Sometimes I just want to be entertained. As much as I love going to hot, cramped, shithole venues that reek of body odor and beer, and having my ears assaulted with screaming guitars and blood-curling screams of death, I admit that sometimes it's cool to hit a big arena show and just take in some good catchy metal. And that is exactly what I got with Avenged Sevenfold. As they hit the stage with "Critical Acclaim," the opening track of...
Some bands are just unable to hide when they haven't figured out how to articulate that thing which has captured their imagination and, as good as a record might be, the band simply sees it as another stepping stone in a vast work in progress. Don't get the wrong idea, that's not a slight or indictment, only an observation that, since first appearing from the asshes of hardcore staples Day And A Deathwish and In These Walls, Attack In Black...
It's raining in Pomona. The blocks around the Glass House are populated with shuttered businesses and craters where buildings once stood. One of my companions relates how another venue used to be right where a fenced-off hole now sits just across the street from the Glass House. If one were to believe in omens, this would be the sort of neighborhood to avoid, as though any minute artillery fire from Chino might swoop down and crash upon us. But then,...
Over the last eleven years and five albums, …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead has evolved from purveyors of the densest, most martially anthemic rock n' roll on the planet into thematic and delicately layered musical dramatists of a sort the world has never seen before. Released in 2005, Worlds Apart (their second album for Interscope) was the first and finest bowshot in the band's self-imposed redefinition of its parameters, but the real surprise was contained...
Sometimes the most gratifying and exciting creative turns a band can make are not the big ones. Sometimes it is the tiny tweaks that crop up along the way – rather than the grandiose departures in form or style – that re-ignite the fire and end up rejuvenating a band because they offer a different angle for listeners to approach the group that not even their most rabid supporters had considered before. Those celebrations of the small – more than...
“Wait – what?! No.” Those three seemingly incoherent words will be the first that run through the minds of any long-time Soundgarden or Audioslave fan as “Part Of Me” – the lead-off track from Chris Cornell's new solo effort Scream – wallops them over the head with great big dance floor beats. “Wait,” you ask, suspiciously. “Dance floor? As in where Madonna confessed from a couple of years ago?” Yup. “That place Donna Summer, Abba, Michael Jackson and Britney Spears...
The word ‘one man band’ has the nasty habit of bringing to mind Dick Van Dyke a la Mary Poppins from 1964. Some guy in a pimped-out barbershop quartet suit with a drum strapped to his back, a harmonica strung across his face, and cymbals strapped somewhere I don’t even want to know about. It’s not a person seen often in the world of music, much less in the head-banging, hard-rocking land of punk/alternative metal. But here’s where former drummer...
For many of us, this is something we’ve fantasized about of for years. A tour with two bands that have a similar fanbase, but in all actuality, have almost nothing in common, and for them to share a stage on the same night just seems like a close-out deal at Best Buy you just can’t pass up. Hey, it worked for Slayer and Marilyn Manson, so why not Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction? The one good thing about this...
Although I had already hit six shows in the weeks leading up to Fucked Up, this was the one gig I was really looking forward to. After a friend had turned me on to the band a couple of years ago I found myself listening to Fucked Up's records over and over again, and I have to admit I had a slight obsession with this band after hearing their latest release, The Chemistry Of Common Life. So after missing them...
I'll admit it. This is probably the best time ever to be a music fan. Why? Because whatever kind of music you like—from the most popular hip-hop to the most radical avant jazz (and from the most popular smooth jazz to the most radical progressive hip-hop)—it's out there somewhere where you can find it. Someone is not only playing it, they are making it easily available to you. There are two reasons for this, and they both trace back to...