Tag: hard rock
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Demon Eye – Tempora Infernalia
Not to be confused with Demon Lung from Las Vegas, this Carolina quartet takes its name from a track offa Deep Purple’s Fireball record. Suffice to say, they’ve got a throwback, ’70s sound, albeit with a healthy dose of proto-doom mixed in. On their second album, the outfit serves up the tunage with shades of Priestess,…
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Royal Thunder – Crooked Doors
I actually wasn’t that big a fan of Royal Thunder’s debut, CVI, when I first heard it. I gave it a cursory listen, and quickly determined that they were a buncha Led Zeppelin wannabes playing Reverend Bizzare-length snoozers who threw in a female singer for added media attention. But then I saw them play live, on…
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Scott Weiland and The Wildabouts – Blaster
Love him or hate him, no one can claim that Scott Weiland isn’t adaptable. Since first appearing on the alt-rock radar with Stone Temple Pilots in 1993, the singer has changed his artistic focus with the same kind of regularity that most people have in changing their socks; he rolled through a series of compositional…
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Nightingale – Retribution
When most music lovers who favour the heavier side of things think of Sweden the first genre reference that comes to mind is Swedish Death Metal, but over the past 20-plus years bands and people like Opeth, Katatonia and Dan Swanö having been trying to change that. Returning to the ranks of the progressive, classic, technical and…
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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.…
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Sleep of Monsters – Produces Reason
Previously only available in Finland, and now unleashed on the world by Svart Records. The songs are well crafted, and while diverse, have a dark majesty all of their own. It owes something to vocalist Vil’s previous band, the splendidly named Babylon Whores, though I have to say Sleep of Monsters is a great name, and…
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Die Mannequin – Neon Zero
It’s been five years now since Die Mannequin smashed listeners over the head with their debut full-length album, Fino + Bleed, but one look at what’s gone down in that time proves that it was a long damned five years. In that time, singer Care Failure became Joe Dick II (sort of) in Hard Core…
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Opeth – Pale Communion
Pale Communion is a richly appointed collection of progressive rock that continues the approach of 2011’s Heritage, while refining and expanding the style that characterized that troubling (to some) transitional album. Everything on Pale Communion—the production, the material, the performances—hangs together more logically than on Heritage. The songs travel through candlelit corridors, sidestep into a…
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Rise Against – The Black Market
After illustrating that they were more than capable of moving forward beyond their melodic hardcore foundations with Appeal To Reason and Endgame, The Black Market proves that Rise Against still has some more ground that they’d like to break and a few boundaries they still want to push. Such creative testing is always a dicey…
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Crowned by Fire contest – Space Music for Cave People
While we were distracted by Canada Day celebrations up here in the hinterlands, a snarling beast from Los Angeles launched its latest global invasion campaign. That beast is called Crowned by Fire, the invasion campaign goes by the name Space Music for Cave People, and you can be among the next wave to succumb by winning…