September 2010
1 post
6 tags
Controversy is a light that will never go out...
Oh Morrissey, you sly, irreverent old coot. Again with the press tickling subversiveness to stoke up the word counts in your favour and fire up the defenders of free speech and multiculturalism alike. Never one to shy from the limelight are you?Many are preoccupied with the amount of heart felt meaning Mr. Morrissey truly holds in relation to his latest comments on China, animal abuse and claims...
August 2010
2 posts
3 tags
You don't listen to REAL Screamo! part 2.5: now...
The oceanic lapse in maintaining this almost-a-feature may have lead some to believe I’d given up listening to ‘real’ screamo anymore, or that perhaps i’d lost the use of my fingers, ears or mind due to a terminally atrocious, pick ‘n’ mix medical emergency of disastrous defects, diseases and near-deaths.
Facts are that no graves have appeared above my bed,...
6 tags
House Vs Hurricane - Perspectives (Dead Press...
House Vs. Hurricane need you to buy this album. Forget pirating, borrowing and ripping from a friend’s CD or any other method that doesn’t involve your cold, hard cash ringing through the Austrailian six piece’s collective bank account. Mind you, they’re not after some inflated sales figures or a dollar sign confirmation that they’re not wasting their time, they just desperately need the...
July 2010
6 posts
5 tags
Antares - L'esprit de L'escalier (Dead Press EP...
The first sixty-nine seconds of l’esprit de l’escalier are the blood clot before the brain haemorrhage. Try to stand in its way for the following 15 minutes and you’ll be ripped to shreds. This is progressive hardcore at its sharpest with jaw dropping guitar work, snap wristed, bone blast drumming and the furious vocal cluster bombs of lead singer Steve Watts. This is no tech...
5 tags
Throats - Throats (Dead Press EP review)
Throats’ latest self-titled EP is a difficult beast to judge. It does so much right in terms of angry, raging noise making and apparent teeth ripping brutality yet there is something a miss at the heart of all the commotion. The windmilling elephant in the room is Converge’s No Heroes, an album which was surely a massive influence on this 17 minute six track bombshell. Along with the...
6 tags
Pulled Apart By Horses - Brudenell Social Club -...
Back in Leeds once again, and on the home straight of their latest UK tour, Pulled Apart By Horses skid across the Brudenell finish line to launch their freshly pressed self-titled album with the help of a few friends.
Blacklisters hit the stage like a nail bomb. Their gritty, droning hardcore oozes with the bloody juices of Daughters’ groaning discords, Converge’s visceral intensity,...
5 tags
Pulled Apart By Horses - S/T (Dead Press review)
After building a fearsome reputation on the back of their bruising and brilliant live performances, Pulled Apart By Horses release their self-titled debut full length onto an expectant world in the hopes of ripping a big, beautiful hole out of 2010’s summer.
We begin with Back To The Fuck Yeah as it patters into life. Its an odd choice for an opener that doesn’t quite connect until...
5 tags
Pulled Apart By Horses - Brudenell Social Club -...
Leeds: the home straight on Pulled Apart By Horses’ latest sprint of shows across the country. This wasn’t any old homecoming however. This was to be the launch of their brand spanking new debut self-titled and, with the help of a few friends, the Brudenell’s favourite adopted sons aimed to throw one hell of a prodigal’s party to celebrate.
First up were Blacklisters, the...
5 tags
Pulled Apart By Horses - S/T (Leeds Scenester...
Pulled Apart By Horses’ main strength lies in the energy and impact of their ferocious live performances. Translating such feral energies from the stage and into the studio is an infamously tricky task and after being tipped by almost everyone everywhere to do something rather huge in the year 2010, their self-titled debut lands as one of the most hotly anticipated releases of the year....
June 2010
9 posts
5 tags
La Dispute - The Well, Leeds - 21st June (Dead...
The Leeds stop of La Dispute’s short stay in the UK almost never happened. Salvation came with a venue change from Royal Park Cellars to The Well saving the band’s only northern date.
Due to technical difficulties with the guest list, the events of Curses’ set are a mystery. As you can only review what you’ve actually seen, I can only describe their set as a live rendition...
