The first time through Flatfoot 56’s Jungle of the Midwest Sea, I heard a street punk band with Celtic overtones, with bagpipes, a blue-collar feel and a growly-voiced singer. It took a second round through to note the obvious Christian lyrics—maybe because the lyrics didn’t stand out much. A pit-worthy sound but without the danceable […]
When the benign noisy haze lifts on “Souvenirs”—the opening track of Midnight Movies 2007 release Lion the Girl—it does so to reveal a woman’s voice decidedly vintage in the hollow haunts it travels. Pitched as encompassing “noir L.A., replete with mystery, desire, and yearning,” Lion the Girl seems stamped with shadows of the past, pulling […]
You can say what you want about MySpace. It’s a haven for cheesy, fake boobed chicks looking to expand their online customer base. Regular users experience error messages on a regular basis. But for music journalists, it’s a Godsend. With a simple click we can discover gems and also know what press kits we won’t […]
When the music critics of ancient Babylon etched their musings in stone, they often found themselves hammering out the same tired lines about the same tired music. It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same, which is why we find ourselves today panning yet another lackluster “Original Motion Picture Soundtrack.” Today’s […]
Counting as inspirations the likes of Justin Warfield, Divine Styler, and Wise Intelligent (of Poor Righteous Teachers), as well as Everlast (after House of Pain), Rhode Island resident Storm Davis delivers his debut album Kegstand Poetry For The Recovering Alcoholic. Though self-professed as being “hip hop smooved out on the indie rap tip, with a […]
The best thing about a live hardcore show is that even if you don’t know anything about the bands, if there’s a halfway decent crowd you can still have a great time. The pushing, shoving, slamming of sweaty bodies against one another along with the jolting, crashing, throaty screaming of the music…you know what I’m […]
Dirty, gritty punk—pure and feckin’ simple. The Kaffeine Buzz entourage caught Oakland rockers The Time Flys with pals and label-mates Apache at Austin’s South By the Southwest (SXSW) festival last month, and the reality is everything their second LP, Rebels of Babylon promises: Three skinny, dirty, quite stoned boys and one rockin’ chica, blazing through […]
Finally, a rock band that reminds me of why I loose so much sleep listening, reading about, researching, and seeing music while also loathing the contrived, formulated pre-teen pop that seems to be everywhere we turn these days. Maybelline eye shadow and Gap fashion spreads does not a rock ‘n’ roll band make. And sometimes […]
Coldcut 1. M.I.A. – Arular – XL2. David Last – The Push Pull – The Agriculture3. Common – Be – Geffen 4. Dangerdoom – The Mouse and the Mask – Lex 6. Sigur Ros – Takk – EMI
This isn’t fair, but anybody that has followed Slayer’s career knows this to be true—they simply can’t top their 1986 thrash metal masterpiece Reign In Blood. Whether they have truly tried or not can be questioned, but inevitably Tom Araya, Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King have failed in recreating the concentrated evil that oozes from […]
