Empowered Vol. 11by Adam Warren Reckon with the man Adam Warren and his works! Especially Empowered. I gotta say the only thing that’s gotten worse about the Empowered series is that they don’t come out as often as they used to. Is it a superhero comic? A parody of superheroes? A manga? A sci-fi story? It’s really all of those things. Adam Warren has been able to grow and mature his little baby which started out as short “sketches” of...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Bowels of Earth LP by Entombed A.D. I have to confess that the last time I paid any attention to the members of Entombed was around 1993, when the band released Wolverine Blues. The truth is that I became interested when I saw an ad for it in an X-Men comic book, and Wolverine Blues became my first real introduction to death metal. Ironically, I’ve been pretty picky about anything I’ve...

Photos by Richard...

The Hold SteadyThrashing Thru the Passion Happy 400th Vinyl Vlog! Thank god for this album, folks. Thank GOD! I think I’ve said this before, but the Hold Steady are one of those bands that suffers from Monty Python syndrome, in the sense that it’s good, but the most annoying people in the world will not shut the fuck about it. Have you met a Hold Steady fan? If you’re not sure, then you haven’t. The real Hold Steady fans are annoying as hell. As such, it’s hard to...

Photos by Hailey...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Crisis Point LP by Subhumans. Mark Twain once said that, in order to truly find one’s way to genuine inspiration, “First, get your facts straight – then distort them at your leisure.” Now forty-one years after they started (thirteen since last the band release a full-length album of new material), it can be assumed that Subhumans learned all their lessons and got all their details aligned because, in listening to Crisis...

The Pale Lips should be the biggest thing in punk rock right now. There’s absolutely so much to love about them: they bring the riffs, they’ve got the melodies, their songs are catchy, they sing about the things we care about (like romance and the spooky stuff) and everything about them sounds fun. They’re one of those bands that you feel glad you discovered and can’t wait to tell people about. I know for me, with it being Halloween and...

Photos by Jen Vesp...

I often admit to being late to the game with a lot of bands, but I think I got into Jenny Lewis at just the right time. I had often been exposed to her whenever my wife controls the music on long drives, and I had found that it varied from powerful to uninterestingly derivative. My wife, being a huge fan, wasn’t going to miss out on a performance when Jenny Lewis came to town, and seeing that her new...

As an old school Against Me! fan, let me just say that I’m getting excited about them all over again. Particularly because they’ve recently welcomed old bassist Andrew Seward back to the lineup. This band is resembling more and more the one I fell in love with all those years ago. All they need now is the return of Warren to the lineup. Is that gonna happen? Who knows. But what I do know is that they’re playing 4 albums...