Dan Slessor

Itch The Deep End If you can make it through The Deep End from front to back without cracking a smile, you may well be dead inside. Though echoes of the King Blues—the politically conscious U.K. ska-folk-punkers who vocalist Itch fronted for eight years—are present, at heart this is a big, shiny, smart and uplifting pop […]

Australia’s the Amity Affliction recently headed into the studio to track their fourth currently untitled full-length. Focusing on getting better at what they do rather than reinventing themselves has served the band well so far, though this does not mean their steady rise has been an easy one. The personal problems of vocalist Joel Birch […]

The Hotelier Home, Like Noplace Is There On Home, Like Noplace Is There, the Hotelier (formerly known as the Hotel Year) hold nothing back. Hope, despair, longing, unabashed excitement and love at its most naked surge from the speakers, every emotion both palpable and irresistible. Their stripped-back and organic-sounding punkish indie rock recalls early Jimmy […]

Front Porch Step Aware If all of Jake Mcelfresh’s songs are autobiographical, then he has had his heart stepped on in just about every way imaginable. If not, the singer also known as Front Porch Step is a damn fine and impassioned storyteller. With an emphasis on sparse arrangements comprised of a single acoustic guitar and his […]

Close Your Eyes Line In The Sand It’s never easy when a band lose a longstanding vocalist, not least since some of their identity inevitably departs along with them. So Close Your Eyes are to be commended for not digging in their heels and enlisting someone to mimic Shane Raymond, but rather replacing him with Blessed By […]

Trivium Vengeance Falls Trivium seem to have set a precedent, alternating thrilling records like 2005's Ascendancy with their patchier works like 2003's Ember To Inferno and 2006's The Crusade. Following this logic, Vengeance Falls should fall in the former category, and while it fails to scale the heights of their best work it is a mostly fine addition to their […]

Save Your Breath There Used To Be A Place For Us If you like your music bursting with hooks and drenched in sunshine, then you could do a hell of a lot worse than There Used To Be A Place For Us. Still sounding like they could sit alongside any of the bands on the […]

Farewell, My Love Gold Tattoos To comment at length upon Farewell, My Love’s music bearing a striking resemblance to early My Chemical Romance is somewhat moot: It does, period. Accepting this, it’s still difficult to judge Gold Tattoos on its own merits, and it is very much a hit-and-miss affair. Often good and just as […]

Avenged Sevenfold Hail To The King Throughout the course of Avenged Sevenfold’s last few albums, they have evolved into a more hard-rock-oriented wrecking crew while still retaining a strong tie to their metallic roots. With an evident desire to write the biggest music imaginable, they have upped the game with every release, and Hail To […]