May 20, 2010

Apple’s Acre Try as you might, there's no easy way to pigeonhole Portland, Oregon's Nurses; the band's sparse, off-kilter sounds occupy their own little niche. This doesn't mean that comparisons are impossible. Their freewheeling oddness recalls early Deus; their droning vocal harmonies could be made by the Polyphonic Spree as the members were falling off...

King Of Jeans After the total sonic destruction and abandon of 2007's Hope For Men, this Allentown, Pennsylvania, quartet weren't in for an easy ride with their third full-length. Thankfully, it crushes with more speed, weirdness and sheer sonic weight than Hope For Men and the band's punkier debut, 2005's Shallow. While Pissed Jeans have always cribbed...

You Can Take It With You Though commonly associated with emo, Long Island, New York's As Tall As Lions always stood apart. They never sounded like the bands with whom they shared stages, and they never fit the stereotypical Long Island sound. While their peers found inspiration in '90s alternative bands, ATAL fashioned their music...

Curse Your Branches It's been three years since David Bazan released his debut solo EP, Fewer Moving Parts, and even longer since he stopped playing under the name Pedro The Lion. However, those of you still paying attention should know that Bazan is crafting the best music of his career. Curse Your Branches may not be as...

Armistics As the press machine's wheels begin to turn on Armistice, MUTEMATH's sophomore album, one angle guaranteed to be beaten into the ground is that the New Orleans-based quartet–frontman Paul Meany, guitarist Greg Hill, bassist Roy Mitchell-Cárdenas and drummer Darren King–scrapped an entire album's worth of songs (16, to be precise) at the encouragement of...

Here Waits Thy Doom 3 Inches Of Blood haven't changed their lyrical perspective on their fourth full-length (and first for Century Media); they're still yammering on about battles and demons and blah blah blah. But their musical approach has changed quite a bit. While Slipknot's Joey Jordison produced 2007's Fire Up The Blades, this album is...

At Both Ends EP With a double 7-inch this good, it's easy to forget this comes with the last issue of At Both Ends, a fantastic hardcore zine from Canada's Northwest. While that's a bummer, the eight songs on this gem soften the blow. This is a great hardcore record featuring just about anything you could...

Turtles EP This digital-only collection of alternate versions from this Los Angeles neo-new-wave outfit's previous full-length, The Continental Divide, is a curious companion piece. Of the four tracks retooled for this EP by WT drummer William Mohler, the lush, atmospheric version of "Always Falling" rivals its album counterpart in terms of vision. The remix of "Take...

To The Secrets And Knowledge There's a vocal refrain in "Noises," from Number One Gun's newest offering, To The Secrets And Knowledge, that has been haunting us for days–and not in a good way. We're talking drilled-into-the-head haunting; pure, syrupy, Rick Astley-style torture. Luckily, nothing else on the new album by this group, lead by Chico,...