Label: Metal God Entertainment Released: January 8, 2008 At the time, Judas Priest’s Painkiller seemed like a breath of fresh air. Ram It Down was a decent album, but not enough to assure metalheads that Turbo was a mistake Priest wouldn’t make again. Painkiller, on the other hand, seemed like Priest had not only abandoned their pop metal ambitions, but… Read more »
Label: Deep Elm Records Released: December 10, 2007 Ride Your Own Bike’s debut, Bad News from the Bar, gets off on the right foot with “We All Have Our Own Shoes,” whose strings slowly give way, but never completely, to a more traditional rock arrangement. After that, the creativity is pretty hit or miss though. For every clever or catchy… Read more »
Label: Woodstock Musicworks Released: November 1, 2007 A Million Yesterdays‘s brand of Americana generally alternates between country and country rock, finding the most consistency with the former, but perhaps their best moments with the latter. Their more traditional songs show clear command of the genre. Avalon Peacock’s voice might get a little shaky in her vibrato, but that along with… Read more »
Label: Hopeless Records/Sub City Released: March 4, 2008 The seventh installment of the Take Action compilation series is, as usual, a mixed bag of bands, but a pretty good one nonetheless. It dabbles in everything from from hardcore and metal (Every Time I Die) to noise rock (Drop Dead, Gorgeous) to progcore (Chiodos) to straightforward punk (The Matches), but most… Read more »
Label: Equal Vision Records Released: March 18, 2008 “The sky was cold-fire sunrise, the clouds alive in wild paint, but all of it blurred in the dynamite crescendo.” These words from Richard Bach’s Illusions not only give Alive in Wild Paint their name, but also their essence. Not only do they evoke soundscapes every bit as vivid as these words,… Read more »
Label: Country Club Records Released: March 4, 2008 Pretendo play a dark angular pop that revolves around its rhythms, whether that is principally percussion, bass or guitar (or most often the interplay between them), while keyboard or guitar build an unsettling ambiance. The songs vary from the subtley Stones-influenced swagger of “Chronicle a Free Subletting” to the post-punk/dance meld of… Read more »
Label: self-released CD Baby Released: March 4, 2008 Okay, I’ll admit White Zombie was kinda fun…for about ten minutes. I don’t know that I could ever take them in album-length doses. When the first track of A Single Drop of Red was nothing short of an homage to White Zombie, it was already off on the wrong foot. Unfortunately, it… Read more »
Label: self-released Released: March 4, 2008 The opening track of There’s Nothing Safe sounds like a cross between 80s synth pop and the Runaways. Over the course of the album, they throw in alt rock, new wave and post-punk. It may sound like a pretty bland stew that they’ve cooked up here, but they’ve largely taken the strengths of these… Read more »
Label: MVD Entertainment Released: February 19, 2008 Tad is the forgotten band of Seattle’s grunge explosion, but there is a case to be made for them being among the scene’s most important artists. In Busted Circuits and Ringing Ears, it is said that in 1989 “Yeah, I’m friends with Kurt,” meant Tad bassist Kurt Danielson, not Cobain. They were perhaps… Read more »
Label: MVD Entertainment Group Released: January 22, 2008 This is the story of the Smiths through the eyes of Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke. Who you ask? The guys who sued Morrissey and Johnny Marr a few years back. Oh yeah, they were also the rhythm section of the Smiths. Under the circumstances, I expected Inside the Smiths to a… Read more »