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Our latest album reviews, featuring the records we've most enjoyed (or not) over the past few weeks.

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Browse our album reviews according to score: Highest (9.5/10 or more) or Lowest (2/10 or less)

Kill Your Idols

Something Started Here
Get Outta Town / Lifeline (2007)

Kill Your Idols were always one of those bands to me. I never considered myself a fan of their music, maybe having a track or two on various compilations, but I would never outwardly say "they suck" or some similar criticism. My indifference to the band wasn't total either. I can recount seeing them four or five times, almost always playing main support to the band I really wanted to see, but even when they headlined I'd stick around, having paid my ten dollars or so, just to check out their performance and the crowd's reaction. I never got into them too much though; the songs just sounded too similar to each other in a live setting, which turned me off from ever purchasing their recorded work. And then this little album fell into my hands. Something Started Here is a solid album for the die-hard Kill Your Idols fan or the new listener trying to get a feel for their sound. For the former, here are all the tracks, both originals and covers, from various EP's, splits, and compilations in one neat album sparing the need to hunt down rare or out of print records, many of which only … Read more

Blitzen Trapper

Wild Mountain Nation
LidKerCow Ltd. (2007)

When I'm on a road trip, I get this undeniable urge to listen to All-American music. We're talking CCR and … Read more

Black Dice

Roll Up / Drool
Paw Tracks (2007)

Black Dice are ridiculous; they have the spottiest and most transformative of musical histories even when compared the most dysfunctional … Read more

Last of the Believers

Paper Ships Under a Burning Bridge
Independent (2007)

Paper Ships Under a Burning Bridge is the debut offering from Last of the Believers, a new project spearheaded by … Read more

Rocky Votolato

The Brag and Cuss
Barsuk (2007)

Rocky Votolato has been a busy man of late. He released last year's Makers to wide acclaim and only just … Read more

Lymbyc Systym

Love Your Abuser
Mush (2007)

The limbic system controls a fairly large part of the human brain. It helps us get aroused, remembers important facts, … Read more

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One from the archives

Paris Hilton

Paris
Warner Bros. (2006)

Though I'm sure none of you indie elite need to be reminded, but allow me to assert that Paris Hilton is a piece of shit. It's an obvious statement, sure, but one that is central to wrapping your head around this omnipresent, miasmic phenomenon in our media and celebrity-centric culture. Too often, the question we thinking people - anyone with a high school diploma - ask ourselves is "why?" only to find ourselves helplessly lost, confused, and embittered in the face of ultimate irrationality. What part of human nature allows something like Paris Hilton to happen? Like timeless questions of good vs. evil, order vs. chaos, sanity vs. madness, perhaps the answer is not meant for us; we as mortal human beings wouldn't even be able to handle it, let … Read more

More album reviews

Cruel Hand

Without a Pulse
6131 (2007)

It's time to play the ex-member/members of game again. This time we have members and former members of the Maine hardcore unit, Outbreak. If I'm not mistaken Cruel Hand is actually the same Outbreak lineup that gave us the You Make Us Sick EP, but with a different singer. So if you haven't guessed Cruel Hand does at times sounds … Read more

Loser Life

I Have Ghosts and I Have Ghosts
Magic Bullet (2007)

Loser Life comes from a place called Bakersfield, California, an area the band has numerously described as "the armpit of California." This is what Loser Life is influenced by, and the band's sound makes their pleasant description seem all too realistic. Loser Life is dirty, grimy, filthy, and fucking pissed off at their little hole in the world, and the … Read more

The End

Elementary
Relapse (2007)

For anyone unfamiliar, The End is a Canadian band that have established themselves as a math metal powerhouse, similar to a more controlled and brooding The Dillinger Escape Plan. Within Dividia and the Transfer Trachea EP were intense, frantic and at times almost impenetrable. Someone should have gotten to them earlier, because with three and a half years between albums, … Read more

200 Words Or Less

Sleep Terror

Probing Tranquility
Feeling Faint (2006)

