Label: Kinger Recordings Released: September 11, 2007 Considering the album cover, a not-so-clever Pink Floyd parody, I had relatively low expectations for Cheater Pint. It didn’t take long for the music to change that though. Cheater Pint play raw tunes that at times conjure up images of X, the Replacements, the Ramones, Cheap Trick and late-Angry Samoans even. The common… Read more »
Label: Rhino Released: November 13, 2007 A cover here and there isn’t a bad thing and often playing covers helps a band know itself. But there’s a big difference between the occasional cover that pops up on an album or a live set and releasing a whole album of someone else’s songs. This trend, similar to the current trend of… Read more »
Label: Break a Leg Entertainment Released: October 24, 2007 Going into this review, I was under the impression that Helsinki’s Hellcity 13 was just another Scandanavian glam band, but unlike the rest, they don’t just want to revive hair metal, they want to revive the 80s almost as a whole. There is hard rock bombast that runs throughout the album,… Read more »
Label: Bad Reputation Released: November 2007 in Europe (June 13, 2006 in North America) The Flairs play a brand of hard rock that falls somewhere between glam and punk. Shut Up and Drive is a peppy album of chunky rhythms and snotty vocals that seldom lets up. Aside from a 3/4 female line-up, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. The… Read more »
Label: Smithsonian Folkways Released: August 28, 2007 (Paul Robeson) & October 9, 2007 (Pete Seeger) On the surface, these two albums have little in common. But I happened to put them both on my iPod, and by hearing each artist’s songs randomly mixed with Primal Scream and Pedro the Lion and Picastro (it was a “p” kind of week), I… Read more »
Label: Nuclear Blast Released: November 6, 2007 One of the earliest NYHC bands, Agnostic Front was also one of the first to cross over into metal back in the mid 80s. The 90s found them getting away from the heavy riffs and more into the singalong Oi! that influenced hardcore in the first place. Their latest release finds them returning… Read more »
Label: I Eat Souls Records Released: 2006 A clever name like the White Noise Supremacists could be a blessing or a curse. If the name’s that clever, how clever must the music be just to live up to it? While the name may be the best thing they’ve done thus far, their off-kilter rhythms and subtle melodies shouldn’t be dismissed…. Read more »
Label: Exigent Records Released: 2007 Prize Country’s Lottery of Recognition comes off as a mix between the post-hardcore leanings of Fugazi and the dense hardcore of Quicksand. Or perhaps as the dark side of Hot Water Music. However, you describe it, their music is simply unrelenting. Its noisiness belies the band’s tightness. They are riffy, but without any of the… Read more »
Label: Five One Released: September 11, 2007 Awake and Alert’s music centers around Maya Peart’s voice. She has great range and movement and is as dynamic and smooth as a jazz vocalist, but at the same time, her voice is down to earth as if she’s singing right to you. Unlike many gifted singers, she also trusts her voice enough… Read more »
Label: self-released Released: 2007 Papertrigger’s Riot Lovers EP is an odd pop record that does more than just dabble in cabaret music. It is dense and often organ-dominated with jazzy rhythms and a dark, seedy undercurrent. While they play it loose and perhaps even a bit sloppy, the album shows their innate sense of being a band instead of a… Read more »