6 tags
Duck Duck Goose - Off Yourself (Dead Press review)
With Blood Brothers defunct, Fear Before not shaking anywhere near as oddly as they used to and The Murder Of Rosa Luxembourg all but a faint speck lost to the dust clouds of the near past, who can you turn to for a dose of melodic, spazzed-up hardcore fit for LSD trips on spinning teacups rides? Duck Duck Goose are your new sheet of blotting paper.
Take this band at name value at your peril...
5 tags
Bullet For My Valentine - Fever (Dead Press...
Metal is a strange beast. At the same time both an entrenched institution and an escapist counterculture, it thrives off it’s own in-house nostalgic dogma, traditions and conventions whilst demanding a sense of progression and competitive camaraderie from its artists and followers alike.
Wales’ finest, Bullet For My Valentine, have forged a career through an understanding and...
5 tags
Kids In Glass Houses - Dirt (Dead Press review)
Forget male vocal choirs. The dominant sound emanating from the welsh valleys in recent years has been post-hardcore pop acts hoping to emulate the mainstream success achieved by Lostprophets and Funeral For A Friend. Kids In Glass Houses are no different. Dirt is an album that seeks to continue this burgeoning tradition by following in their countrymen’s footsteps step by step.
Following on...
5 tags
Rolo Tomassi - Cosmology (Dead Press review)
Rolo Tomassi; If Cosmology is your entry point then make sure you’re standing (or sitting) on something soft and comfortable. You don’t want your jaw shattering into a million pieces when it hits the floor now, do you? You’ll be needing it as you try and put into words what you’ve just experienced as you piece your world back together bit by bit. For those of you already...
5 tags
Third Eye Blind - URSA Major (Dead Press review)
Third Eye Blind return from a six year hiatus since 2003’s “Out of the Vein” and you’ve got to wonder why they bothered.
URSA Major sounds like a Nickelback fan’s take on 30 Seconds To Mars with some horrifically chedder choruses and embarrassingly poor lyrics that kill off any sense of atmosphere or believability that may have threatened to take hold. Lead singer and...
4 tags
Ellie Goulding - Lights (Dead Press review)
What a difference a producer can make. “Lights” is ten singer/songwriter acoustic tracks disfigured and fiddled with by a multitude of collaborators at the mixing desk. The stellar list of Starsmith, Frankmusik, Biffco and Fraser T. Smith all bring their impressive CVs and individual musical agendas to the mix. It’s an interesting exercise that boasts a gleamingly efficient pop end product.
For...
6 tags
Antares - L'esprit de L'escalier (Leeds Scenester...
Welcome to 15 minutes of a lump in your throat. Antares play experimental hardcore, teched up and fired out at a speed that most bullets can only dream of. The delivery is visceral and intense with some jaw dropping guitars, neck breaking drumming and the barking howls of front man Steve Watts.
Opening track “High Function” sounds like an earthquake’s equivalent of a throbbing panic attack,...
5 tags
Rolo Tomassi - Cosmology (Leeds Scenester review)
Cosmology was to be Rolo Tomassi’s difficult second album after becoming the underground darlings of the UK alternative music scene. Such heights were meant to cripple them with compromise and over-expectation as per every other band that gets sucked into the media scrum whilst still young.
Having clawed their way up to the top table of the UK hardcore bracket from the pat-on-the-head position...
May 2010
9 posts
6 tags
Futures - The Holiday (Dead Press review)
London doesn’t strike as the most natural birthplace for a pop-punk band. Suburbs and provincial towns seem to be the de facto stomping grounds for such groups who can often sound like desperate attempts to cling onto a second hand Americana that got damp and diluted on it’s way over the pond. Futures however are a pop-punk band from London and you can tell, for all the right...
6 tags
fun. – The Cockpit, Leeds - 23rd May...
Remember those hyperactive e-numbered sugar rushes you used to get from old school Skittles? The dental decay highs back from when sweets were still coated in all those lovely, all-too-child-friendly chemicals that addled and amazed the brain. Now imagine Walt Disney force feeding such mind altering substances to the comically ever-depressed My Chemical Romance, watching their ensuing technocolour...
6 tags
Double Dagger – Nation of Shopkeepers - 13th May...
