Category: Reviews
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It’s hard to believe that Sara Bareilles is already on album number three. Alas, her major label debut, Little Voice, was released in 2007. And I’m pretty sure there’s still a radio station somewhere playing its huge hit single, “Love Song,” at any given moment. Of course, her second album, Kaleidoscope Heart, also yielded a…
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Hailing from Sweden, Darkane blend melodic death metal and technical thrash metal, yielding a highly energetic and wholly captivating sound that reminds me of early, Kill ‘Em All era Metallica at times, while calling to mind later day Slayer and newer bands like Mastodon and Opeth at others. The Sinister Supremacy sees the return of…
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Stars Dance is Selena Gomez’s highly anticipated fourth album. It’s also her solo debut, following three albums with her band The Scene. The album’s first single, “Come & Get It,” was released on April 8, 2013 and made it all the way to the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming her most successful…
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Gabrielle Aplin grew up in a small town called Chippenham in Wiltshire, England. Her parents bought her her first guitar when she was just 11 years old. She grew up listening to Bruce Springsteen and Joni Mitchell and she cites them as influences. She’s also a big fan of singer/songwriters like Leonard Cohen and Bob…
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Deer Howling is the “little secretive” side-project of Valquire Veljkovic of the obscure electro-pop band ANIAETLEPROGRAMMEUR. (You may have heard their remixes of songs by Velvet Condom and Noblesse Oblige. If not, check them out on their site: http://www.aniaetleprogrammeur.com/) Val tells us: “The roots of this project are in mid 90s acid techno scene, wandering…
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“It breaks my heart to love you, it breaks my heart to love you,” croons Editors vocalist Tom Smith matter-of-factly during “Sugar,” the second track on the band’s splendid new album The Weight Of Your Love. Previously, the band have often reminded me of The Killers and Franz Ferdinand, but not so much on this…
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Skylar Grey is the alias of American singer/songwriter Holly Brook Hafermann. Her first full-length album, 2006’s Like Blood Like Honey, was released under the name Holly Brook, but during recent years she underwent a transformation and decided to start going by Skylar Grey. According to Wiki, she chose her new name because “it represents the…
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Nehedar is what NYC-based singer/songwriter Emilia Cataldo goes by, much the way Natasha Khan calls herself Bat For Lashes or Sarah Assbring calls herself El Perro Del Mar. Let’s face it — it’s trendy for female solo artists to give themselves a cool name these days. But Emilia didn’t just start calling herself Nehedar because…
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Every time a new Megadeth album comes out, I listen to it and find myself thinking, damn, this is the best Megadeth in years. Perhaps, then, they’ve been getting progressively better. It’s also possible — if not probable — that I’ve forgotten how good the previous album was by the time a new album comes…
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Initially, I was disappointed that this new Black Sabbath album, the first in something like 20 years to feature Geezer Butler (bass), Tony Iommi (guitar) and Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), didn’t have any catchy songs like “Iron Man” and “Paranoid.” I felt like, didn’t they want to hook people? I’ve been frustrated with Iron Maiden for…
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United World Rebellion: Chapter One is Skid Row’s third release to feature vocalist Johnny Solinger, who’s been their singer for a decade now, which is probably close to how long original vocalist Sebastian Bach was in the band. Their first release with Solinger was called Thickskin and it found the band trying on an alternative…
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If I understand correctly, this is the chorus of “The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here,” the title track of Alice In Chain’s new album: “The devil put dinosaurs here / Jesus don’t like a queer / The devil put dinosaurs here / No problem with faith just fear.” Now analyze that. Seriously. Because I don’t get…
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Daft Punk will undoubtedly be this year’s most successful electronic music duo (even if much of their latest album was produced with live instruments), but Australia’s Empire Of The Sun won’t be kept down under on the charts for much longer if there’s any justice in this world of pop. Just listen to “Alive,” the…
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I started covering Paola & Chiara over a decade ago when I was writing a world music column called Import Zone for Lollipop magazine. (I couldn’t find every column I wrote about them in, but I did manage to find the one with my review of their 2002 album Festival, which you can read here:…
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Back in April a Queensrÿche album called Frequency Unknown was released. And it was terrible. The 10 new songs were so generic that they were painful to listen to. Or maybe it was the production and/or mixing. The drums sounded like tin cans. Actually, that’s an insult to tin cans. I don’t mean that as…
