Along with "Who would win in a fight between The Incredible Hulk and Hulk Hogan?" and "How do they get cranes on top of half built skyscrapers?" there is only one other question that seems impossible to answer: "Is there anything that would make The Mail on Sunday worth buying?" And so, humble reader, I have decided to take it upon myself to find out if the release of Planet Earth, the new album from Prince, makes the embarrassment of taking a right wing turd of a Sunday paper to the counter and handing over money in return for it worthwhile. You see, The Mail on Sunday (and his shows at the O2 Arena) are the only ways for the common Brit to buy Planet Earth after Prince gave the license to the newspaper in exchange for £250,000 and Columbia decided this would make releasing it in the shops a waste of time and money and pulled it from the U.K. shelves. Oh, Prince! You crazy little man with a weird obsession with the color purple, always pulling japes on the recording industry! What ever will you do next? Write "Slave" on your face? To do this test I will … Read more
It was in 1994 at age thirteen that I first skipped a day of school and popped Rancid's Let's Go … Read more
Listening to Melt Banana carries a list of requirements: Deal with the vocals. Deal with annoying noises. If you can't … Read more
These reunions need to stop. Gorilla Biscuits? Cool. Bold? Okay. Bad Brains? No. Honestly, what was Beastie Boy Adam Yauch … Read more
Seeing Damnation A.D. for the first time in years at New Year's reunion in Syracuse a couple of years back … Read more
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Do you know who the Meat Puppets are, or have you ever wondered who the two long-haired guys that appeared on Nirvana’s Unplugged performance were? Like many people my age, I was introduced to the Meat Puppets by seeing the Kirkwood brothers perform their songs with Nirvana on MTV’s Unplugged way back in 1993 (Dear God has it really been 29 years since then) and then subsequently seeing their video for “Backwater” from their best selling album Too High To Die (hence the title of this biography), but even still I knew about them only a small bit (I knew their first records were on the legendary punk label SST, I knew they were not your typical punk / hardcore band, and I knew that those who loved them, really … Read more
Zeit·geist n. German. The spirit of the time; the taste and outlook characteristic of a period or generation. The Smashing Pumpkins' comeback album threatens to set itself up as a Serious Rock Statement about present-day societal ills, in the same vein as Jack White's totally hoary commentary about illegal immigration on the recent White Stripes single "Icky Thump." As a … Read more
In all likelihood you're fully aware of the Smashing Pumpkins history and 90's legacy; if you somehow don't, I recommend Wikipedia. But in short, this is the first album in seven years from Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin under the Smashing Pumpkins moniker. Both were in Zwan, and both performed on the other's respective solo disc. But since 2000, neither … Read more
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness changed the way I listened to music. Siamese Dream continues to do so. Machina is one of the best records I've ever heard. The news of the Smashing Pumpkins' abrupt return, more than half a decade later, was a big deal - a huge one in fact - and of course it brought with … Read more
Someone beats on sheet metal. A phone rings? White noise and feedback. Sounds from a long lost sci-fi B movie I think. Someone recorded the sounds from an alien spaceship's motherboard. A saxophone goes completely fucking berserk. An eerie, unrelenting din pervades everything. This is what I hear as I sit down to review Nonhorse's compact disc. Enter Haraam, Circle … Read more
Odious Mortem's website describes their sound as employing "technical, dark, and experimental aspects of the death metal genre." When I think death metal I think Nile, Suffocation, maybe even Slayer. Odious Mortem are what Slayer might sound like if you replaced Kerry King with a jet engine. Vaguely reminiscent of early Fear Factory and Dillinger Escape Plan, for the most … Read more
Internal Affairs is a band that embodies what hardcore should truly be about. The music is fast, energetic, and pissed off. The lyrics are honest to the point of being blunt - hardcore used to be about speaking your mind, somewhere along the way most bands forgot this. And finally, the band puts on one heck of a performance, inviting … Read more
Since about the year 2000, Tim Armstrong, Lars Frederickson and pretty much that has anything to do with Rancid has pretty much been a horrible venture, looking your way The Viking, Transplants and the last Rancid album. Prior to listening to this album the only conation I had about The Aggrolites was that they were Tim Armstrong's backing band for … Read more
Over the past decade or so "toughguy" hardcore has gotten more obnoxious by the second, but one of the bands that spawned this shitstorm, Madball, always had at least one thing going for them. This special ingredient was the combination of the pure catchiness of their riffs and their surprisingly tight sense of rhythm. Even though I am enough of … Read more
When Hank III goes on tour, he leaves no stone unturned, playing anywhere that would have him: cities, towns, hamlets, burgs and more than a few Native American reservations. This had quite an impact on Hank's then touring guitarist, ex of the Jesus Lizard and future Tomahawk co-founder Duane Denison. The music he would hear while on the reservations left … Read more
You know what I liked when I was in high school? Actually, you can probably guess this one. I liked The Smashing Pumpkins. You probably did too. I know for damn sure the Distortions did. Their Myspace page lists them as indie/shoegaze/post-punk, but I'm not seeing it. I guess it's possible I don't know what those terms mean, but if … Read more
It is real nice that Rocky Votolato's A Brief History is available again. With the original label - Your Best Guess Records - going the way of the Dodo, this underappreciated gem went out of print. Second Nature, thankfully, has the foresight to make this available for people again, and just in time for the release of Votolato's forthcoming new … Read more
A Brief History is Rocky Votolato's second full-length, originally released in 2000 after his hard-to-find self-titled debut in 1999. At twenty minutes long, it's really more of an extended EP, but then, the 'brief' in the title should be taken quite literally. Newcomers to Votolato's alt-country/Americana sound might be surprised to backtrack through his releases and come across this, helpfully … Read more
The comparisons are going to be made so let's just get them out of the way right now. As Against Me! becomes the new Hot Water Music, Fake Problems might just become the new Against Me!. Maybe. Yes, Fake Problems hails from Florida, a few hours north of the aforementioned bands and yes, they take a no frills approach to … Read more
The artist of the album I reviewed made it difficult to include his name in the opening sentence without thinking people would disregard the entire article, because this is his ninth studio album following three releases just two years ago in 2005. Yup, Ryan Adams released yet another album entitled Easy Tiger. It hardly feels like it's been two years … Read more
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