Author: Bill Adams
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Rancid – …And Out Come The Wolves (5 x 7” vinyl set)
It sounds a little sensationalist to make this declaration but, of the albums which really sparked the punk revival of the 1990s (including – but certainly not limited to – Punk In Drublic by NOFX, Stranger Than Fiction by Bad Religion, Dookie by Green Day and Smash by the Offspring), it was Rancid who ran…
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In From Out Of Nowhere – Round Eye Emerges
Ask any rock fan – even the disciples of the deepest quadrants of the underground – and none will proclaim that Shanghai is a hub of rock excitement. The city never jumps to mind when one thinks of rock n’ roll; places like New York, Los Angeles, London, Cleveland, Austin, Seattle, Toronto, Detroit and Liverpool…
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Faith No More – Sol Invictus
The last time Faith No More released a new studio album (which was Album Of The Year in 1997, by the way), I was eighteen years old – it was literally half my lifetime ago. While it wasn’t the band’s best album (critics complained that the proliferation of side projects the band’s members were contributing…
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Louise Distras – Dreams From The Factory Floor LP
The problem with a lot of what is earnestly being marketed as punk rock in the twenty-first century is that much of it is fundamentally flawed: it’s made the way it is because that’s what’s expected. The expectation is that punk songs will come equipped with a confrontational attitude stacked on top of a progression…
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Anti-Flag: Against The Odds
It seems deliberately discordant in many ways, but some bands need to fight their battles on an uphill incline in order for them to produce their own best selves. These kinds of bands are the sort which need to feel as though they have something to prove because they’ve been knocked down or counted out,…
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Cusses – Here Comes The Rat EP
Before we attempt to pull Cusses‘ long-awaited new EP apart, I have two questions for listeners to consider: 1.) Do you like roller coasters and 2.) Why? For some, their love of rollercoasters springs from the rush of adrenaline which accompanies a fast ride; it’s a physical thing. For others though, the rush is far…
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Citizen Dick – Touch Me I’m Dick 7”
Freelance journalist and novelist Joshua Foer once opined that “Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. … If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound ro blend unmemorably into the next – and disappear.” It might seem unlikely, but Foer’s logic is also applicable to the music industry;…
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Fire Next Time – Cold Hands
After Weezer’s last album tanked so hard that it actually left a crater in its wake, even some of the most dogged emo fans had to concede that the genre might not be on stable ground anymore. How would they be able to deny it? When one of the biggest names in the genre’s stable…
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San Fermin – Jackrabbit
It might be considered an inconvenient truth, but some albums just aren’t the sort which immediately grab and hold imaginations – it can take a longer period of time for the seeds to germinate. San Fermin‘s second album is just like that; for me, it took a couple of listens to think it was anything…
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MAY DAY: another round of staff playlists
It’s been a few months but we’re back with another round of Hellbound staff playlists. Here are some current favourites and a taste of what our contributors have been listening to. Bill Adams Round Eye – s/t (Ripping Records): I can’t quit this album! A great compromise between western indie punk and eastern flavoring, this sounds quite unlike…