At the end of the day, when the books finally get opened on bassist Mark Sandman and his band Morphine, it will be found that while rock history is dotted with bands that made a tremendous impact but seemed to come from nowhere, Morphine set a whole new template for...
For the last nineteen years, Converge has led a modest but respectable career mixing metal and hardcore (someone once went so far as to call it 'Grindcore') and has amassed a decent following for their efforts – there's no denying that – but...
No matter how open-minded a fan of any given band might be, there are moments when one has to be skeptical about their output – particularly when that output is an album specially dedicated to covers. Think about it; why would a group decide to stop in its tracks...
There will always be ongoing debates among fans about how it came to be that a particular band reached one creative consensus or another that ultimately yielded a significant artistic change in style but, sometimes, it's much more simple than anyone would like to...
For some bands, the loss of a key member – say, the singer, for example – would qualify as a devastating blow to morale and place the group's future into question. With the singer would go an identifying, recognizable trait from the band and the loss...
There is no hard and fast set of rules for how a band creates music, each one does it differently. When it comes time to make a new record, some bands consciously go out of their way to block out a pre-determined (by them) set of dates and times during which the...
As any stand-up comedian can tell you, it takes a lot of work to be funny. Social commentary and criticism – no matter how superficial – require a precarious balance of obviously out-sized imagery and prescient truth in order to get over with audiences...
In every music genre, there are a few records that mark time and mark a shift in values that would forevermore be felt and seen in the style and sound of that genre – how it's perceived, what it might mean to the people listening, what it means from both a...
Some sounds are just universally comforting. Whether it's a melody that reminds a listener of an easier time or it's a chord progression that invokes feelings of nostalgia, there are some songs that will cause a listener to heave a sigh of relief involuntarily...
Some sounds are just universally comforting. Whether it's a melody that reminds a listener of an easier time or it's a chord progression that invokes feelings of nostalgia, there are some songs that will cause a listener to heave a sigh of relief involuntarily...