The excitement is building in Sunderland, UK. For the first time in five years, record store shelves will feature a new album from Sunderland-bred punk monsters Leatherface but that's only part of the excitement though. Certainly the excitement is building everywhere for the album, but the reason it's building specifically in the band's hometown is because this new release, called The Stormy Petrel, also marks the maiden release of material from Big Ugly Fish – the band's own record label,...

Eleven years ago, even some of the more devout fans in his base had written Carlos Santana off. When the guitarist performed at the twenty-fifth anniversary of Woodstock in 1994, his presence was totally overshadowed by the excitement surrounding the more modern acts on the roster that year and it had been seventeen years since Santana had released a gold record. While the guitarist could very likely have continued with a moderately successful world music career, the possibility of having...

It's incredible how little it can take to augment the dominating impression that a musician leaves, there are instances wherein all that need be changed is the venue or arena in which the sound is captured. Take the work of singer Jay Malinowski for example; with Bedouin Soundclash, Malinowski has found fanfare producing densely arranged pop that crosses roots reggae with just the thinnest hair of punk. There has always been some heart in it, but it's still got the...

Is it finally time for A Wilhelm Scream to get their proper due? Having plowed their own course in relative obscurity since the release of The Way To A Girl's Heart Is Through Her Boyfriend's Stomach at the turn of the century, the New Bedford, Massachusetts-based band drew a surprising amount of notice for 2007's Career Suicide so word did get out, but nowhere near the amount that songs like “Die While We're Young,” “Get Mad, You Son Of A...

If there has been any constant that can be taken away from pop music, it is that each and every sub-genre always gets one good last gasp in before it goes underground to recharge the cells and burst forth renewed again at a later date. Don't think it's true? Just before punk 'died' the first time, The Clash got one more lick in with Combat Rock and simultaneously slammed the book closed on the first chapter of the story as...

Some records – whether they're brand new or not – have this sort of lived-in quality that will just set a mind at ease when they start playing. It might be the lyrics that speak just right or the guitar tone that feels like the listener is sitting in the eye of a storm, or a rhythm section that strikes just the right chord in a listener but, whatever it is, it just feels like home. That's the sort of...

After so many years and releases (since Supersexy Swingin' Sounds – at least) that have seen Rob Zombie continue to mutate his metal into some permutation of ghoulish electro-goth, the question of whether the singer would find his way back to more real-time music had become an increasingly valid one. In the last ten years particularly, even when Zombie has polished his metal edge (Educated Horses), it has always been coupled with an appraisal of his cybernetic one in order...

There are few things more tantalizing in modern rock than a songwriter that rips a hole in the fabrics of both time and taste, stands outside them and makes a sound that could have been produced yesterday as easily as it could have been made one, two, three or four decades ago. Could that be called timeless work? Sure – but more accurate would be to say that, no matter when the record in question was released, it would have...

It's difficult to imagine that there might be anyone on Earth more genuinely happy with where he's at in life than Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker (aka USS) singer/guitarist Ash Buchholz. While he and turntablist/hypeman Jason Parsons may have started making noise under the name Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker in 2007, the notice has really been on the rise of late, and the increased exposure has been a huge inspiration to the band. “I decided what I wanted about five or six years...

Funny thing about the stylistic disparity that accompanies gender in rock n' roll, while men will curse and bitch an unhinged blue streak about the injustices perpetrated on them by the fairer sex and done so with platinum-coated success for decades (just look what it did for Disturbed), women have simply endured the trespasses and foibles of men – either because convention dictates it or the option of playing the femme fatale is just more appealing than the angry alternative....