Recent reviews

More album reviews

Ava Mendoza, Gabby Fluke-Mogul & Carolina Pérez

Mama Killa
Burning Ambulance (2025)

Ava Mendoza appeared in the avant-rock scene in the '10s, and throughout the decade, she defined many works with her adventurous guitar playing and tonality. She made her mark through projects like Unnatural Ways, the trio with Tim Dahl and Sam Ospovat, and her split release with Sir Richard Bishop of Sun City Girls, Ivory Tower. Along her journeys, she … Read more

FVRMN

Suicides
Steadfast Records, Sweet Cheetah Records (2025)

Calling themselves "Fevermooon," FVRMN is led by J Holmes and Suicides is the second album in as many years. In a broad summary, I thought Back To The Whip was like a drawn out Leatherface or Jawbreaker record. Similar gruff vocals, personal lyrics, but paced with slower tempos and longer songs. Jumping to the present, Suicides has captured the tone … Read more

Lambrini Girls

Who Let The Dogs Out
City Slang (2025)

I ramble, at length, about basically everything. Word limits fear me. My friends dnf my texts. I think I may have single handedly crashed Twitter. Straight to the point, I am not. However, in the spirit of things, I’m going to dive right in. Who Let The Dogs Out is Lambrini Girls’ first full length album. 11 tracks, 29 minutes, … Read more

Sexfaces

Bad Vibes OST
Slovenly (2025)

Best thing about writing reviews is finding out about new stuff that I otherwise might not have heard. Also writing reviews for bands that aren’t friends of mine is pretty cool but when I hear a band I really like, like Sex Faces, it makes me want to be friends with them, I can't help it! I’m not even halfway … Read more

Unseemlier

I Have A Screw Loose, Somewhere
Sell The Heart Records (2025)

What does Unseemlier sound like? I've been mulling that question as I listen to I Have A Screw Loose, Somewhere for a while now. As I listen to more and more Sell The Heart releases, The band is from Boston, but seemingly influenced by late '80s DC. It's heavy, but more with hardcore-like vocals shouted over moving, building guitars and … Read more

Personality Cult

Dilated
Dirtnap (2025)

I had a hard time starting this review. I can’t help coming back to the fact that it sounds like Marked Men. It does, maybe intentionally so, as Dilated is the second of Personality Cult’s albums that is produced by Jeff Burke of Marked Men and Radioactivity. But I don’t necessarily like to say a band sounds like another band … Read more

Various Artists

Her Head's On Fire/Arms Like Roses - Split
Double Helix (2025)

Her Head’s On Fire (NY, NY) and Arms Like Roses (New Haven, CT) team up on this split 7” with two new tracks (one each band) of post-hardcore tunes that are both massive and melodic in their own distinct ways. "Universal" is the track from Her Head’s On Fire. Recorded by the band’s guitarist Jeff Dean, "Universal" came from the … Read more

Dead Bars

All Dead Bars Go To Heaven
Iodine (2025)

Dead Bars has a unique talent of taking the everyday, the experiences you see and live all the time, and shining a new light on them to make them personal and interesting. I've written about it before, yet it's my job to say this again and to make it interesting. It's what Dead Bars does, so it only seems fitting … Read more

Painkiller

The Great God Pan
Tzadik (2025)

Painkiller, the trio of John Zorn, Bill Laswell, and Mick Harris shows no signs of slowing down. The Great God Pan is their third full-length, since their reunion in 2024, and in many ways it is an unexpected offering. In keeping with their interests in the metaphysical realm, Painkiller find inspiration from the famed Arthur Machen horror novella. Here, the … Read more

Painkiller

The Equinox
Tzadik (2025)

Painkiller sees three absolute masters of extreme music join forces. John Zorn of Naked City and a billion other projects, Mick Harris who transcended from Napalm Death drummer to illbient guru with Scorn, and producer extraordinaire Bill Laswell. Their first two records, Guts of a Virgin and Buried Secrets are strange meditations traversing between free-jazz, grindcore and dub. Still hungry … Read more

Dauber

Falling Down
Dromedary Records, Recess (2025)

The lazy approach would be to call Dauber "ex-Screaming Females," but that barely scratches the surface. If I had to pick one band to namedrop a comparison to, it would be labelmates Night Court. They play a familiar style but with a lot of quirks that set it apart from the genre standard-bearers. It's driving and energetic -- more importantly, … Read more

Aesop Rock

Black Hole Superette
Rhymesayers (2025)

Aesop Rock has a reputation for esoteric and abstract raps. It's certainly an earned reputation, but that background makes it interesting when you peel off the layers of his latest, Black Hole Superette and realize that many of these dense songs are actually about the mundane: walking the dog, cohabitation... hell, even fishkeeping. While there's a lot of day-to-day routine … Read more

Circuit des Yeux

Halo On The Inside
Matador (2025)

Haley Fohr's artistic vehicle, Circuit des Yeux, defies categorisation. Stamping the indie folk label on her was superficial, something dispelled easily once you have experienced the lo-fi distortion of "The Girl With No Name." It might be that under the layers of sonic disfigurement, a folk ethos is present in Fohr's narrative sensibility, but it is no longer the same. … Read more

ZEPHR

Past Lives
Dumb Ghost, Snappy Little Numbers (2025)

Sometimes you can just hear the passion in a voice. ZEPHR is one of those bands. They defy convention a little bit, in that I associate gravelly voices with harsher, heavier sounds, but ZEPHR use sore-throat vocals to great effect with midtempo, emotional and melodic 3-chord chugging punk rock and some DC sound. In few words, it's raw, both musically … Read more

• First
• Previous
• 1 (current)
  Page 1 of 302
• 2
• …
• Next
• Last