While it's inevitable for everyone, age is almost invariably least kind to metal bands. Because the music is so (some would say proudly) aggressive and the players that make it undergo such spectacular exertions making it, it shouldn't be surprising that the...
Sometimes I just want to be entertained. As much as I love going to hot, cramped, shithole venues that reek of body odor and beer, and having my ears assaulted with screaming guitars and blood-curling screams of death, I admit that sometimes it's cool to hit a big...
Some bands are just unable to hide when they haven't figured out how to articulate that thing which has captured their imagination and, as good as a record might be, the band simply sees it as another stepping stone in a vast work in progress. Don't get the...
It's raining in Pomona. The blocks around the Glass House are populated with shuttered businesses and craters where buildings once stood. One of my companions relates how another venue used to be right where a fenced-off hole now sits just across the street from...
Over the last eleven years and five albums, …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead has evolved from purveyors of the densest, most martially anthemic rock n' roll on the planet into thematic and delicately layered musical dramatists of a sort the world...
Sometimes the most gratifying and exciting creative turns a band can make are not the big ones. Sometimes it is the tiny tweaks that crop up along the way – rather than the grandiose departures in form or style – that re-ignite the fire and end up...
“Wait – what?! No.” Those three seemingly incoherent words will be the first that run through the minds of any long-time Soundgarden or Audioslave fan as “Part Of Me” – the lead-off track from Chris Cornell's new solo effort...
The word ‘one man band’ has the nasty habit of bringing to mind Dick Van Dyke a la Mary Poppins from 1964. Some guy in a pimped-out barbershop quartet suit with a drum strapped to his back, a harmonica strung across his face, and cymbals strapped somewhere...
For many of us, this is something we’ve fantasized about of for years. A tour with two bands that have a similar fanbase, but in all actuality, have almost nothing in common, and for them to share a stage on the same night just seems like a close-out deal at Best...
Although I had already hit six shows in the weeks leading up to Fucked Up, this was the one gig I was really looking forward to. After a friend had turned me on to the band a couple of years ago I found myself listening to Fucked Up's records over and over again,...