Tag: review
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Neal Morse in Toronto, April 2018
An Evening with Neal Morse @ The Great Hall – 21 April 2018 This weekend is one of unadulterated progressive rock for Toronto. On Friday, supergroup Sons of Apollo levelled the Opera House. Tonight sees Toronto host esteemed prog rocker Neal Morse. Tomorrow, a sold-out Danforth will marvel at prog royalty Steven Wilson. In the centre…
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Hallux – Hallux
It would be fair to describe Hallux as a trend-free band. Hallux are a three-piece in the classic vein of Motorhead circa The Three Amigos line-up (Lemmy, Philthy Phil and Fast Eddie), and like the ‘Head, they keep their music lean and mean. Theirs is a brand of crusty, anti-authoritarian thrash metal, inspired by the likes of…
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The Second Coming of Heavy Chapter VIII (Ride the Sun/The Trikes split)
While I don’t think there’s been a bad installment in Ripple Music’s Second Coming of Heavy series, I’ve enjoyed certain editions more than others. These splits are usually best when both bands are of a similar vein—and from the pre-release singles, I would hafta say that Californians Ride the Sun and Germans The Trikes are…
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My Silent Wake – There Was Death
My Silent Wake play the genre of metal known as death/doom, a genre I believe is slowly picking up in popularity. The music is slow, emotional, weighty, heavy as a dwarf star. Heavy not just in the sense of riffs, but in emotion and depth. Two bands that form a good touchstone for this album,…
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Ford Madox Ford – This American Blues LP
Remember a couple of decades ago when, against some fairly long odds, The Blasters managed to cross-wire punk rock and Americana/roots music? The results were pretty cool – the group actually did manage to break onto the popular radar for a minute (with some help from Quentin Tarantino and the soundtrack from From Dusk Til…
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Limb – Saboteurs of the Sun
It’s always great to hear a band progress and grow organically. Limb’s song-writing has improved massively. Saboteurs of the Sun (a fine title by the way) has excellent catchy songs that form a cohesive and complementary whole as an album. Limb have moved to territory previously occupied by Hawkwind, Monster Magnet and Mastodon, displaying imagination and…
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Sleep – The Sciences
Those sneaky bastards! After being my most-anticipated album for the past two or three years in a row, Sleep finally released their first full-length of new material in 20 years secretly, with no advanced fanfare, on 4/20. Because of course. The Sciences spans 53 minutes, and finally sees a proper studio recording of long-time live-set…
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Hashteroid – self-titled
I gotta hand it to this Vancouver outfit—as far as stoner band name puns go, Hashteroid is a pretty good one. But if you’re looking for Weedeater and Bongzilla worship from this trio’s debut, you might be mistaken. These guys take a faster-paced, punkier approach to stoner rock, more along the lines of The Shrine,…
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Bang – Best of Bang
Back in the early 70’s, it wasn’t unusual for a heavy rock band to score a major-label deal, release two to three albums, and then disappear. But thanks to the powers of modern technology, many such artists have achieved cult status, from Jerusalem to Leaf Hound, Sir Lord Baltimore to Captain Beyond. One other such…
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Vamos – 1,2,3 LP
The problem with every great music revival is that, as energizing and exciting as it might be, there’s a certain safety and security in knowing that the ideas involved have worked before and can work again in a walk – if enough people believe in it. Such thought processes have worked well several times over…