Life In Your Way
Life In Your Way Walking Giants [2.5/5] Skirting the line between melodic metallic hardcore and melodic metallic post-hardcore, Life In Your Way draw equally from Shai Hulud’s upbeat/intense juxtaposition and Solid State alum Beloved to create a sound that’s devastatingly… Uh, decent. The usual contrast of pretty, flowery guitar parts and throat-shredding bark is on...
The Handshake Murders
The Handshake Murders Usurper [3/5] Somewhere between the release of Meshuggah’s Nothing in 2002 and 2005’s Catch Thirty-Three, it seems like 75 percent of the bands who were still working on their musical voice (i.e., ripping off the Dillinger Escape Plan before realizing they couldn’t) decided that one Meshuggah wasn’t enough for the world. Head...
The End
The End Elementary [4/5] If this is what the end of the world is going to sound like, then bring on the apocalypse. Every bit as relentless and cataclysmic as you’d expect the fall of man to be, the End’s third album, Elementary, brings a very dynamic approach to their punishing sound. Superlatives aside, the...
Daggermouth
Daggermouth Turf Wars [3/5] Since their first full-length, Stallone, Daggermouth have been saddled with a derisive comparison to Bay Area upstarts Set Your Goals, and unfortunately, Turf Wars doesn’t do much to deter the associations. In theory, Daggermouth should sound a little more like their pop-punk/melodic hardcore predecessors (the Movielife, Lifetime, New Found Glory) and...
Big Business
Big Business Here Come The Waterworks [4.5/5] The West Coast’s premier power-duo Big Business are back, and if you thought 2005’s Head For The Shallow was awesome, Here Come The Waterworks just punched awesome in the tits, stole its wallet and pushed it down three flights of stairs. To wit: Huge bass riffs tumble from...
Autonym
Autonym Shall We Skip To Excessive Celebration? [3/5] Autonym have both extremely good and extremely bad qualities. The good: Their songs are short, combining Minutemen, Liars and the Locust influences to pummeling, cathartic effect. Only one track out of 11 passes the 90-second mark, and that one could have been split literally in two-the first...
Alabama Thunderpussy
Alabama Thunderpussy Open Fire [2/5] After six albums and three singers, Alabama Thunderpussy just aren’t the same band-literally and figuratively-who tore Southern rock a gaping new asshole with Rise Again and River City Revival in the late ’90s. On Open Fire, ATP debut their latest vocalist, Kyle Thomas-formerly of defunct New Orleans thrash champs Exhorder-but,...
Comeback Kid
Comeback Kid Broadcasting… [4/5] Comeback Kid’s 2005 full-length Wake The Dead turned heads by injecting new melody into the fast-paced, shout-heavy hardcore previously associated with this Winnipeg band. So when vocalist Scott Wade quit CBK in 2006, his immediate replacement by founding guitarist Andrew Neufeld left fans wondering what other changed continuity for CBK; the...
Maria Taylor
Maria Taylor Lynn Teeter Flower [3.5/5] Not even a Swiss Army knife has the cutting versatility of Maria Taylor’s rich alto, the Azure Ray siren whose voice grows more evocative with the passing of the seasons. Lynn Teeter Flower finds Taylor shaving away some of the layers from her solo debut 11:11 for more subtle...