December 6, 2006

Shat Cuntree [1/5] Sort of like Wesley Willis (dead paranoid schizophrenic with many records), Shat (living sexual deviant with brain damage and Buddyhead support) is one of those musical anomalies that makes perfect sense live when you’re in the company of friends who all “get it,” even though one of you is laughing because the...

Rabbit Ears Rabbit Ears EP [3/5] Singer Spencer Moody (Murder City Devils, Dead Low Tide, Smoke And Smoke) teams up with drummer Jeff MacIssac (Aveo) for four tracks of drums, electro-noise and crooning/shouting that will simultaneously impress and distress. On “For And Against,” Moody channels his inner goth, creating a vibe similar to Interpol’s Daniel...

Miss Violetta Beauregard Odi Profanum Vulgus Et Arceo [4/5] Shortly after becoming the first Suicide Girl from Europe, the lovely Swiss national Miss Violetta Beauregard bought a trashed keyboard for 10 Euros (approx. $12.56) in a street market and started playing gigs. Since then, she’s gotten better gear and amped up her abrasive personality to...

DJ Starscream The New Leader [4/5] Metalheads know that Sid Wilson, a.k.a. #0, jumps off tall PA systems and mans the decks for Slipknot. But way before he rocked a gas mask, Wilson was known as DJ Starscream, who helped push the boundaries of music in a crew called Sound Proof Coalition. Though he found...

Daughters Hell Songs [4/5] Daughters may hail from Providence, Rhode Island, but they’re better than most in their surrounding scene. Their songs borrow an ADD writing aesthetic from the Locust (among others) and a jagged post-no wave guitar sound from even more contemporary bands. But it’s NAME’S vocals-which bear a marked Lux Interior/Birthday Party-era Nick...

Blowfly Blowfly’s Punk Rock Party [4/5] Blowfly has made a very successful, triple-X-rated career of pissing off as many people as possible. Yet never before has the masked alter ego of Clarence Reid so boldly pissed on the material he parodies. True, some of these scatological rewrites of punk’s sacred texts are no harm, no...

In AP 222, on sale now, we exclusively profiled over 50 upcoming releases for 2007 from some of the hottest acts around. Unfortunately, we got a little too excited and wrote about more bands than we had space in the magazine for (stupid physical limitations). All of the below releases are definitely considered Most Anticipated...

Walls Of Jericho With Devils Amongst Us All [5/5] Walls Of Jericho have a special gift, namely the ability to make the power-metal workbook sound refreshing and dynamic, despite the number of half-assed pretenders clogging that scene like so much audio cholesterol. Their not-so-secret weapon is fearless singer Candace Kucsulain, who doesn’t assume any of...

Mastodon Blood Mountain [5/5] Considering their grand conceptual notions and their longtime alliance with master cover artist Paul Romano, it’s no surprise Mastodon left Relapse Records’ indie stable for the bottomless coffers of Warner Bros.: If any modern metal band needed a giant canvas on which to spew their vision, it’s these Atlanta behemoths. Ostensibly...