Brian Lee creates an incredibly interesting style of music on “Moth”. The type of sound that issues forth during “Love To Me” is beyond description. This eclectic bit of guitar and lightly-smattered drums, topped off with a male and female set of vocals, ranges the gamut of styles from Beatles-era pop, to indie, alt-country, and even Conor Oberst-types of emo. This means that there is a panoply of contexts that…
The guitar riffs that open up “Ol’ Blood N’ Guts” are absolutely intense, with hints of timeless acts like KISS placed alongside progressive metal shredders. When the vocals start up, a similarly-catchy side of Brown’s music is shown. Where production largely goes ignored now, it is the skilled production on this album that allows Brown’s solos and vocals to shine without either sounding too tinny or being forgotten in the…
Each of the compositions on “The Black Dove” are very pensive and stark in the overwhelming silence that they are couched in. There is no need for vocals in tracks like “Missing”, but Sharron’s vocals calling on masters like Allison Krauss and Stevie Nicks make the country and bluegrass stylings present into something that is compelling and catchy as all get out. In a sense, Kraus’ vocals even take on…
The opening composition of “Czar Nicholas is Dead” is “Yurovsky’s Lament”. Theme album, perhaps? I find it hard to really see or hear themes when the artist doing the theme is largely (if not completely) instrumental-based. I understand that there is a theme based on the track titles, but there does not seem to be a theme that immediately presents itself to me. How is one supposed to tell the…
To be honest, I really expected something more classical (Selena-like) when I first put on this disc, but when one starts to listen to a track like “Caterpillar Eyes” it becomes evident that Kiara is making a strong entrance into the land of pop-singers. The track does not seem to be oriented to the pop music genre in 2006, however; this is more Twila Paris and nineties pop than Kelly…
Khold is currently on hiatus, which sucks. However, the music that was recorded for “Krek” shows the band at a slightly happier time. The fury in which the band drenches their compositions on “Krek” is something new for most metal fans, as the band during tracks like “Blod Og Blek” uses a very sludgy sound to get their point across. Khold thus comes forward with a new hybrid of metal…
Khierstin used to be a teenage model, and this fact really makes sense when one hears the opening strains of the title track. What comes forth is an inoffensive, innocuous brand of pop music that is vocally-led, so much so that the instrumentation present is pushed to the background. Each of the tracks on “Lost In This” sounds similar to what has been common fare in popular music – that…
From Italy, Kharisma play a style of muted punk that has a definite eye towards the early nineties subset of punk rock. Starting out their demo disc with their theme song, “Kharisma” has compelling vocals laid down by GD, but a pretty weak electric guitar holds Kharisma back from really achieving their potential. This lack of guitar energy is endemic to the entire disc, and really is something to be…
I forget, is a two track album a proclamation to the world that the band feels that they can hang in with such storied acts as Klaus Schultze and Jethro Tull, or does it just say that the band is a bunch of pretentious assholes? One thing that can be said about bands that use such drawn out tracks (the shorter of the two tracks is still a shade over…
I should have guessed when the first track on “Always Never The Same”, “Tree of Night” started up, that this band had been around for a few years as it contained some of the most solid instrumentation that I’ve ever heard from a ska band. Every part of this eight-piece is given equal time on this disc, and one can hear drums ,brass, bass, and guitars all kicking in behind…
Kate Kennedy plays a very guitar-heavy type of looking-back rock. The new-folk of a track like “The Blues Are Exhausted” has Kennedy singing in the vein of Suzanne Vega and other nineties alternative singers, as the acoustic guitars play a folk-style that screams 2006 looking back at 1936. The guitars play interesting harmonies during “The Blues Are Exhausted”, and this is only helped by the inclusion of percussion during the…
The echoing of Kelley’s vocals during “High Boots” is interesting. The rarities aspect of this disc means that the tracks are collected through the entirety of Kelley’s life. The production of some of these tracks are a little suspect, but one can hear early that Kelley has an ear for this music. One of the things that individuals can see immediately with “Some Sucker’s Life” is that the tracks are…
While Keep of Kalessin is fast, individuals actually can understand what the hell that the lead vocalist is singing. This is a plus, for sure. While I am not sure if this is a plus or minus, the vocals cxrack and show some strain from out of the gate. It sounds almost as if the lead singer is going hoarser with each subsequent line that ey sings on “Armada”. As…
From the bands they’ve played with (Dillinger Four, Oneida), one would never expect The Keep Aways to kick so much ass. Still, here they are playing a brash brand of punk that draws equally from different times and movements in a fresh way. The snotty vocals of Mindy look towards other female-led punk bands like The Avengers and more current acts like Retching Red, and the quick start-stop of the…
Keane has been around for a few years, and they have not broken it big in the United States yet. I have no doubt that they will when copies of “Under The Iron Sea” start flooding the United States market. The sweeping electronic atmosphere that is first present during “Atlantic” fit the title sea well. There is a compelling pop-rock set of vocals on the track, but what really cinches…
“P.R. Song” starts off “Modern Primitive Punk”, and Kcuf comes forth with a style that lends itself well to the thrash-punk that hit it big during the early part of the eighties in places like California. The simplistic riffs of the track smash listeners upside the head and show that the band does honestly not give a shit whether individuals call them repetitive. What one will immediately hear about Kcuf…
While all the Brits are extolling the virtues of Kava Kava, the United States haven’t had the ability to get their new album, “Maui” until now. Starting off with intense dance-music (ntense as in Junior Senior, not the 300bpm dance marathon tracks), Kava Kava’s rich instrumentation and solid production ensure for a tremendous experience. The tracks on “Mauyi” are mini-epics, using the extended lengths of some of the longer pop-dance…
With immediate influences to Converge and Hidden In Plain View, Kane Hodder does the light/dark dynamic of vocals impressively, with the light set of vocals capturing all the harmony and melody of Ryan (Yellowcard) as well as Serj (SOAD) and the dark set being fairly par for the course. Moving perilously close to the insincere arena rock of later-day U2 in the late minutes of “Last of the Anti-Fascist Warriors”,…
This may just be the first progressive metal band that I have heard use a pitch changer; this occurs first on “March of Mephisto”, which is a Middle Eastern influenced romp that gives the opening of “The Black Halo” proper energy. The band speeds things up considerably during “When the Lights Are Down”, mixing crystal-clear guitar work with breakneck drumming and a set of vocals that approximate early-nineties Iron Maiden…
“Raindrops” starts out slowly, but Kalli seems to bring more and more elements into the track without losing anyone along the way. Still, by the time that the track gains a little steam, all that is needed is a guitar and drums. The vocals come in in much the same way as a Melissa Etheridge or a Joe Cocker, all while the driving instrumentation lifts the vocals to a new…