This is Part 1 of 2 of our coverage of the Metal Masters Tour featuring Judas Priest, Heaven and Hell, Motörhead and Testament. Check out Part 2 here. I really tried to write a clever opening paragraph to this review, honestly I did. But damn dude, this is Judas Priest, Heaven and Hell, Motörhead, and Testament. What could I possibly say that would even begin to describe the magnitude of a show like this? You’re right, absolutely nothing. So rather...
Dirty? Sure. Straight up? I believe they call it neat. James Bond wanted his shaken, not stirred. I like my mine family style. Give me a Martini Bros on the track and I’ll be good to do whatever needs to be done for the night. This duo consisting of DJ Cle and Mike Vamp create some dark vocal electronica music with the heart of Berlin. The MB Factor is one album everyone is sure to need for that dark drinking...
Remember that creepy painter dude with the white “fro” on TV who would teach you how to paint bad-ass landscapes and whatnot? Yep, Bob Ross. Well, that’s who’s responsible for the newly unveiled album art for Annuals’ upcoming album, Such Fun, due out October 7. Coincidentally it’s on Canvasback Recordings, which makes me think that one of the peeps in the band—Adam Baker, Kenny Florence, Zack Oden, Donzel Radford, Mike Robinson or Anna Spence—broke into Bob’s house, stole the painting...
We all know one or maybe two ourselves. They take on the characteristic of being awesome, well versed in music, kind, great to hang out with and mostly a DJ. The Crystal Method is a duo that is unmatched in my personal history of music and being up to par in person. Now, on top of being these said characteristics—father and a Volvo driver—these gentlemen are going green. Whenever I go out to a show I, like a serial killer,...
This is coverage of Day 1 of the 2008 Outside Lands Festival. Click for coverage of Day 2 and Day 3 . There are some moments when I’m so overcome with love for my City by the Bay that I have to sort of pinch myself just to make sure it’s real. Friday night—as I stood less than a football field from Thom Yorke singing “Karma Police," the cool summer fog rolling in from the ocean and blanketing the park,...
Taking the combined pedigrees of Jim Guthrie and Nick Thorburn into account, it’s a pretty safe assumption that, walking in, listeners have an idea what they’re going to get from the duo’s joint side project. Guthrie was the ad hoc namesake for the now-defunct Three Gut Records (once home to a host of meek folk and rock acts – and The Constantines) and built his name on making a sort of folk rock comparable to an indie informed, Harvest Moon-era...
When Hawksley Workman released Between The Beautifuls earlier this year, it was to tremendous critical response and fans justifiably awestruck at the singer’s sudden turn. Where once the singer found new innovative and fantastic ways to intermingle spirits of romance both high and low brow with garish electronics and hooks that had a habit of catching you when you weren’t looking, Between The Beautifuls saw him spontaneously changing directions into distinctly and unmistakably classic rock-sounding provinces. Suddenly Bruce...
Basking in the summer sun, a crowd of beautiful young people gathered together with barbecue and plastic cups of beer on a recent Saturday to listen to the sun-drenched, island-flavored indie rock of Islands. Except we weren't on a tropical beach—we were in a parking lot on the east side of Manhattan, flanked by a highway and the not-particularly inviting waters of the East River. But then, Islands' songs are mostly about dying of thirst under a blistering sun, so...
How strange is the world that Amanda Palmer has sketched for herself. Since she first appeared with Dresden Dolls professing to perform a “Brechtian punk cabaret” – so named because the singer couldn’t bear the thought of letting others mistakenly call it something synonymous with ‘goth’ – Palmer (along with drummer Brian Viglione) has reveled in producing a series of three-penny psychodramas that, with each successive release, put more flesh on the grainy bones of a strange, sepia tone celluloid...
When Coldplay first appeared ten years ago sporting distinctly collegiate guitar tones and singing about the color yellow, every reasonable assumption was that Britain had won the global race to break a modestly intentioned, heart-on-its-sleeve (and hence non-threatening) indie band and negotiated a way to present the sound on the largest imaginable scale. They were huge from the word go, but amazingly they got even bigger; A Rush Of Blood To The Head did better than evade the sophomore slump,...