What else is there to say? Slayer is the best metal band on the planet. Period. They’ve been burning it down for almost thirty years and if you haven’t seen them play live, you must. They’re currently destroying the country with a million other metal bands on the Rockstar Mayhem Festival tour (which I caught last week in San Antonio, Texas) but with Slayer on the bill, no one else matters—and I’m not the only one who thinks so.

, 20 August 2009

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What do you get when you get together the bass player from Head of David (Dave Cochrane), the bass player from jesu (Diarmuid Dalton) and the masterminds, guitarists and vocalists from jesu (Justin Broadrick) and Isis (Aaron Turner)? The most abrasive, most dissonant metal machine music since Godflesh’s Streetcleaner (which is still the blueprint of this sound Broadrick laid down twenty years ago), that’s what. Greymachine’s debut, Disconnected is two steps forward and one step back and loud and ugly and good in all of the ways this kind of noise should be. If you miss the discordance of Broadrick’s earlier work or you just need a good, hard kick in the ass, Greymachine is your ticket.

, 20 August 2009

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A QUARTER OF NICKELS

I can still remember the very first time I heard them. It was the same day I first met Neil Blender. 1986 or so. Neil was blasting their music over speakers in his living room when O and I walked in. My first question was, “Who is this?” Neil and O both responded, “The Minutemen.” I was dumbfounded. A few months later in a record store, my good friend Kevin Wilkins shoved a couple 12″ records in my hand and just said, “Buy these.” It was the Minutemen’s What Makes a Man Start Fires? and Double Nickels.

I purchased them both and my life hasn’t been the same since.

The Minutemen’s now iconic Double Nickels on the Dime has been floating in …read on

, 30 July 2009

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Sonic Youth Live by Rodger Bridges

Rodger Bridges photographer

ETERNAL YOUTH

Typically, if a band has been together for a quarter century or more, they stay famous based on their legacy. Most of their fans go to see them to hear “the old stuff.” Not so with Sonic Youth. Their latest, The Eternal (Matador, 2009) is as consistent and challenging as anything in their burgeoning catalog.

Now a five-piece—bass player Mark Ibold of Pavement and Free Kitten fame, who’s toured with Sonic Youth for the past few years, officially joined on this record—their live show is as blissful and blistering as it’s ever been. I saw them again recently at Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, Alabama. This time out, they ripped through most of the new record and a handful of tracks from …read on

, 20 July 2009

If The Cure were a metal band (à la Godflesh, not Skid Row), they’d probably sound a lot like Isis. An Isis record is usually a workout for your head, and Wavering Radiant is no exception. It’s their fifth long player and it showcases their strengths in spades: the solid songwriting, the slow builds, the scathing crescendos, the cathartic releases. Keyboards used to be a sign of going soft, but in the hands of Clifford Meyer, they’re as searing as the sun. With Jeff Caxide’s echoey, spaced-out bass and Aaron Turner’s gruff vocals, as well as the meandering song structures, we could consider Isis the flagship of their own genre: prog-core. Wavering Radiant is aptly named and a perfect entry point into their world.

, 17 July 2009

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Wavering Radiant

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Tom Oldham photographer

ROUGH DIVERS

The Vibe Bar, East London, 6th July 2009: I’m too old for reviewing bands. Sorry, dear reader, to immediately discredit the forthcoming paragraph but rather annoyingly (for some junior snappers in the customary elbow-off down the front certainly) in photographic circles, experience still counts for a lot. Juggling available light with flash exposures and a band with a long mic cable and little regard for the confines of the stage as a working area, I give you Dananananaykroyd.
Six Glaswegians with more energy, dedication, enthusiasm, talent, drummers and reverse stage divers than anyone ever before. Not that I’ve been counting especially. Go see them and understand. I have no idea how they translate to record but in the increasingly important …read on

, 08 July 2009

MORE PHOTOS

Dananananaykroyd are due all over the UK and in lots of worldwide destinations forthwith

Since the early 90s, Steven Wilson has been The Man behind the UK’s neo-prog outfit The Porcupine Tree. With Insurgentes he steps out on his own. This is nothing new. He’s recorded under his given name in the past. What is new, however, is how big this record gets. The Porcupine Tree is a powerful band with big ideas, but Insurgentes overwhelms anything they’ve done. Wilson’s voice is as pensive and delicate as ever, but at times — the perfect times — the songs erupt in shimmering waves of guitar noise. It’s as beautiful as it is blistering.

, 02 July 2009

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Omar Rodriguez-Lopez

Sandy Carson photographer

THE MAN FROM MARS VOLTA

As the guitarist/composer for The Mars Volta and At The Drive-In, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez has had a regular outlet for his noisy but nuanced ideas for a decade and a half. Well, it seems that their regular output—The Mars Volta has released six records in as many years, with the latest, Octahedron, just out on June 23rd—is not enough. The guy has no less than a baker’s dozen solo and side-project records out, and they’re all good!

Well, they’re all good if you’re into proggy bluesy arty rock ’n’ roll. They’re all good if you’d like to hear what the edges around The Mars Volta sound like. They’re not out-take-ish though: these are fully formed musical onslaughts and they will broaden your …read on

, 22 June 2009

The Mars Volta are just kicking off a Euro-tour, starting in Zurich and culminating in shows in the UK and Ireland

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