39 total search results — Page 1 of 2
Panic – Circles
Review — June 16, 2006
In hardcore's early '80s halcyon days, the EP became the coin of the realm: a handful of songs, often over before you had a chance to sit down. Many great bands never even recorded full-lengths - a phenomenon that's a lot less common today though by no means extinct. Maybe …
Men's Recovery Project – The Very Best of Men's Recovery Project
Review — June 29, 2006
The idea of releasing a "Greatest Hits" package for a band like Men's Recovery Project seems laughable on the surface. Emerging out of the scorched carcass of Born Against, Men's Recovery Project left an embarrassing stain on the face of mid-'90s hardcore, offering messy, aberrant punk fueled by primitive, farting …
Crime Desire – Id Music to Combat the Superego
Review — July 6, 2006
When no one's chomping at the bit, hardcore can easily turn into comfort food. Sing-alongs, breakdowns and carefully placed "go!"s can become a security blanket. This has its place, but hardcore is often best when bands eschew the easy outs of well-worn forms and stake out fresh ground. Bands like …
Graf Orlock – Destination Time Yesterday
Review — July 16, 2006
The connection between abrasive, warp speed music and film samples isn't new - for a whole wave of turn of the century hardcore bands, the familiar samples punctuating minute long tantrums were usually the most memorable part of the entire enterprise. But Graf Orlock takes this connection to an entirely …
Think I Care – World Asylum
Review — August 1, 2006
During the Cold War, the specter of Mutually Assured Destruction formed the backdrop against which many musical and literary statements were articulated, but in today's post-9/11 world there are a myriad of new concerns to take the place of the long-standing threat of nuclear annihilation (which still exists but is …
Oxbow – Love That's Last: A Wholly Hypnographic & Disturbing Work Regarding Oxbow
Review — August 9, 2006
When I reviewed The Very Best of Men's Recovery Project recently, I thought that there couldn't be a band less suited for a "greatest hits" release. Obviously, I had forgotten about Oxbow. To put it simply, Oxbow is one of the most intense and challenging bands in America today. Oxbow …
Scott Walker – The Drift
Review — August 14, 2006
Scott Walker - to those who know and love his music - is one of those towering figures of American culture that is as much the stuff of legend as an actual person, like Roky Erickson or Thomas Pynchon. Walker spent the late '60s recording four astonishing LPs of lush, …
Black Hell – Deformers of the Universe
Review — August 31, 2006
I'm from Arizona, so I'm not jumping at the chance to describe Black Hell as "crawling out of the sandblasted wastes" or any such thing; it's not as exotic for me. But they do in fact come from my beautiful and notoriously dry home state, hitting hard with their debut …
The Ergs! – Jersey's Best Prancers
Review — September 25, 2006
Anyone who's been paying attention can see the writing on the wall: like Cock Sparrer in 1982, pop punk's coming back. Of course, it never really left; it's just seen a variety of mutations since the halcyon days of "Locket Love": The Descendents' heartsick catharsis, The Lillingtons' television city dreaming, …
Fucked Up – Hidden World
Review — October 10, 2006
By now, you've probably already heard Hidden World. It leaked months ago, and the band even posted a link to one of its downloading proxies on their blog. Before long the Internet was awash in reactions, most grouped along two polarities - while plenty of listeners thought they were …
Lemuria – Lemuria
Review — October 19, 2006
I have a bottomless love for Discount that no one I've ever met has matched. Together with Lifetime, they were the band that defined my high school years - I took up songs like "Disappointed" and "On the Counter" and made them my own; they were the soundtrack for my …
The Lillingtons – The Too Late Show
Review — October 26, 2006
We're in the middle of a pop punk renaissance. New recruits are signing up left and right and firing off catchy odes to the evergreen vagaries of romance, teenage or any age. But this is a post-Lifetime era, so for the most part today's young turks eschew the Ramonesianism of …
Converge – No Heroes
Review — October 28, 2006
After rock and roll's pop ascension in the postwar era, the recording industry adopted the practice of "front-loading" albums, situating the strongest songs at the beginning. This serves several purposes: it sells the album to skeptical listeners (such as radio programmers, distributors and consumers), and it enables bands who don't …
For Science – Revenge for Hire
Review — November 7, 2006
Fuck yeah. I live for records like this. The tunes are fast, snotty as hell, impassioned, and stick in your head for days. The lyrics are clever and charming, yet poignant at the same time. But really, the whole thing is more than the sum of its commendable parts, which …
Wolf Eyes – Human Animal
Review — November 14, 2006
Torture is on everybody's lips these days. Our Vice President vaguely approves of hydrogen-based interrogation, and our anchormen volunteer to be waterboarded on the air as our cultural debate over instrumental dehumanization limps along. In our new and improved wars without borders against enemies without armies, we're running ourselves ragged …
Harvey Milk – Special Wishes
Review — November 30, 2006
In 1955, photographer Robert Frank received a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to travel the country photographing the American people in all their multiplicity and uniqueness. He was unable to find an American publisher for the resulting book, The Americans, and had to have it published …
Geisha – Mondo Dell'Orrore
Review — January 21, 2007
Noise is a funny term. Not "ha ha" funny, but highly prone to linguistic slippage: its connotations cover everything from the stylized squawk of Lightning Bolt to the Pacific Rim blasts of Incapacitants or Masonna. The mutant term "noisecore" has been beaten virtually beyond recognition, referring to everything from the …
Fucked Up – Year of the Dog
Review — February 4, 2007
The Chinese Zodiac dictates that the dog will come through for me every time. The dog, I'm told, is reliable, empathetic, and intelligent. The dog is the kind of friend everybody can use. For a few years now, Fucked Up has played the dog for me. I resisted at first, …
Lifetime – Lifetime
Review — February 18, 2007
On the song "Can't Think About it Now," Lifetime vocalist Ari Katz notes in passing that "nobody knows if the kids gonna like it." No kidding. As anyone talking about this record will likely point out, expectations ride high. After eight years away from the fray, Lifetime returned in 2005 …
