Given that heavy metal has remained an active genre now for over four decades, it's interesting to look at how the music has evolved over time. Compared with what came before it (Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and even Led Zeppelin are good examples), the music and...
There’s something pretty special about seeing a band just as they approach their peak. You know, at a time before they become too refined and still have a little roughness. For Metallica, that time was when I saw them in 1986 on tour with Ozzy Osbourne,...
Oh Dashboard, how many pre-teen break-ups did you nurse or nurture with your patent emo-shoegazer sound? With your grand total of five studio albums, half of which sported a sweet recorded-on-a-dime-store-tape deck sound, your mournful lyrics went after two moments...
Because it's been happening so much over the last few years, it has become reasonable to assume that it's easy for a band to reconvene or stage a comeback. How couldn't it be? The groundwork, name and mythos for the band has already been laid, it's just...
Since first appearing in 1991, Mountain Goats mastermind John Darnielle has discovered and crowned himself king of his own little corner of the subcultural landscape where form (in the context of recording media) has always taken a back seat to musical expression and...
One of the best, most fantastic things that can happen in music is when an ambitious idea goes awry. Take Curtains For You for example – in listening to the band's debut, What A Lovely Surprise To Wake Up Here, it's pretty plain to hear that the band is...
The Avett Brothers have a lot of explaining to do. After all, the band has spent the majority of its career building a fan base almost solely on touring, releasing albums independently (more like self-released, actually), and garnering little airplay on the radio....
Sometimes, after so many years gone and creative turns made, it becomes nearly impossible to discern where exactly a musician began his creative arc. In some cases, listeners simply come to expect a clean artistic slate upon the announcement of another album from some...
Ah, what a year 2009 was for music. By all accounts, the climate was a delicate one as the music industry sought to streamline itself in accommodation of a new, digital generation which meant re-tooling services, re-thinking promotional strategies and working out the...
It's hard to believe that it's been nineteen years since NoFX released The P.M.R.C. Can Suck On This (the second time) and, even at that, who could have known what it would lead to? That six-song 7” (which boasted a photo collage of Tammy Fay Bakker...