What a difference a few months can make in the development and growth of an entity. Nine months ago, Eagles Of Death Metal singer Jesse Hughes could (and was) quoted as saying, “Eagles Of Death Metal is a success story of the way it should be. Josh has been there for me every step of the way… He is the captain of our gang and...

There are times when, even from the very beginning of an album, it's very easy to tell where a band is from. That is not to say that it's simple to geographically profile a sound – most large city centers have a wide array of sounds at work in them and a wildly varied musical palette – but there are definitely some staple sounds that are inherent to some locations and bands from elsewhere have been known to lift them...

I’ll be honest. I do not know these guys. Which is a point of contention for a music reviewer; you pride yourself on knowing obscure groups that no one around you knows. It’s how you get cool points, and for a girl who spends her days shut in an apartment eating Chee-tos and writing notes about music tracks, like so many other reviewers out there, I need all the points I can get.  But this band from Portland (the no....

Over the last ten years, the notion that being glib is the height of biting sarcasm and criticism has spread like a virus, been refined and finally honed to a flawless edge before being sent out to hack down the previous crop of next big things suddenly and brutally. The problem with such slash and burn tactics is that there just aren't that many bands coming up that are particularly good at it; because they all pass through so quickly...

It doesn't happen very often in the business of being in a rock n' roll band but, every now and then, it's reassuring to know that things happen on the time line that was originally projected. Such is the case with Endgame's release; earlier this year, Megadeth singer/guitarist Dave Mustaine went on the record saying that his band would have a new release on store shelves in September, 2009 and, lo and behold, Endgame has not only appeared on time,...

The Mars Volta are one of those bands that you either get or you don’t. For the ones that do, their barrage of aural explosions come at you like a meteor shower, but somehow your brain allows you to make sense of it all like after looking at a stereogram for a few seconds. The beautiful picture hidden in the sea of dots separates from the background and you can appreciate it for all its glory. For others, unfortunately, that...

tba   Downloads: "Headcrusher" – "1,320" –...

Since first appearing on record store shelves five years ago, Elliott BROOD has infiltrated the minds and hearts of listeners twice already, both times in a similar, but dramatically affecting, way: with a bit of the deep south in them and the shadows of the gothic craziness one can find there on them, they've started slowly and carefully, building with each successive track on a given record until, about halfway in, listeners discover they've been launched headlong into the most...

The are moments (this might be one of them) when one has to ask, “At what point does high concept become an enactment of self-indulgent drivel?” Sure – multi-passage songs are not unheard of in the context of concept albums – everyone from Pink Floyd to Ween to Green Day has don them in some capacity at one point or another and done them well – but when a band's album has to be a two-disc set because the first...

There are lots of ways to try and argue around it, but it's difficult to honestly deny that Cuff The Duke was one of the least likely inductees into the wave of Canadian rock that crashed against the US border about eighteen months ago, thus forcing the American market to accept the fact that they weren't the only ones in North America with a music community. The easiest way to say it is that the band stuck out like a...