It's funny to see how punk rock has mutated over the last few years, and look at what it has become. Since (just say, for the sake of argument) 2008, the genre has really seemed to both regain its identity in some communities, but become far more diffuse in others – but the results have always been mixed, regardless. In the case of OFF!, for example, hardcore punk has proven it can still be a virile force to be reckoned...
Sometimes there is just no rational explanation for events when they occur. In those cases, the bottom line is that whether one accepts or rejects the fact that the event even occurred is irrelevant – the only thing that matters is how one is able to digest the information. A textbook example of the “either deal with it or don't” phenomenon came along twelve years ago when Ben Folds Five just suddenly blipped out of existence without much warning; while...
After OFF! shattered every expectation that anyone could have had of them with their First Four EPs release, the band found itself in the predicament of trying to figure out what to do next. Doing the exact same thing and pointing fingers at the punks in the crowd as they had with their first release would have just gotten them on the fast track to becoming just another nostalgia act, so something had to change – but the question was,...
While it might not have come across through the numbers at which the band's last album sold, the inconvenient truth of the matter is that Green Day has been in a pretty tough spot creatively ever since American Idiot took off like wildfire eight years ago. After that explosion, the band had exactly no idea what to do next as they tried to play to an audience of unprecedented (by punk rock standards) magnitude but came up short of expectation...
Howzitgoin' ya junky reprobates youse? I was walkin' up Avenue B the otha day an' thought thit mebbe – jus' mebbe – ya might be lookin' fer a new hit awready! 'At's right, I thought aboucha, but don' go gettin' all emotional or nothin' – I jus' figgered ya might awready be itchin' even though the SWAG I laid on ya las' week was pretty sweet. So I got onna stick an' I started lookin' an' I foun'a whole bunch...
"So is it better than their last one? Or is it worse?” asked a friend and fellow fan when I told him I was reviewing the new NOFX record. It might sound crass, but the question is valid in the eyes of some fans; over the last little while, NOFX has experimented with a bunch of new ideas and different angles to their music. Some of them have been great and some of them haven't, but fans have supported the...
So is it better than their last one? Or is it worse?” asked a friend and fellow fan when I told him I was reviewing the new NOFX record. It might sound crass, but the question is valid in the eyes of some fans; over the last little while, NOFX has experimented with a bunch of new ideas and different angles to their music. Some of them have been great and some of them haven't, but fans have supported the...
Even if you're not the single greatest fan of a band, it's hard not to get into them a little when you're joined in a room by a bunch of other people who are loving what they're seeing. Such is the epiphany that Ground Control head photographer Raymond Ahner had when he walked into DNA Lounge to shoot Finnish folk metal icons Korpiklaani on the eleventh anniversary of September 11th; he wasn't sure what he expected to see, but what...
You know those bands that you forget you’re in love with? The Bronx is most certainly one of those. I don’t know why it is that I never think of them anymore when I scroll my iPod, because “False Alarm” is arguably the perfect rock song. Maybe it’s because we think of them more as “that Mariachi band with punks in it” nowadays, I’m not quite sure. But what I do know is that the chance to see such a...
After the 2010 reissue campaign which saw The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion re-examining, re-configuring, re-imagining and re-structuring staple catalog titles including Orange, Acme, Now I Got Worry and Extra Width, fans' hunger for the soul-flaying sound of Jon Spencer, Russell Simins and Judah Bauer was whetted, but not satiated. They wanted more, and no amount of looking back would do; so after a series of globe-trotting tour dates which knocked audience's socks off and set their minds on fire, JSBX...