Review
Charge of the Love Brigade | artist: Escape-ism — Sometimes the bad is so good it makes you feel like life is not fair. This is that real good bad. The good good bad. Outlaw rebel bad. And this outlaw rebel swaggers around knowing that he’s got a bigger rock-a-rolodex then
Review
Pavements (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) | artist: Pavement — As is widely known, "Fillmore Jive" was the last song recorded in the 1990s. Not long after its completion, the entire Pavement professional musical ensemble perished in a freak flash flood. | How do you even begin rating something like this? 4
Review
In the Company of Champions | artist: Magus Lord — First of all, I beg M. to get someone else to master the side projects. That out of my system, what to make of this? It starts up with an overloaded gothic thing that in all of its sonics and repetition and
Review
Instant Holograms On Metal Film | artist: Stereolab — I always preferred reading music reviews about Stereolab's music to actually listening to the music itself. I saw them once in the early or maybe the mid 90s when they came through Washington, DC. I didn't know they would
Review
Steel, Rust and Disgust | artist: Midnight — The flame-throwing beast that is Midnight reminds us of two things on this covers-heavy set: a) you do not rock as hard as Midnight b) you do not rock as hard as Cleveland. This album of (mostly) covers — and covers mostly of the Cleveland-centric
Review
Are We All Angels | artist: Scowl | Yes, there will be comparisons to Hole and to Bleach’s fuzzier twists and turns. Yes, there will be “hardcore” boys trying to wring the knots out of their underpants. Yes, there will be complaints about selling out maddeningly typed into Reddit via $1,
Review
Spectrum by Am I in Trouble? — This is the best progressive metal album (Death, Blackened, Trad or otherwise) by an American band since Wilderun’s 2019 masterpiece Veil of Imagination. And I say that realizing that this is exactly the kind of record that ties into knots the tongues of
Review
The Mechanics of Mysticism | artist: Ether Diver — An ambitious bit of occasionally abstract electronica mashed up with bouncing rhythms, The Mechanics of Mysticism proposes to be the preliminary results of an effort "to catalog the techniques, tools and technology of direct experience of the divine". Like I said,
Review
Temporada de Homínidos EP | artist: Animals Revenge — Tight songwriting, driving d-beat, and lots of shouting made this an enormously exciting release. It is the soundtrack to getting chased by a bear. Crunchy guitars, over-driven bass, killer trash drums... and did I mention lots of shouting? Maybe there is a more
Review
The Teeth of Time | artist: Drouth — There is a wrenching tremolo pull that uproots an electric guitar chord at about the 5:10 mark of the track that opens this five song set by Drouth which sort of sums up the project. It is akin to a jaw being suddenly
Review
Wings Beneath Krynn's Moonlight | artist: Mythráen — I imagine there will be plenty of listeners who speak to the fantastical lyricism and moody rhythms of Mythráen's latest release. While, on the surface, the compositions fall into the general occupations of Dark Dungeon and Fantasy Synth music writ
Review
Burden | artist: Obsidian Urn — The big sludgey riffs hang around like overtaxed storm clouds casting slowly shifting shadows on whatever is below. The drums swing back and forth. There is space — as in a spatial physical place — imbued in these recordings. One feels as if in the midst of it