It's absolutely bizarre that The Darkness are back. It's even more bizarre to be a fan, actually. I wonder sometimes why I bother with a band that seems to be so much more about style than substance. The truth is, The Darkness are more than just style. Style is just the icing on the cake of their umlaut-peppered metal axe-wielding. My friend Kitty Kowalski (from Kowalskis fame, of course) once put it beautifully, "With a band that's just so much...

POUZZA FEST, one of the year’s most exciting events for lovers of punk rock music, will be held in the heart of Montreal on May 18, 19 and 20. Pouzza Fest is a gathering of more than 170 bands performing at six different venues located within a few blocks of each other, making it easy for the festival-goers to enjoy it all and miss nothing. Following the success of the first Pouzza Fest that featured bands like Lifetime, Bad Astronaut...

It's hard to think of a more influential individual in the Southern Ontario (that's south of Toronto) music scene than Steve Stumble. Since first appearing as a member of The Sick Boys in the mid-Nineties, Stumble has established himself as a fixture in the local punk rock community there; he founded Stumble Records in 1998 (which has since played home to a stable of great punk and rockabilly bands including Knucklehead, The Matadors, The Mahones and more) established and continues...

“The genesis of Hollows and Rounds came from my admiration of the baroque pop of the late sixties and seventies,” says Chris McDuffie of Whitejacket.  While the former keyboardist for Elephant 6 leaders The Apple in stereo claims the influence of many obscure artists from the era, he cheerfully admits the obvious. “The Beatles are my first love. These days, I feel like indie types demand a certain literary seriousness from songwriters, but Paul McCartney’s example reminds me that a...

Hey ya funky junky monkey,Sorry, I ben listenin' to a lotta da Beastie Boys over da last couple o' days. So how's tricks, ya reprobates! How's things in yer life? Things're goin' great fer me, an' I think this week's SWAG Report proves it – I got some primo gear fo' ya inn'ere. Like, dis week, I nabbed'at new tune from from Jack White – "Love Interruption." I know whatcher thinkin' junkie, "So what? That's not a 'win it before...

It's easy enough to get a bit cynical at the thought of a rock band inciting hysteria at a concert in the twenty-first century. It's not uncommon to assume that, for some bands, the joy of music-making and the thrill of presenting that work on stage is a bit overstated; there have been more than a few bands who have likened the act of stepping on stage to punching a time card at the beginning of a shift in a...

Bill Adams vs Mark Sasso of Elliott BROOD BA: …I don't know if I remembered to say congratulations on the show the other night, but it was pretty great and remarkable that you pulled it out like you did.MS: Thanks! Yeah – it was pretty good. BA: I thought it was great. MS: Well, that's kind of our show, really. We view ourselves as entertainers and, the way we look at it, we've invited these people over so we want...

Let it never be said that hard work doesn't eventually get rewarded. For the last eighteen years, Israeli punks Useless ID have released albums and toured at a tireless rate and built a devoted fanbase (among which Jello Biafra numbers himself) which each successive move they've made. There's no doubt it must have been a hard road for the band (UI is often referred to as Israel's most successful punk band – but doesn't mean the amount of exposure they've...

While it's true that rock history sports no shortage of great but widely overlooked or underrated bands (the 1980s proved to be full of them), sometimes it's just impossible to decide how it could have happened – what averted the public's attention so completely – that a fantastic record passed through completely unnoticed. Like, in 2002, what was going on that The Blank Fight's only album got overlooked? That particular year – while mainstream audiences were justifiably diverted from the...

After so many years of Van Halen actively holding the possibility of a reunion with David Lee Roth in front of fans like a carrot only to pull it away when it looked like they might get excited, can anyone blame those spurned supporters for not wanting to play along anymore? In the last sixteen years, Roth has passed through the “frontman” position with a facility akin to both entering and exiting a revolving door, but hasn't actually accomplished much...