There’s something about niche genres that allow artists to connect with their audiences in ways that the larger beasts of the music world do not. That isn’t to say the latter aren’t inspirational for others or have aspirations of speaking their truth in earnest and honest ways that connect with…
The tour of a side project, especially that featuring members of two more high profile bands, is a rarity. Seeing them label a tour as “The first and only North America tour” makes it that much more special. Vocalist Hansi Kürsch of Blind Guardian and Guitarist Jon Schaffer of Iced…
It’s not so rare that we see bands with certain immensities tour together, but it is quite strange when two behemoth acts from wildly different backgrounds, disparate fan bases, and particular evolutions come together. This is certainly what can be said of The Unheavenly Skye tour, which sees nu-prog titans…
What is there to say about bands with legacies so massive, so influential, that any words written today are just plain redundant? Judas Priest are in the midst of a worldwide tour in support of their 2018 album Firepower. Though a band eighteen records deep into their career might seem…
Marking the release of their twelfth album Moonglow, Tobias Sammet’s Avantasia set off on their second North American excursion in their 20-year career with a short five-date jaunt from San Jose, CA, to Worcester, MA. Halfway through, Avantasia made their first stop ever in the windy city of Chicago. Patio…
Few bands rarely see tenth anniversaries. Even fewer will see the success of large-scale tours in their home country or others, huge stages, massive production values, or even a consistent lineup. Animals as Leaders, however, have managed to consistently pump out immense instrumental material over four albums. From 2009’s self-titled…
Every single day we exist we are experiencing something brand new in the world. No two moments in time are exactly the same, contrary to what we would be led to believe by the oft-monotonous drudgeries of our daily living. Each created moment destroys the preceding, with minute decisions influencing…
Maryland foursome Clutch have recently wrapped up their tour for the newly-released Book of Bad Decisions [review] to monstrous effect. With packed houses on all dates, Clutch continue to prove themselves as one of the driving forces of southern-style rock, despite hailing from the colder north. Chicago’s Concord Music Hall…
Baroness stand stalwart at the precipice of their upcoming release Gold & Grey, offering us delightful glimpses in “
Having had a direct involvement with America’s first post-rock dedicated festival, dunk!usa, I know first hand how hard it is to mount a successful event featuring largely fringe artists. When you live in my bubble and you book Russian Circles and Pelican to headline a two-day event with 20 more high-quality artists in a town neither of them has ever played before, you can become lulled into the mindset that all you have to do is hang out and watch the tickets sell themselves. When you discover how wrong you are, that location is massively important, that timing is a key factor, that even though a band like Russian Circles seems huge to a nerd like you, the reality is that probably one out of every forty people has even heard of them, it can be kind of a bummer. dunk!usa was an amazing event that not a ton of people had the privilege of enjoying. So when Nason Frizzell of the band PILLARS approached me with the idea of doing Post. Festival – essentially a dunk!usa without the post-rock name value, the first two things I felt were (a) excitement, because obviously I was 100% ready to get back at trying to grow this scene and (b) cynicism, because I knew how my expectations of fan dedication had been flattened somewhat by my previous experiences. As it turns out, I’m feeling a bit better about the state of “post” music in America as of this moment.
