July! What a terrible, awful month it is for anyone who suffers from the heat like I do. Actually, I’ve looked back on my previous two Editors’ Picks from July and I complained about the heat and the summer there as well, so perhaps I’ll refrain from doing that again,…
We’d be missing a trick by not mentioning the two bands whose members have birthed Rowsdower, the vibrant sludge band who’s brand new LP we’re premiering today. Two of the angriest, heaviest bands to ever come from the sunny West Coast, Admiral Angry and Black Sheep Wall are famous for…
On this blog, we’re frequently talking about really dark music. Obviously, we cover black metal and death metal. But there’s also the subgenres like dissonant black metal or brutal death metal. Another heavy hitter is grindcore which can sound equally evil (and personally way tougher than the other genres, but…
Each month, we always seem to come to the same conclusion when it comes to our Editors’ Picks column: Friday release days open the floodgates and unleash a seemingly endless stream of quality new music. But while some of our Editors and Contributors sit down gleefully each week to dive into this newly stocked treasure…
Like many of you, I’m always scrounging for something heavy to introduce to my non-metalhead friends; something that can be tossed on at a party without thought or kept in the pocket for crowd-pleasing carpooling tunes. Modern stoner rock lends itself particularly well to this task. With vocal lines that…
I mentioned this when I was writing up my stoner metal round-up but it bears repeating: Irata’s upcoming release, Tower, is some of the best stoner metal I’ve heard in a while. It has this effortless air to it and a charm, as if Irata just let things roll off…
OK, how many times do you think you’ve heard bands being compared to Mastodon or Torche at this point in your life? Probably hundreds and, to be honest, it’s with good reason; both of those bands helped forge an entire generation of musicians and their sound. But aren’t you tired of it? Maybe, but…
Honestly, I knew I was in for a wild ride when I asked Netherlands to write this post for us. If you’re still unaware of these guys, let me introduce you: they’re from Brooklyn. They make a kind of poppy sludge that takes Torche and feeds it through a grinder, belching it out some sort of neon pink, noxious and incredibly groovy weirdness from the other side. They’re also don’t take themselves too seriously, infusing plenty of their music and its surrounding aesthetics with lots of self-deprecating and society-deprecating humor. Oh, and they’re also incredibly hard-working, having released an album and an EP in the last two years and now gearing up for Black Gaia, which comes out on the 24th of August and a tour with none other than legends Mastodon and Dinosaur Jr. You can head on over to their site for dates and a pre-order thing.
Scenes are a funny thing, right? They’re basically just another form of narrative, an attempt by human brains to quench their hunger for patterns. Reality is often a lot more complicated but narratives (with scenes among them) give us a pretty little diagram that we can refer to when trying…
Almost three years ago, we clued you in to a band called A Troop of Echoes, trading in the a noisy kind of post rock that was immediately appealing and engaging. Now, we’re back with news from members of that ensemble and another project of theirs, namely Public Policy. This time around, the lads have turned up the noise rock influences, added in a dash of early Foo Fighters vibe, a vocalist and plenty of fuzzy and produced Human Resource, a bouncy and raucous album. It explores the spaces between pop sludge, noise and post-hardcore to an admirable degree, never forgetting to set its sights on approachable and enjoyable music. We’re streaming it in full just below so get on it!
