I begin my series on Middle Eastern black metal with three bands from Iran.
Will SCOTT MCCAUGHEY ever get his just due as a songwriter and record-maker?
If you’re a neo-classic rock group, you’re duty-bound to attempt a double album at some point.
If you’re a neo-classic rock group, you’re duty-bound to attempt a double album at some point.
Despite the unconventional lineup, there’s little on this album that breaks any boundaries or alters perceptions.
There’s nobody like CURRENT 93. DAVID TIBET‘s long-running project occupies its own unique place in the universe, and he’s no compunctions about leaving the doors open and letting anyone inside.
A ridiculously accessible, often stunning collection of power pop tunes that can stand proudly beside tracks from acknowledged masters.
While nobody’s going to mistake these sounds for Bach, I’d argue that they’re closer to classical music than to rock.
SY has a great sound, and even when the lyrics are silly or lackadaisical, Lee and Thurston’s distinctive guitar timbres push all the right buttons. They invented this sound/style, and despite all the bands influenced by it over the past three decades, they’re still the best.
It’s easy to be skeptical about the quality of an artist whose advocates tend to run toward the breathless. But Rhodes lives up to the hype.
Darkness is most effective when contrasted against the light.
It’s easy to be skeptical about the quality of an artist whose advocates tend to run toward the breathless. But Rhodes lives up to the hype.
The British quintet owes its longevity to two factors: a devotion to the traditional sounds and arrangements of prog and an emphasis on melody over gratuitous soloing.
Ultimately, Frames comes down to loud guitars, forthright emotional content, shifting arrangements and anthemic melodies.
NELS CLINE may be best known for his often spectacular lead guitar stylings in WILCO, but he’s been a leading figure in avant-garde jazz and rock for almost three decades.
Now that DEVIN TOWNSEND has laid his many projects to rest, he can worry less about which tune fits which sobriquet and just thrown everything he likes onto one album.
LIAM MCKAHEY was the voice of the forever-bubbling-under British band COUSTEAU.
Blacklist’s medium is a message not only of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, but of geo-politics, socio-cultural dynamics, and revolt.
The quartet sounds little like either of its forebears, instead traversing the mysterious terrain between late 60s psychedelia and early 70s hard rock.
Kamp is a triple threat: a fine singer, a frightening multi-instrumentalist and a strong songwriter.
Certainly the 40th anniversary of Astral Weeks deserved to be celebrated, but conceptually, it was a bit odd to present one of the most intimate albums in rock history at the Hollywood Bowl, capacity 17,376. But what could’ve been a disaster proved a triumph.
Singlewide emphasizes writing over clatter, as the guitar-crazy group turns down its amps and lets tunes speak louder than power chords.
What’s been interesting about this project is that, despite the co-conspirators’ progressive metal credentials, the work leans far more in the direction of atmosphere and melody than heavy histrionics.
Blackshaw sees the guitar as a tool for conveying his melodic ideas, not a method of showing off his technique.
Franklin’s self-styled “Bolts of Melody” strike straight and true, with little frippery to get between tune and eardrum.
Cause I Sez So is that difficult milestone in a band’s career: the follow-up to a successful comeback album.
There’s a real feeling of warmth threaded throughout this mostly (but not solely) acoustic album, the kind of feeling that comes only from musicians who trust each other.
The eight feet of the men in the CHURCH have long stood in several worlds, which is what makes the long-running Australian band’s music so consistently interesting and satisfying.
Lloyd and his gang mix ‘n’ match a bit of Big Music melodrama here, some Britpop hookiness there, wrapped in contemporary production sheen.
It’s too bad the magazine No Depression is no more, as OLD CALIFORNIO would surely be one of its cover stars.
California’s A.M. VIBE shivers in the embrace of a dual love.
GREG and THOM come off as a snarky SIMON & GARFUNKEL here, and that’s not a bad thing.
The couple’s lush, widescreen music fills the air the way warm water fills a bathtub.
UNITED BIBLE STUDIES hearkens back to a unique time in the U.K.’s musical history, when bands were cross-pollinating native folk music with the more adventurous side of progressive rock.
These tracks comprise the demo that got Bergmann his record deal, presented as its creator intended.
Most of this Norwegian outfit is made up of members of the band BRISKEBY, but the group’s international interest comes from its singer, POSIES co-leader KEN STRINGFELLOW.
It’s a rush of noise around good-old-fashioned pop melody, and of course wrapped up at once with wishes, dreams, and hopes.
If it’s a rock-related style powered by sounds coming out of six strings on a piece of wood – blues rock, folk rock, power pop, prog rock, hard rock – this Oxford-based trio incorporates it.
We all saw this coming: MASTODON has finally let its prog flag fly high.
Echo & the Bunnymen, the Church and the Psychedelic Furs are touchstones, but don’t think that E.Joseph is merely a rip-off artist.
It’s easy to peg ASSEMBLE HEAD IN SUNBURST SOUND as a revival act, particularly of the kind of free-flowing, psychedelicized rock that proliferated in the late 60s and 70s before calcifying into arena rock.
When it comes to Seattle’s psychedelic icon the GREEN PAJAMAS, there are two things you can count on: the band is incredibly prolific, and everything it does is good.
Virginia’s PONTIAK could slot comfortably on the shelf next to envelope-pushing stoner rock bands.
Where do these great British pop bands come from?
What’s great about the Nigeria 70 compilations is that they give us a fuller context in which to view the stars.
This time, instead of being combined on one CD, 25 O’Clock and Psonic Psunspot are split into two separate discs, each with lots of bonus tracks.
A lot of compilations of this sort elicit a groan of “Not another one…” This set, however, should not.
Thorn crossbreeds Germanic space rock with the muscular power rock for which the Motor City is so well-known.