Three for the price of none should always be an attractive entry fee yet the night’s first salvo of band, Wonderswan, had only a skeleton crew of a crowd for company. This didn’t hinder their performance mind as they treated the fortunate few early birds to a set of swirling and lurching epic fuzz rock fuelled on high energy and flailing band members. The combination of loose, tumbling...
5 tags
Daughters - Daughters (Dead Press Review)
What a big beautiful epitaph this turned out to be. Daughters’ latest self titled release could well be their last if rumours are to be believed. Crashing home in just under 30 minutes it’s an explosive mix of oppressive, crunchy noise, desperate vocals and screeching, wailing guitars that sound like decayed ruins fired up with fresh electric. Under the thick foggy overcoat of...
6 tags
Cancer Bats - Bears, Mayors, Scraps & Bones (Dead...
Album number three from everyone’s favourite Toronto southern hardcore merchants, and yet again they come up with the goods. As per usual, every track here is packed to the gills with enough riffs to make any fully grown lumberjack weep. Liam Cormier’s vocals are as biting and punchy as ever whilst Scott Middleton’s guitar work can only be described as ridiculous in the...
6 tags
Review (Dead Press): Jamie's Elsewhere - They Said...
Finally, a band that takes the hardcore in post-hardcore a little more seriously than just a fashion accessory suggestion for tattoos and flesh tunnels. Whilst they still definitely fall into the very pop end of the aforementioned genre, Jamie’s Elsewhere contain enough of a kick to back up their pleasant melodies and add some thankfully solid bite to the proceedings. For once a...
6 tags
Review (Dead Press): Year Long Disaster - Black...
Who needs new ideas or innovations when you’ve got the faint, warm glow of nostalgia to wind back the years and cover the cracks with? Year Long Disaster make no apologies for their stereotypical hard rock existence, complete with former homeless crack addictions and the subsequent rehab sessions you expect from these archetypal retro outfits. Harking back to the dead old days of...
6 tags
Review (Dead Press): A Hero A Fake - Let Oceans...
Rather than slamming down a few fistfuls of heavy-as-lead beef to labour through, A Hero A Fake have instead decided to lay on a stylish banquet of 11 accessible yet technical tracks of metalcore for us all to feast on for this, their second album, ‘Let Oceans Lie’. A Hero A Fake’s sound lies somewhere between that of now defunct UK tech outfit SiKth, New Jersey’s...
5 tags
Review (Dead Press): Deaf Havana - Meet Me...
Has the UK really run so low on ideas that American imitation pop-rock has become the closest thing we have to new music? The hyper machine rallying behind Deaf Havana is growing increasingly deafening but these 11 tracks make it all sound like a big noise over nothing. ‘Meet Me Halfway, At Least’ lacks any of the much needed bite and ideas that would lift it above the blandness...
April 2010
10 posts
5 tags
Review (Dead Press): Alesana - The Emptiness
“The emptiness will haunt you” claims the album’s intro. How tragic then that just 20 seconds later any chance the band had of creating some kind of atmosphere or momentum is killed dead by weak, flaccid vocals and hilariously poor screaming. The music itself is okay if fairly passable, but it’s clear that the majority of the blame for this album’s failings...
5 tags
Review (Dead Press): Foxy Shazam - Foxy Shazam
The name Foxy Shazam sounds like some over-the-hill exotic dancer still plying her trade alongside her pension. She’s got all the skills but the ideas have run dry. No amount of glitter or feather catsuits can drag back the clock and help make this tired old race horse look any fresher. It’s all gone a bit stale.
The band Foxy Shazam sound like Freddie Mercury’s grave ...
4 tags
Review (MGF): Cassini - Cassini
Cassini – Cassini Self-released (2010) Rock / Alternative / Progressive metal
From its thundering outset, Cassini’s self-titled debut doesn’t let you mistake its intentions. With the chops and knowhow to back it up, the band fires you through forty minutes of intelli-alt-metal full of snarling riffs, howled vocals and shuddering bass lines with just the right amount of radio-friendly...
