Tag: punk
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Coheed and Cambria – In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3
Sometimes there’s just no question or doubt that, when it was originally made, an album wasn’t intended to appear on a particular format. A perfect example can be found in the vinyl reissue of Coheed and Cambria‘s sophomore album, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3. While the sound is great, even the most devoted fans…
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Hunters – Hands on Fire
From the very first time I heard Hunters‘ debut full length album, I was in love. The grainy, gritty street-punk-meets-grunge mixture produced by the band touched every single pleasure center in my brain. Derek Watson’s guitar growled just the right way and Izzy Almeida’s vocals smoothed the hardened, angry burrs in my mind with a…
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The Melvins – Hold It In
The problem which tends to spring up whenever two bands team up and pool their creative energy for an album is that neither band wants to be outshone and be seen as “the group who bent to [insert the name of other contributing act here].” It’s not exactly an ego trip, just that nobody wants…
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Death From Above 1979 – The Physical World
In the name of complete disclosure, I must confess that I wasn’t the biggest fan of Death From Above 1979 on their first trip through the pop music ranks. What the band was playing at in their first go ’round was just too canny, calculated, competant and superficial for me; it played like punk geared…
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Gob – Apt. 13
As of this writing, it has been seven years since Gob‘s last album of new material came out. That’s a pretty long time to go with no new material for any band who likes to be seen as an enduring, creative entity but, for a pop-punk band like Gob, an absence so long might as…
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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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Corrosion of Conformity – IX
Since the original/core members of Corrosion of Conformity decided to carry on sans Pepper Keenan they’ve been on a tear. 2012 saw their “comeback” self-titled album. Then came the Eye for an Eye reissue and Megalodon EP. Now just in time for Summer, Reed Mullin, Woody Weatherman and Mike Dean deliver unto us a new…
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The Shrine – Bless Off
I was pretty impressed with these guys when they opened for Red Fang last month. While they’re not reinventing the wheel, they sure know how to roll it, bringing down some brief blasts of heavy vintage tuneage. It’s almost like one of those semi-obscure heavy bands from the early 70s (Dust, Bang, Gun, take your…
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Mutation – Error 500
By Bill Adams Iggy Pop was once quoted as saying that the sound The Stooges were aiming for in their early days was “something monolithic – something loud and annoying.” It worked of course; The Stooges made sounds which were loud and annoying and ended up laying the groundwork for an entire sub-genre of rock…
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Black Flag – What The…
By BIll Adams With all the lawsuits, controversy and other such nonsense surrounding the name iconography of Black Flag bubbling up to the surface lately (the short version is that guitarist and SST Records owner Greg Ginn recently has tried to sue the members of FLAG, then he threw singer Ron Reyes out of his…