Sometimes it doesn't take much, but sometimes it takes something gigantic to make a pensive man smile. One would think that after all he's seen and done – toured the world, found love, religion, intimacy and isolation – the effort required to make the single most stoic musician on Earth smile would be one of epic proportions. Preconceived notions get bucked, however, when novelist/philosopher/poet/musician/monk Leonard Cohen boards the stage at a sold out O2 Center in London, and the first...

We are the World opens the night and these guys were on a whole level that I wasn’t ready for. I’m not sure if that was clear enough. Imagine you tell your mother you’re taking her to “Shrek the Musical,” and instead you take her to a Marilyn Manson concert. What you just said is what I said when the curtain opened. A group of four (Robbie Williams , Ryan Heffington , Megan Gold and Nina...

There’s a good list of reasons why Lamb of God wasn’t picked to play any one of the ten inaugural balls ushering in our new era of change back in January for our recently elected President Obama. The reason that has to clearly top that list is the fact that event organizers didn’t want any tuxedos or ball gowns awash in ritualistic blood. Even with the release date of Wrath being about four weeks after the inaugural balls, you would...

Musicians that are able to coax a believable form of dew-eyed, city-set heartbreak are a rare commodity these days. Thirty-five years ago, songwriters like Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen and (pre-Swordfish Trombones) Tom Waits made it look so easy to find the beauty of walking down a rain-slicked street, resigned to the fact that they feel very much alone in a very large crowd, but it has begun to look more and more like a lost art in recent years. Conor...

Here's the easiest way to say it: The Prodigy first appeared in 1990 sporting a noxious blend of punk rock, PCP and acid house that threatened to start fires while other electronic acts (like Fatboy Slim and The Chemical Brothers) were happily kicking up dust at and loving their neighbors all night. They blew the floodgates wide open for crossbreeding the once exclusive camps of rockist snobs and chemically cooked ravers too – after Liam Howlett and his crew scorched...

I don't know that I have ever seen any band work the crowd to the point of a near riot without even hitting the stage, but Zakk Wylde and Black Label Society did just that on Friday night at The Fillmore. With a huge BLS branded curtain covering the stage, while Patsi Kline's "Crazy" was being pumped out on the house P.A., the sold-out crowd of metalheads were already going a bit nuts, and Zakk hadn't even walked out onto...

Gather round kiddos, it’s musical story time, and you know who that means—The Decemberists! With The Hazards of Love, the wily troubadours mix up their sound into a metal rock/rock opera/folksy country mélange while sticking with what they do best: making their music into a audio novel. And this one could be their War and Peace. So what’s the story? It’s been described as a drama about a young woman named Margaret and her true love William who are being...

Neko Case is having a party, and you get to listen in. While it’s not unusual to have collaborations on albums—this being her fifth—Case takes what usually is a get-together with a few friends and makes it an all-out reunion party. Joining her on her latest LP are not only her New Pornographer band mates, but also members of Calexico and The Sadies, not to mention a smattering of solo artists: M. Ward, Sarah Harmer and Lucy Wainright Roche. The...

An obsession with death is often a haunting and disturbing thing, but where White Lies are concerned, it’s a source of musical inspiration. From the very first strains of “Death,” you know you’re in for something big—the building synth beat escalating into an infectious guitar-studded refrain: “Yeah, this fear’s got a hold on me.” While the undeniable strength of “Death” can’t quite be touched by any of the disc’s other tracks, the English three-piece churn out To Lose My...

While it's inevitable for everyone, age is almost invariably least kind to metal bands. Because the music is so (some would say proudly) aggressive and the players that make it undergo such spectacular exertions making it, it shouldn't be surprising that the shelf life of the average group that indulges in the kamikaze sound of screaming youth and/or screaming out their demons night after night and record after record is significantly limited. The truth is that, after a while, metal...