After the introduction, “Unleash The Bastards” starts off Municipal Waste’s latest album “Hazardous Mutation”., The clarity in which Municipal Waste works may be the most shocking thing about the band, far outstripping the speed and intensity that this thrash act puts forth on every track of “Hazardous Mutation”. There are hints of “Rust in Peace”-era Megadeth, D.R.I., and much more present in the Waste’s style, but the inclusion of the…
Mummy The Peepshow is the first band that has been imported from Japan from Records of the Damned that really breaks free of the J-pop label. In fact, the first track on the disc (“Hide-And-Seek On The Turntable”) ties together Brassy with L7 to make a hard rocking and musically confident track. There is much of the same happening on the disc’s title track. The straight-forward dominance of the guitar…
Even though the music on “I Wish My Name Were Jack” was xcreated this last year, the compositions feel as if they could have came out years and year ago. The disc’s first track is “Salt Water Jam”, and it meanders around for a few minutes before Mullen moves on. This music is not for those individuals that wish to run or mosh to the guitar strains of an act.…
The way in which “Floating In The Clouds” starts is very sedate. If anything, one can hear the style of acts like Soul Asylum, Blues Traveler, and Rusted Roots in this track. In fact, the band builds their sound specifically on the style of these bands. The opening track is only three minutes long, and the slower tempo of M2B makes the three minute runtime of the song feel more…
I had no clue what Mt. Gigantic was going to sound like before I put the disc in the player, and I feel good that I did not read the promo sheet before listening in this instance. What follows is a truly unique style of music, similar to A Silver Mt. Zion in its ability to subsume all different styles of music and create something that is their own. Bloomington,…
Mt Gigantic – Gleanings and Gatherings / 2007 Harlan / 8 Tracks / http://www.mtgigantic.com / http://www.friendsandrelativesrecords.com / Reviewed 01 May 2007 “Get Well Cougher” is the first track on “Gleanings and Gathering”, and it is an interesting for all of the different tempos, loudnesses, and genres that Mt. Gigantic uses during the song. It is not enough that the and goes from quiet to heavy, but the track moves from…
Mr. T Experience – Yesterday Rules / 12 Tracks / 2004 Lookout Records / http://www.lookoutrecords.com / Released 13 January 2004 / Reviewed 21 January 2004 Somewhat lighter of a release than I would expect from the Mr. T Experience, a band that I thought would perfectly espouse the Lookout ideal of a pop-punk band. There are still some remnants of the punk roots of this band, but a lot of…
Mower – Not For You / 2006 Suburban Noize / 15 Tracks / http://www.mowermusic.com / http://www.suburbannoizerecords.com / Reviewed 01 June 2006 Mower plays a brand of hard rock that quite often goes into hardcore and metal veins. For those that did not know, they are intricately related to Kottonmouth Kings. Where KMK has put forth a very intense brand of rap down on their last few albums, Mower does nearly…
Movies With Heroes – Nothing Here is Perfect / 2006 CI Records / 10 Tracks / http://www.movieswithheroes.com / http://www.cirecords.com / Reviewed 25 March 2006 Movies With Heroes do not play the same style of music that most emo bands push upon their listener.s In fact, a track like “Wake Up” is emotional rock, done with a style of music that more approximately meshes with rock than anything close to “emo”.…
Movie Star Kiss – Starting Over / 2006 Self / 10 Tracks / http://www.moviestarkiss.com/ http://www.myspace.com/moviestarkiss / Reviewed 07 November 2006 The opening of “Starting Over” is slow, deliberate, and snowballs to give the opening set of vocals even more fury than it would have normally had. There is a high amount of repetition present during this track, but the band is smart enough to end the track before the band…
The Movies – In One Era Out the Other / 2002 Gern Blandsten Records / 10 Tracks / http://www.gernblandsten.com / http://www.skyscrapermedia.net / Reviewed 01 January 2004 Another lo-fi, ethereal sounding type of alternative music. Timothy’s lyric sound plucked out of an early eighties 4AD release. While the promo sheet would have you try to equate The Movies with “Pornography-era Cure”, I would have to point individuals in the way of…
Motion City Soundtrack – Commit This To Memory / 2005 Epitaph / 12 Tracks / http://www.motioncitysoundtrack.com / http://www.epitaph.com / Reviewed 06 April 2005 We have a winner for the most annoying method to ensure that one’s CD is not stolen. Epitaph has decided to split up the twelve tracks on “Commit This To Memory” into 99 different sections, and this means that I get into a groove with the great…
James Morrison – Undiscovered / 2007 Interscope / 11 Tracks / http://www.jamesmorrisonmusic.com / http://www.interscope.com / Reviewed 11 March 2007 James Morrison plays a style of feel-good pop-rock that has ties to artists such as John Maher and Jack Johnson; the title track derivates from that formula only when ey adds a very psychedelic meets Counting Crows type of organ to the mix. The large role that the bass has in…
Mouth Sewn Shut – Pandemic = Solution / 2006 Rodent Popsicle / 12 Tracks / http://www.myspace.com/mouthsewnshut / http://www.rodentpopsicle.com / Reviewed 07 July 2006 Obviously, Toxic Narcotic is one of the best crust bands out in the genre today. For those that do not know, Bill and Will from Toxic Narcotic are in this band. Mouth Sewn Shut seems to be a little heavier, more metal-based type of crust act. However…
The opening of “Royal Street Inn” sounds as if a blend of Adam Duritz and Coldplay were present with Moroux’s “Cincinnati”. There is the typical singer-songwriter in a coffee shop style, with a very tender bit of instrumentation backing up Moroux’s vocals. What results is a track that could easily be played on all of the pop and Top 40 radio stations. This does not mean that the track is…
Moros Eros is an act that has a lot of flavor to the tracks that they release, but struggles hard to find a sound for the entirety of “I Saw The Devil”. It seems as if each track on this album shows Moros Eros trying to do something different, whether it be the dance punk of a song like “Short of the Shore” or the grunge meets seventies rock of…
The opening to “Prelude: EP’s 1 & 2” is a mood-setter, an atmospheric track that really tells the story of the band even before any music is laid down on the disc. “Run For Our Lives” has the entire history of British rock behind it, from the less-hacky days of U2 back to The Who; there is even some crossing-over in the slightly Jim Morrison meets Rivers Cuomo vocals present…
The Street Dogs and I have a great history together. Never mind the fact that I have never met them or heard them live, but I played the shit out of “Savin Hill” when I still had my show on WGRE. Regardless, ever since we received that early title for review, the Street Dogs have had a special place in my heart. This self-titled release, their fifth, showcases more of…
The metal that is played by Mord on “Christendom Perished” is something that is not moderated by time or general mood of the track. There is little time for individuals to get ready as Mord throws their listeners headlong into their distinct music style. Actually providing ideas to listeners via vocals is not the goal of the band; the screaming acts more like another instrument here during songs like “Opus…
Moonspell still sounds as fresh and as intense as they did during “Wolfheart”, and the production during this album is solid enough that is allows every different sound that Moonspell places to the disc to be captured in its original glory. The band was one of the first acts to blend together styles of classical and metal, well before acts like Cradle of Filth even began to think of the…