After so many years and releases (since Supersexy Swingin' Sounds – at least) that have seen Rob Zombie continue to mutate his metal into some permutation of ghoulish electro-goth, the question of whether the singer would find his way back to more real-time music had become an increasingly valid one. In the last ten years particularly, even when Zombie has polished his metal edge (Educated Horses), it has always been coupled with an appraisal of his cybernetic one in order...

There are few things more tantalizing in modern rock than a songwriter that rips a hole in the fabrics of both time and taste, stands outside them and makes a sound that could have been produced yesterday as easily as it could have been made one, two, three or four decades ago. Could that be called timeless work? Sure – but more accurate would be to say that, no matter when the record in question was released, it would have...

It's difficult to imagine that there might be anyone on Earth more genuinely happy with where he's at in life than Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker (aka USS) singer/guitarist Ash Buchholz. While he and turntablist/hypeman Jason Parsons may have started making noise under the name Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker in 2007, the notice has really been on the rise of late, and the increased exposure has been a huge inspiration to the band. “I decided what I wanted about five or six years...

Funny thing about the stylistic disparity that accompanies gender in rock n' roll, while men will curse and bitch an unhinged blue streak about the injustices perpetrated on them by the fairer sex and done so with platinum-coated success for decades (just look what it did for Disturbed), women have simply endured the trespasses and foibles of men – either because convention dictates it or the option of playing the femme fatale is just more appealing than the angry alternative....

I saw My Brightest Diamond a year ago in the Hotel Café with a crowd of about fifty people, which turned out to be a very nice and decidedly indie-urban-outfitters-flannel-shirt-wearing kind of night. This was kind of the same thing except with more like seven hundred people dressed like that. So this is how it went down: when the band came out they were all wearing black and white and the stage was set with ladders and balloons that were...

Over the last few years, as economies have flagged and cast into question the futures of so many people, it has become very common for people to conveniently “forget” about the debts and favors they owe to others. It's easy enough to cite distraction or disinterest as more and more people look evermore out for number one. Because of that, the world has become a colder place but it's reassuring to know that, when the chips are really down, people...