The death of Ron Asheton in 2009 was a sad day in music. Considered by this critic and many others to be one of the best guitarists of all time, with his work on the first 2 Stooges album becoming the stuff of legend over the years. Having rejoined with Iggy ...

Zozobra returns five years after their excellent previous full length Birds of Prey; and now, Caleb Scofield (of Cave In and Old Man Gloom) brings forth Savage Masters. If you are not familiar with Zozobra, try to imagine Old Man Gloom covering Cave In tracks: in essence you get straightforward songs, with quite catchy riffs ...

closure and moloch sit on diametrically opposed sides of the same scene in the same country. They share in the metal/hardcore scene within the UK and they manage to bring their differing outlooks to this split. This makes for a different type of split. While most bands would be happy ...

For as prolific as Aidan Baker is (besides his most known musical endeavor Nadja, he is involved in a slew of other projects as well such as Arc and Infinite Light), his solo material seems criminally overlooked by some (which includes my own self in this group); though maybe this is not a case of overlooking ...

The Tossers top out my list of Celtic punk bands. Dropkick Murphys turned into cartoons long ago and I’ve just never been that big a fan of Dave King’s (Flogging Molly) voice. The Tossers, who call Chicago home, bring a mix of emphatic punk energy a la Flogging Molly, but blend it ...

They say that imitation is the best form of flattery, and France’s Soror Dolorosa, in choosing to name their sophomore record after a Stranglers album (due to a badge depicting the album appearing on a jacket used for the cover art) manage to wear their hearts on their leather sleeves and show exactly what ...

If there is any definitive point to life, certainly it must involve leaving something behind that has a positive impact that is discernible well after you are gone. While most of us will ultimately fail to have that kind of effect, we all have the great privilege of being the ...

I'll admit, I was intrigued by the idea of Scottish Pagan Metal. Even with the full understanding of Pagan Metal by definition of the more extreme metal using folk instruments from any religion or culture, the ole' noggin still tends to default to the Norse code. Cnoc An Tursa hail from the ...

The new release from Drivin’ N Cryin’ is the third EP of an anticipated four, each dedicated to a different genre that has shaped the foundation of the band’s sound over the last 25 years or so. While the previous EPs have been stellar, this one is by far the ...

There's soundtracks to the apocalypse and then there's soundtracks to everything afterward. Ensemble Pearl provides the latter. The din and drone as your mind takes in the ruins of its surroundings, the dissonant fear of realization and finally the despair of acceptance. Stephen O'Malley has provided many a piss shiver in ...

It's genuinely hard for me to get excited about supergroups in general--they're almost never as good as the sum of their parts. And unfortunately, despite the calibre of the musicians involved, that seems to be exactly what has happened to post-everything supergroup Ensemble Pearl on their eponymous 2013 debut.Anchoring this ...

The issue that I had with Furnace, the 2011 debut album from Brooklyn's doom metal band Batillus was that it kept losing my interest after the first two songs. Don't get me wrong, I love those first couple tracks and the overall chilling atmosphere of that album, but I just ...

Beautiful Death Machine is the eighth studio album by the Vancouver, British Columbia rap group, Swollen Members. I must admit, up until recently I hadn’t paid much attention to the group since their 1999 debut, Balance. It was one of my favorite underground hip-hop albums from that year, but in the 14-year interim ...

Upon initial listen, this came across as the kind of sloppy folk punk that I’d likely be annoyed by if there was a male singer. Call me sexist if you will but the fact that a female is doing the vocals makes this totally pleasurable, whereas I’d normally dismiss such ...

Having began life as a one-man project borne from the mind of Chris Grigg, Woe’s motive was one of total aggression and pure hate and signified a time when American black metal was only just starting to find its feet within the darker realms of the musical sphere. With A Spell for the ...

I unfairly judged Nai Harvest at first glance. Band name: wacky. Album title: hip self-awareness masquerading an average sounding record. Genre: Emo. Oh emo, we meet again old foe. A style birthed by ex-punks, killed by its own apathy, briefly reanimated by fringed goths, then killed and mounted by Tumblr. ...

In the intervening years between her debut Own Side Now and this sophomore record, there has been very little sign of Caitlin Rose apart from a great cover of Alex Turner’s “Piledriver Waltz.” So as she returns, it is immediately apparent that this interval has been used for growing up: gone is ...

Kenosha, Wisonsin's Jungle Rot have been peddling their form of death metal since 1994. The band have managed to release a nearly insane amount of records in that time and create a fanbase that allowed them to get signed by Victory records. The band have remained committed to their original ...

Though they all claim lineage to the great acts of the 1970s, no modern progressive band can claim that they sound even remotely similar to them. Bands in the modern progressive rock genre (see Transatlantic, Spock's Beard, Coheed and Cambria) tend to sound closer akin to brightly-polished half-metal than the rock of the ...

Dirty, spacey punk rawk—in a nutshell, that’s what The Spits are bringing. We could talk costumes, we could talks subgenres, and we could talk recording quality (and we will), but The Spits are a concept best described in those few words. Sound-wise, it’s largely Ramonescore run through a fuzzy filter, so much so that it ...