Author: Bill Adams
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The Melvins – Hold It In (Vinyl Vlog)
It might sound a little deliberately contrary but, in the current “more is more” music industry landscape (where more variant releases of albums on more formats with different tracklists are the norm), the biggest, longest variant of an album isn’t always the best one. The vinyl incarnation of Hold It In – The Melvins’ twenty-fourth…
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No Simple Highway – A Cultural History of The Grateful Dead
I would never have considered myself the ideal critic to review Peter Richardson’s No Simple Highway – or any book about The Grateful Dead, for that matter. Growing up, it wasn’t so much that I wasn’t interested in The Dead (I listened to lots of different kinds of music), it’s just that the band wasn’t…
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The Ramones – s/t (vinyl reissue)
How long does a band require in order to change the world? How fast can they affect that change? The Stooges managed to change a lot (in the styles which were called the norm in rock) in their time together; in their first seven-year run, they laid out the groundwork that much of both punk…
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NOFX – Punk In Drublic (vinyl reissue)
One look at the list of albums which came out in 1994 reveals that it was a red letter year for punk rock (Offspring’s Smash, Green Day released Dookie, Bad Religion released Stranger Than Fiction and NOFX released Punk In Drublic), but what’s even more impressive in NOFX’s case is that Punk In Drublic‘s success…
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Underworld – Dubnobasswithmyheadman (20th Anniversary vinyl reissue)
There aren’t many occasions when the artistic population of an entire musical genre is able to point to a single album and say it pretty much inspired everything that would matter in and about the genre thereafter, but that’s actually possible when it comes to dubnobasswithmyheadman – Underworld‘s third album. Dubnobasswithmyheadman didn’t just break the…
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Best of the rest – 2014 (part 2): re-dos and other odds & ends
Here we offer the last of Hellbound’s 2014 heavy mostly metal year-in-review coverage. We’re wrapping up with some of the older records effectively revisited last year, Bill Adam’s best vinyl picks, and some random selections highlighting things we particularly appreciated, regardless of genre. BEST RE-DOS (Reissues, re-recordings…) SONATA ARCTICA, Ecliptica Revisited: 15th Anniversary Edition I usually…
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Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble – The Complete Epic Recordings Collection
Some Hellbound readers may see this review of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s new box set on the site and be confused: “Stevie Ray Vaighan’s not metal,” they may scream, “he’s a blues guitarist!” This is true. SRV IS a blues guitarist (and a damned good one), but his work garners mention on Hellbound for a few…
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BEST OF 2014 – our contributors have their say (individual lists)
How did we come up with our collective top 20 metal albums of the year? Our contributors sent in their lists, we did a little math, and well, you can see the result (congratulations, Pallbearer!). But if you’re curious, here are our individual lists, full of commonalities but also revealing Hellbounders’ wide-ranging tastes. Thanks for a 2014…
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Xerxes – Collision Blonde
The first lesson that Xerxes‘ sophomore full-length teaches us is that, if you’re going to start something, you’d better see it through. That’s definitely the lesson this critic learned; when I first put my copy of Collision Blonde on my turntable, I thought I had a good idea of what to expect when the needle…
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Death From Above 1979 and Old Lines – last minute xmas vinyl suggestions
Two last minute vinyl picks for your holiday gift-giving list, from Bill Adams, editor-in-chief of Ground Control Magazine. Death From Above 1979 The Physical World (Last Gang/Warner Brothers) On The Physical World, it’s impossible to miss the difference between Death From Above as they existed in 2005 and this new, re-energized incarnation of the band.…