5 tags
Review (MGF): The Audition - Great Danger
The Audition – Great Danger Victory Records (3/16/10) Pop-rock / Pop-punk
Not that cover art is usually an accurate depiction of an album’s contents or anything, but the Evel Knievel-esque figure on the front of this, The Audition’s fourth studio album, is as far from a valid visual description of what awaits your ears as possible.
This is an album that is, straight down the line, an...
5 tags
Review (MGF): Midas Fall - Eleven. Revert And...
Midas Fall – Eleven. Return and Revert Monotreme Records (4/20/10) Alternative / Progressive rock / Post-rock
When a band’s debut garners comparisons with Portishead and Radiohead, you’d expect certain musical parallels between the acts besides having a female lead vocal and hailing from the UK. Unfortunately, besides those two obvious shared facts, these hype comparisons are way off...
5 tags
Review (MGF): Bill Dolan/JBe - Split 7"
Bill Dolan/JBe – Limited-edition split EP Sixgunlover Records (4/20/10) Indie rock / Alternative
This limited-edition, four-track split begins with two from Bill Dolan of 5ive Style, Heroic Doses and The Fire Theft fame. Both tracks, containing only an acoustic guitar and bass, flow beautifully thanks to some great guitar work and a torrent of wonderfully realised ideas. Each feels like a...
5 tags
Review (Dead Press): We Are The Ocean - Cutting...
Sounding like the UK’s answer to the latter day sounds of Alexisonfire, We Are The Ocean have gone some way to capture similar levels of intensity and scale to that of those famous Canadian stalwarts. The end result is ten brooding tracks of lush post-hardcore with the odd hard-nosed beatdown and a sprinkling of metalcore flavours, tamed and smoothed down by some slick production. The...
5 tags
Review (Dead Press): You Me At Six - Hold Me Down
‘Hold Me Down’, You Me At Six’s sophomore release, is an accomplished and polished land grab for the Americana pop-punk hyper success being enjoyed by so many bands from over that big Atlantic pond out west. They hide their UK origins well and without the prior knowledge you’d struggle to pull them out of any accent derived line-up along similar bands from the...
6 tags
Review (Dead Press): Young Guns - Winter Kiss
Young Guns’ ‘Winter Kiss’ has something of the Fall Out Boy about it. Sounding like if someone fired a rocket up into the wrong end of ‘Thnks Fr Th Mmrs’ and added a string and piano section to the remains, it clocks in at just over 4 minutes of popped-up rock that has all the right attributes to bother any still interested in the charts. It’s an alright...
4 tags
Tinnitus & Tigersuits: Critical hit ...it's super...
A cynical, elitist snob of a vulture; feasting on the reputations, successes and failures of others like a scavenger attempting to cough up a following for itself. Scathing critique and hyperbolic praise to the undeserving are its tools as it callously disregards the sweat and effort of the poor, victimised artist with tooth, claw and word processor.
An album reviewer can be all these things,...
March 2010
9 posts
3 tags
Downing in the Pond: Pulled Apart By Horses
Drowning, swimming, treading water…
Whether lost at sea, under the radar or yet to make a splash, there are plenty of UK acts you may not yet have heard of over in the States, or the rest of the world.
Speaking of which, here’s the scuzzy Leeds based four-piece juggernaut that is Pulled Apart by Horses:
This spikey, noisy thrash-rock quartet began life with one of those almost mandatory...
5 tags
Review (Dead Press): Lostprophets - The Betrayed
With their fourth studio album the boys from Pontypridd continue to move away from their post-hardcore roots and further into the realms of stadium bothering pop rock. Throughout the 13 tracks the songwriting is solid if at times predictable, making for a collection of highly accessible and well rounded, sugar coated anthems ready for festival crowd sing-a-longs and mass radio play that...
5 tags
Tinnitus & Tigersuits: The End Is Neigh: Madam...
Stop the press!
The pandora’s box that is digital downloads is well and truly free; let loose, out of its cage to fire the last few nails into a slow-build coffin with the names of the major labels carved on the lid.
Yeah, yeah… I know. This is hardly news.
It’s clear that selling music is dead and that soon the CD will be will be joining its ancestors in the graveyard of obsolete formats...
8 tags
So much to do, so little in the way of time...
Procrastination, a lack of motivation and that horrible sense of having so much to do you instead do nothing.
