Stutterfly
Stutterfly And We Are Bled Of Color [1] Much like a nasty cold you just can’t shake, the massively played-out “screamo” subgenre gets another breath of life injected from a bloodsucking major label looking to find the next Taking Back The Story Of Hawthorne’s Senses. This month’s casualty? Canadian ponces Stutterfly. Every song on this...
The Red Chord
The Red Chord Clients [4] It’s becoming routine that any avant-metal-grind band who cut their teeth on the Robotic Empire label will eventually take the next step into utter fucking massiveness; and there’s no better example of this phenomenon in action than New England bruisers the Red Chord. Now sporting their umpteenth rhythm section since...
Orthrelm
Orthrelm OV [5] Besides being one of the most amazing bands in the universe, Washington, DC, spazz-punk duo Orthrelm are proof that words like “amazing” are totally subjective; and, as cases in point, they make albums like OV to demonstrate it. But with OV-a one-song, 45-minute endurance test for both listener and performer-they’ve outdone even...
Kylesa
Kylesa To Walk A Middle Course [4] On paper, it already makes no sense that a crusty, mixed-gender punk band from Savannah, Georgia, would find themselves at the top of mainstream rock critics’ “it” lists after years of willful obscurity on labels like Prank and At A Loss. It’s even harder to get your head...
Neil Hamburger
Neil Hamburger Great Moments At Di Presa’s Pizza House [4] Only
America’s self-proclaimed funnyman, Neil Hamburger, could come up with
something like this. Part stand-up comedy, part mockumentary and all completely
fucking absurd, Great Moments At Di Presa’s Pizza House tells the story
of a doomed pizza parlor, narrated by Hamburger...
Meshuggah
Meshuggah Catch Thirty Three [5] Proof that Darwin was wrong: Meshuggah are still not headlining stadiums, while much of the metal that was once nü has evolved into gazillion-selling product that comes pre-manufactured with a “-core” suffix and black fingernail polish. Proof that acting hip for its own sake in music reviews is wrong: Even...
Alkaline Trio - Crimson
Alkaline Trio Crimson For all the talk of maturation surrounding Alkaline Trio’s fifth proper album, Crimson, the disc essentially mimics the goth-punk group’s past few efforts: There are some absolutely killer songs you’ll desperately want to see played live (“Time To Waste,” “The Poison”); some filler songs (take your pick between tracks 6-10); and a...
Gatsbys American Dream
Gatsbys American Dream Volcano [5] Concept albums are a dangerous move in any band’s career. Concept albums about volcanoes are pretty much doomed from the start. Yet somehow, Gatsbys American Dream beat the pretension-equals-disaster jinx with Volcano, an insanely elaborate opus that technically is about Pompeii, but can really be about any topic you want...
Lucero
Lucero Nobody’s Darlings [2] Lucero are a great band. Unfortunately, their fifth full-length, Nobody’s Darlings, isn’t a great album-in fact, it barely qualifies as “okay.” Maybe it has something to do with the departure of guitarist Todd Gill, or maybe all those late nights of whiskey drinking have finally seeped into frontman Ben Nichols’ brain;...