While 2012 has already proven to be another red letter year for punk and hardcore thanks to a series of excellent releases by NOFX, Gallows, METZ, OFF!, Pennywise and more, some young punks must have been hoping for an album which would come from a brand new band who...
Forgetting the fact that there's an inverted cross on the album's cover and the fact that the CD case is made of black pleather, something about listening to MellowHype's new album feels taboo. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Numbers feels...
Sometimes when a new band comes along, their music is just so affecting that it's like they grabbed you by the ears, slammed you face-first into the table at which you were sitting and then kissed you hard on the mouth while you were still trying to collect...
Has a record ever been able to blow a chill through you as you're listening to it? Such ideas get thrown around a lot in the press, but it rarely happens that a sound feels genuinely dangerous. It is rare to get the sort of excitement that comes from hearing...
It has often been said that change is inevitable in all things including music, but the first half of Coheed And Cambria's Afterman concept album proves that not all change is good. Now shockingly far from the mathy metal powerhouse that the band was when they...
As digital production techniques have proceeded to make it easier and easier to make larger, more luxurious and ambitious ideas come to life on an increasingly modest budget, the idea of simplicity has become missing in pop more and more. That so many artists have...
It feels awkward to just blurt it out, but Mo Kenney has achieved a craft on the level with artists including Ani DiFranco, Stevie Nicks, Jolie Holland and Neko Case on her self-titled debut. Such a statement feels awkward because the album in question is her first;...
Hola junky!Y'see what I did there? I was speakin' Mexican – folks like it when you show a little worldly knowledge right? 'At's what'ey tell me, anyway. But who cares? Here we go again, an' here's me wit' anotha great bag o'...
Both fans and critics can say what they like about KISS, but the basic truth is that the band has never really changed over the last forty years. Be they masked, unmasked, sporting an all-original lineup or a new conglomerate featuring new players, there has always...
The thing about rhetoric in the music business is that it is as important to the success of a record as the instruments which are played on it – but while the instruments can be taken at face value, the rhetoric needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Why? Well,...