Category: Rock
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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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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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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…
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The new single by Editors, “A Ton Of Love,” is up-tempo song taken from their latest album, The Weight of Your Love. Usually Editors remind me of The Killers and Franz Ferdinand, but this particular track reminds me of Springsteen, given its potent drumming, the tone of Tom Smith’s moving vocals and the shimmering horns.…
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In 2008 Nouvelle Vague co-founder/musician Marc Collin did a side-project album called Hollywood, Mon Amour. The album featured songs from ’80’s movies covered Nouvelle Vague style, meaning that they were the sort of covers that are often drastically different than the original versions of the song, though care is taken when making these interpretations because…
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Produced by Chris “Zeuss” Harris (Killswitch Engage, Soulfly), Eye of the Storm is the new E.P. by New York City’s Eye Ra Haze and it’s mighty impressive. In fact, its three songs are the most potent female-fronted hard rock I’ve heard since Evanescence’s Fallen, which was released 10 years ago. Since then, an awful lot…
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The French band Indochine have now been at it for 32 years and are usually regarded in the way people regard musical gods like U2, The Beatles and Johnny Cash. In other words, people consider their music a form of high art and deem them music royalty. Well, their fans do anyway. And they have…
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Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner appears on the new Queens Of The Stone Age album and it would seem he was influenced by them from the sound of the new Monkeys’ song, “Do I Wanna Know?” The guitars on the mid-tempo number sound ever so slightly QOTSA-ish and there’s no denying that the sludge-ish beat of…
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I’ll always miss Wolfmother, but, let’s face it, Andrew was the voice, guitarist and chief songwriter, so he basically *is* Wolfmother. So, I suppose it made sense that he would release his new album under his own name after the last line-up of Wolfmother disbanded. But there’s another reason why this album is better suited…
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“You should be dying / dying, dying, dying,” Danzig sings — no, screams — during “You Should Be Dying.” If that sounds lame to you, then I’m sure this album would not suit you. But if you have a dark side that those lyrics might appeal to, then I should think you’d really enjoy this…
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The KISS album Monster, produced by Paul Stanley & Greg Collins, is the band’s 2012 follow up to 2009’s Sonic Boom. In general I considered Sonic Boom the return to form that the band hadn’t had since Revenge, and also that it was the closest they’d come to an album worthy of those released in…
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Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme’s last project was Them Crooked Vultures, the all-star album he did with Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters) and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin). I tried very hard to get into their self-titled album, but it never managed to grip me. The musicianship was top notch, but the songs…
