There’s nothing I like better than being completely surprised by a random album sent to me by a label. Especially when you expected comedy albums and get a curveball mized in in the form of a music/comedy album. Especially when you actually end up really enjoying the album. Then especially when you find out the artist is from your hometown of Boston. Zach Sherwin’s Rap! is all of these things. Yes, it sounds a lot like Flight of...
While I heard a lot of people complain that 2016 was a really poor year for rock and all its associated sub-genres (punk, hardcore, hard rock, stoner rock, metal et c.), the only thing I can assume is that those critics simply weren’t listening. In fact; picking out just ten great albums this year was nearly fucking impossible; doing so forced me to leave out many albums, those by Fat White Family, Dandy Warhols, XIXA and Pup among them. It...
Editor’s note: There’s spectacular power in a simple list. It’s just so potentially affecting; there’s no pomp, no ceremony, no nonsense — all the power is just what’s there. That sense of power is what leapt to mind when Ground Control’s own Aging Punk Murray Thomas presented his list of the best albums released in 2016 to me as nothing more than a list of ten titles and about a sentence in the way of description for each. It was...
Let’s go ahead and call bullshit on the internet for trying to manufacture Shitty 2016 as a trend. This year was great for a number of reasons. One of these is the music that came out this year. New bands excelled and old ones outdid themselves. We apologize ahead of time for the lack of overlap with garbage other sites like Pitchfork are pushing. We can’t help it that we have better taste… Best albums of the year: 01. White...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the First Ditch Effort LP by NOFX. While the last few years may not have looked like the busiest for NOFX on the surface (yes, as every fan knows, four years lapsed between Self-Entitled and First Ditch Effort – the longest gap between new full-length albums in the band’s 33-year history together to date), to say that the band’s members sat fallow would be completely untrue. In fact, it could be...
The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism: The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume I by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman For being such a controversial writer, Chomsky’s writings have been surprisingly easy to obtain. After all, this isn’t soviet Russia we’re living in. That’s why one of the most surprising aspects of the Washington Connection is the very beginning where the authors detail exactly how this book was suppressed by its parent company due to its “unpatriotic” content....
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the In The Garden LP by Holy Sons. Even at first sight, those who are familiar with Holy Sons – the solo pet project of Grails drummer Emil Amos – will know that In The Garden is an important release for the artist. Why? Well, they’ll know it must be of particular importance; In The Garden is Holy Sons’ fourth album for Partisan, but it is the thirteenth to bear the project’s...
Mike Watt Ball-Hog or Tugboat? The juggernaut that is Mike Watt hasn’t always been the unstoppable force we know him as now. The death of his best friend and Minutemen comrade D. Boon made him a broken man, pondering what was next for him. On the documentary We Jam Econo, Watt chokes up when he thinks about D. Boon’s death. “That was a tough day for Watt,” he says. Mike Watt has certainly come a long way since his debut...
Breaking Bad The Final Season Hello readers, and welcome to the first ever edition of TV Party Tonight! Here at Ground Control, we’re known mostly for our impeccable music coverage, but as of late, we’ve ventured into impeccable literary coverage and now impeccable movie and TV coverage. We’re turning into the AV club, I suppose, except with a less-manageable website. Anyway, it’s not certain what route we will be taking with this column (whether we will be focusing more...
Bracket The Last Page It seems like Bracket’s career will always be as unappreciated and bittersweet as those characters they sing about in their songs. Or maybe they’ve been singing about themselves all along. Whatever the case, there’s a certain sad sweetness to their songs that’s undeniable. That and a tendency to contain some of the greatest melodies and harmonies ever recorded in punk rock. One would think that’s a recipe for success, but instead has turned out to be...