As Hunter Thompson once said, at a certain point in one's career, it's imperative to have fun with what you're doing and occasionally shake things up if you want to keep doing it. As one listens to Scrappy Happiness, it would be easy to assume that Joel Plaskett took that idea to heart; originally parceled out one track a week for ten weeks, Scrappy Happiness can be very, very challenging but still manages to hold together as a strong, singular...

Everyone has an opinion of anger. Mahatma Gandhi called anger “the enemy of understanding” while Albert Einstein opined that “anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.” Go back a little further in time, and Roman statesman Marcus Porcius Cato claimed that “an angry man opens his mouth and closes his mind.” All of those observations are sound appraisals made by learned men, but Every Time I Die has successfully managed to merge them all on their new album, Ex...

While it's true that some bands arrive before audiences fully developed and ready to win them over, others show up bands aren't bad but need a bit of extra time to grow into their sound. Vancouver's Real McKenzies fall into the latter category – for the last twenty years, the McKenzies have just been “really good” filler on Celt-punk mix tapes – but there's no doubt that the band has well and truly grown up, matured and come into their...

Something in me really wants to like Total Chaos' new album but, at the same time, I also want to hate it bitterly (often for the exact same reasons) as I listen to it. On one hand, the thirteen-year old punk in me wants to love the hell out of the music but, on the other hand, the thirty-three-year old punk in me wants to curse and renounce the album for being a played-out parody of played-out punk values. So...

In the six years since Cancer Bats first started making records, a few phrases have been used to qualify the band's music so often that they've nearly become cliche. Each time the Bats have released an album, for example, sentiments and praise like “Canadian post-hardcore behemoths,” “Cancer Bats did it again (sometimes punctuated with an exclamation mark),” “brutal” and “awesome” have accompanied discussions of the music in print and, while it has been deserved, it has become repetitive;...

Oh boy Junky, Aw, dis week's jus' a little charmed fo'ya innit, ya vein-spikin' reprobates? It doesn't happen often thatcha get a tune thit plays ta yer proclivities but, dis week, we got somethin' special: a new Garbage tune thit I swiped from ther firs' album in nine years, an' it's called "Blood For Poppies" Blood fer poppies?! That's all aboutcha junky! It wis made fer you, anni's screamin' out ta be included innis column, so here it is; a...

OurStage.com , the premiere digital music destination for unsigned artists, is offering musicians the opportunity of a lifetime to play on the OurStage.com Stage during the 2012 Warped Tour . The festival is known for breaking undiscovered, fresh performers and turning them into music superstars. For the first time, OurStage will sponsor a stage for twenty-two stops of the legendary festival.  Fans will be asked to rank the competing artists in order of their preference and will determine the up-and-coming musical...

If there’s any song that feels poised for “Pumped Up Kicks”-style ubiquity, that song would be Fun.’s “We Are Young.”  The first single from the band’s new Some Nights album has already topped the Billboard charts, as a Glee cover, months before the album’s release, and has been inescapable thanks to its commercial use in a Chevy Sonic ad.  Not only that but, just like that aforementioned Foster The People track, it is maddeningly catchy. Some Nights as a whole...

Neil Young and Crazy Horse will release a very special album titled Americana on June 5, 2012. Americana is the first album from Neil Young & Crazy Horse in nearly nine years. Crazy Horse is: Billy Talbot, Ralph Molina, Poncho Sampedro, and Neil Young. As you’ll see from the track-listing, Americana is collection of classic, American folk songs. In their day, some of these may have been referred to as “protest songs,” “murder ballads,” or campfire-type songs passed down with universal,...

As their eighth annual Green 17 Tour wound to a close, Flogging Molly took the stage at the Fox Theater in Oakland, CA and made the room glow not green, but with with some of the most penetrating blue and red house lights you've ever seen. Ground Control Editor At Large Raymond Ahner was there with camera in hand to capture the festivities, and he was left with no shortage of striking images cut! Click here for Ray's Lens-eye view....