Luke Jaeger is a one-man metal making machine; Sleep Terror is his solo project and musical outlet. Fifteen staggeringly technical tracks make up Probing Tranquility, but the album barely surpasses half an hour. I'm no metal aficionado, but I am an avid guitar player; however, it hardly takes a musician to sense the complexity of this release. Blast beats mesh … Read more

200 Words Or Less

Ceremony

Scared People
Bridge Nine (2007)

One of the better bands currently existing in hardcore returns with a new EP, their first release since signing to Bridge Nine Records. This time around Ceremony shows they've got more in their songwriting arsenal than just lightning fast demonstrations of hate a la Infest. Showing even more variance in writing than their last release, Scared People shows what promise … Read more

Fucked Up

Year of the Pig
Whats Your Rupture? (2007)

Fucked Up are on intimate terms with ambiguity. It's a rare virtue, since as a rule rock bands tend to seek the comfort of ham-fisted moralism or an apathy either hard-partying or self-pitying. But like Sylvia Plath circa Ariel or the earliest punk bands, Fucked Up stamp their works with an intimidating and sometimes uncomfortable symbolic resonance, leaving it to … Read more

Deathspell Omega

Fas- Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum
Norma Evangelium Diaboli (2007)

Wow, I haven't been keeping up with Deathspell Omega. I was lucky to end up with a promo copy of the Kénôse EP from 2005 and I've been hooked on Deathspell Omega ever since. Fas- Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum is supposedly the second installment in a trilogy - Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice being part one - and it marks … Read more

Bad Religion

New Maps of Hell
Epitaph (2007)

Bad Religion may not need any introduction due to their notoriety in punk, hardcore, and various independent and even some mainstream circles, but there are several impressive facts that New Maps of Hell bring to light with its release to the public. One, Bad Religion is, minus a few break ups in the eighties, closing in on thirty years of … Read more

Mark Ronson

Version
Columbia (2007)

To steal from the classic Ben Stiller movie Zoolander, "Mark Ronson is so hot right now!" After producing the latest Amy Winehouse album, Lily Allen's debut, and the best bits of an otherwise awful Robbie Williams album, the New York based, London born hip-hop club DJ turned producer can do no wrong. And now, he's decided to rope in the … Read more

Goon Moon

Licker's Last Leg
Ipecac (2007)

Let's not beat around the bush. Licker's Last Leg is the album Queens of the Stone Age should have put out instead of the bands recent Era Vulgaris. Why the comparison? Well, there's the obvious one founder/vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Chris Goss has long been the unofficial fifth Queens of the Stone Age-er for quite some time, appearing on or producing every album … Read more

Art in Manila

Set the Woods on Fire
Saddle Creek (2007)

With the indefinite hiatus of Azure Ray, the duo of Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink ventured into the lives of solo recording artists with different intentions. Maria offered up her 11:11 album, which was more or less a continuation of the established Azure Ray sound, focusing on the vaguely folk indie pop which had won her over her with the … Read more

The Starting Line

Direction
Virgin (2007)

I'm sure most people reading our reviews here at Scene Point Blank won't care about clicking on this album. The Starting Line is a pretty "mainstream" band; not something the readers would jump to buy, or even care to listen to at all. I know you're thinking that there was that slew of early 2000's Drive-Thru pop-punk bands that were … Read more

Lucinda Williams

West
Lost Highway (2007)

Ever wonder what it sounds like when a bunch of people are falling asleep while recording an album? Or how about the sound of an artist totally giving up on their craft, but still making music? Well, you're in luck because Lucinda Williams has released West, an album that does all of that and more! Lucinda Williams has previously been … Read more

Baroness / Unpersons

A Grey Sigh in a Flower Husk
At A Loss (2007)

Baroness and Unpersons team up for A Grey Sigh in a Flower Husk. For Baroness, it serves as a precursor to their forthcoming album for Relapse Records and as a send off for former guitarist Tim Loose. For Unpersons, this split serves as some people's - like mine - first exposure to the band. The two bands have vastly different … Read more

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Browse our album reviews according to score: Highest (9.5/10 or more) or Lowest (2/10 or less)