With the work piling up for my second semester, this writing malarkey shifting between hyper activity and blood-from-a-stone slow-mo and the hassle of trying to force life into a few incoming gigs with my effort, patience and give-a-shit meters at an all time low. It’s all become a...
4 tags
Tinnitus & Tigersuits: Big Noise, Small Brains?
So, being covered in safety pins whilst swinging a guitar around in angst is the preserve of the unskilled rebel, is it?
A mohawk might look nice and threatening on the scalp of a lobotomised lout, but where’s the fun in getting loaded and swinging your fists around like a pissed chimp on the wrong side of a lawn mower engine? I’ve always preferred my punk bands with a bit of ability in the ...
8 tags
Tinnitus & Tigersuits: Larynx vs. Lyrics. Final...
Who needs vocals? Lots of people, actually. How many times have you shown someone that band with the amazing guitarist, ridiculous drum beats or funkiest bassist you’ve ever heard, only to be on the receiving end of the twisted face of disgust as the music is thrown back at you because they didn’t like the singer?
When it comes to screaming, lo-fi vocals or just plain unintelligible ...
6 tags
Review (MGF): Librarians - Present Passed
Librarians – Present Passed Postfact Records (3/9/10) Indie rock / Pop / Psychedelic
Like some benevolent pop overlord, Animal Collective dominated 2009 with a synth-drenched fist of genius, so it’s unsurprising that their sound has begun to seep into the diets and DNA of those who you might consider downwind of them in the musical food chain.
Merriweather Post Pavilion is Librarians’...
5 tags
Review (MGF): Close Your Eyes - We Will Overcome
Close Your Eyes – We Will Overcome Victory Records (2/16/10) Pop-punk / Hardcore
The debut album by Close Your Eyes has been tagged under the sound-alike banners of Rise Against, New Found Glory and A Day to Remember, and you can hear why from the offset.
Although touted as the big hardcore release of 2010 so far, stay away if you’re expecting something gritty, edgy and, well… hard. This...
5 tags
Review (MGF): KiNDERGARTEN - Small
KiNDERGARTEN – Small Self-released (2/10: available on iTunes) Rock / Funk / Punk
So, apparently, KiNDERGARTEN are the “new” sound of New York, made up of equal parts Talking Heads, Television, Elvis Costello, David Bowie and Lou Reed, with a touch of Prince.
Besides Bowie and Prince, I’m not so sure. The idea that this is the “new” sound of New York when there are bands such as Yeasayer...
February 2010
12 posts
5 tags
Review (MGF): The Laughing Man - A Palace For...
The Laughing Man – A Palace for Alice Kotori Studios (2009) Rock / Blues / Funk / Folk
I say, “fusion,” and your mind probably says, “No.”
That image of the middle-aged men in the awfully loud shirts, trying to cram as much in the way of cheesy latin pastiches and bad bebop into their sweating attempts to make a guitar weep in case it might make them look young or sexy. They do it because...
5 tags
Not a fucking Valentine's date: a review of...
For valentine’s day a couple of weeks ago, me and Maz headed off to pastures new to sample the delights of a restaurant we hadn’t hit before. Below is a review by my lovely girlfriend that she posted on a food blog run by friend, and fellow fine sustenance fan, Tom Bush : Not A Fucking Foodie.
“Distrikt is new. Distrikt needs to tell you it’s new. They have this flyer...
6 tags
Tinnitus and Tigersuits: Punk Rock in the Wrong...
Emo now resides in the same social stigma bracket as an STI in a group of friends, and misspelt tattoos, all of which are awkward, cause painfully annoying yelps and squeals and make people scatter like a cloud of leprosy.
But isn’t emo the whiney great-grandson of punk?
Good old punk. Locked away in some kind of pop-culture purgatory and disallowed from resting in piece(s), instead...
I love arguments; especially when i don't believe...
Belgium Beer.
Vast quantities of it in a multitude of variations and flavors.
This is the fuel of the philosophers and of great, great men. Socrates drank it, as did Kant and Marx, Chopin and Hercules and anyone who ever lived with any sort of badass with historical importance that a drunk mind can recall. Winston Churchill did, Hitler didn’t. High percentage beverages for high...