this band, which is more talented, more adventurous, and honestly more interesting, it's a step in the wrong direction. Wild Mountain Nation swings back and forth between the unfortunate Chutes Too Narrow region and the way more … Read more

Black Dice

Roll Up / Drool
Paw Tracks (2007)

Black Dice are ridiculous; they have the spottiest and most transformative of musical histories even when compared the most dysfunctional … Read more

Last of the Believers

Paper Ships Under a Burning Bridge
Independent (2007)

Paper Ships Under a Burning Bridge is the debut offering from Last of the Believers, a new project spearheaded by … Read more

Rocky Votolato

The Brag and Cuss
Barsuk (2007)

Rocky Votolato has been a busy man of late. He released last year's Makers to wide acclaim and only just … Read more

Lymbyc Systym

Love Your Abuser
Mush (2007)

The limbic system controls a fairly large part of the human brain. It helps us get aroused, remembers important facts, … Read more

Cruel Hand

Without a Pulse
6131 (2007)

It's time to play the ex-member/members of game again. This time we have members and former members of the Maine … Read more

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One from the archives

Various Artists

Punk Goes Crunk
Fearless (2008)

The Punk Goes series has been running since the start of this century, beginning with metal and running through pop, acoustic, the 80's, the 90's, and now culminating with crunk. There have been some good renditions over the years: A.F.I.'s "My Michelle," Reach the Sky's "Sometimes," Coalesce's "Blue Collar Lullaby," and High the Lights' "Hey Jealousy" come to mind. On the other hand, there have also been several atrocities: the entire Punk Goes 80's disc, Slick Shoes' "Candy," Mae's "March of the Pig," Cartel's "Wonderwall" and many more. So what happened when punk met crunk? First off, the "crunk" label of this covers album isn't exactly fitting. Sure, there is a Lil' Jon song and an Outkast song. But there are also covers of Will Smith, Akon, Rihanna, The Roots, … Read more

More album reviews

Loser Life

I Have Ghosts and I Have Ghosts
Magic Bullet (2007)

Loser Life comes from a place called Bakersfield, California, an area the band has numerously described as "the armpit of California." This is what Loser Life is influenced by, and the band's sound makes their pleasant description seem all too realistic. Loser Life is dirty, grimy, filthy, and fucking pissed off at their little hole in the world, and the … Read more

The End

Elementary
Relapse (2007)

For anyone unfamiliar, The End is a Canadian band that have established themselves as a math metal powerhouse, similar to a more controlled and brooding The Dillinger Escape Plan. Within Dividia and the Transfer Trachea EP were intense, frantic and at times almost impenetrable. Someone should have gotten to them earlier, because with three and a half years between albums, … Read more

Sleep Terror

Probing Tranquility
Feeling Faint (2006)

Luke Jaeger is a one-man metal making machine; Sleep Terror is his solo project and musical outlet. Fifteen staggeringly technical tracks make up Probing Tranquility, but the album barely surpasses half an hour. I'm no metal aficionado, but I am an avid guitar player; however, it hardly takes a musician to sense the complexity of this release. Blast beats mesh … Read more

Ceremony

Scared People
Bridge Nine (2007)

One of the better bands currently existing in hardcore returns with a new EP, their first release since signing to Bridge Nine Records. This time around Ceremony shows they've got more in their songwriting arsenal than just lightning fast demonstrations of hate a la Infest. Showing even more variance in writing than their last release, Scared People shows what promise … Read more

Fucked Up

Year of the Pig
Whats Your Rupture? (2007)

Fucked Up are on intimate terms with ambiguity. It's a rare virtue, since as a rule rock bands tend to seek the comfort of ham-fisted moralism or an apathy either hard-partying or self-pitying. But like Sylvia Plath circa Ariel or the earliest punk bands, Fucked Up stamp their works with an intimidating and sometimes uncomfortable symbolic resonance, leaving it to … Read more

Deathspell Omega

Fas- Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum
Norma Evangelium Diaboli (2007)

Wow, I haven't been keeping up with Deathspell Omega. I was lucky to end up with a promo copy of the Kénôse EP from 2005 and I've been hooked on Deathspell Omega ever since. Fas- Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum is supposedly the second installment in a trilogy - Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice being part one - and it marks … Read more

Bad Religion

New Maps of Hell
Epitaph (2007)

Bad Religion may not need any introduction due to their notoriety in punk, hardcore, and various independent and even some mainstream circles, but there are several impressive facts that New Maps of Hell bring to light with its release to the public. One, Bad Religion is, minus a few break ups in the eighties, closing in on thirty years of … Read more

Mark Ronson

Version
Columbia (2007)

To steal from the classic Ben Stiller movie Zoolander, "Mark Ronson is so hot right now!" After producing the latest Amy Winehouse album, Lily Allen's debut, and the best bits of an otherwise awful Robbie Williams album, the New York based, London born hip-hop club DJ turned producer can do no wrong. And now, he's decided to rope in the … Read more

Goon Moon

Licker's Last Leg
Ipecac (2007)

Let's not beat around the bush. Licker's Last Leg is the album Queens of the Stone Age should have put out instead of the bands recent Era Vulgaris. Why the comparison? Well, there's the obvious one founder/vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Chris Goss has long been the unofficial fifth Queens of the Stone Age-er for quite some time, appearing on or producing every album … Read more

Art in Manila

Set the Woods on Fire
Saddle Creek (2007)

With the indefinite hiatus of Azure Ray, the duo of Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink ventured into the lives of solo recording artists with different intentions. Maria offered up her 11:11 album, which was more or less a continuation of the established Azure Ray sound, focusing on the vaguely folk indie pop which had won her over her with the … Read more

The Starting Line

Direction
Virgin (2007)

I'm sure most people reading our reviews here at Scene Point Blank won't care about clicking on this album. The Starting Line is a pretty "mainstream" band; not something the readers would jump to buy, or even care to listen to at all. I know you're thinking that there was that slew of early 2000's Drive-Thru pop-punk bands that were … Read more

Lucinda Williams

West
Lost Highway (2007)

Ever wonder what it sounds like when a bunch of people are falling asleep while recording an album? Or how about the sound of an artist totally giving up on their craft, but still making music? Well, you're in luck because Lucinda Williams has released West, an album that does all of that and more! Lucinda Williams has previously been … Read more

Baroness / Unpersons

A Grey Sigh in a Flower Husk
At A Loss (2007)

Baroness and Unpersons team up for A Grey Sigh in a Flower Husk. For Baroness, it serves as a precursor to their forthcoming album for Relapse Records and as a send off for former guitarist Tim Loose. For Unpersons, this split serves as some people's - like mine - first exposure to the band. The two bands have vastly different … Read more

Every Second Counts

Every Second Counts
6131 (2007)

Here's a band from Southern California that I'm not familiar with, and for the style they play I find that odd. There hasn't been any mention of them on messageboards or any bulletins on Myspace about them being "good dudes" who are "backed hard." It says on the one sheet that Every Second Counts tours but they have probably never … Read more

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Browse our album reviews according to score: Highest (9.5/10 or more) or Lowest (2/10 or less)

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