I thought when “Banned In America” started that Jade would be creating something that was an Avril clone. Don’t get me wrong, the vocal style of Jade is still something that is pop-based, but the backing instrumentation is something that is much more heavy and rock-based. This puts Jade in the position of being another Amy lee. The vocal style gives me more of a Celine Dion feel, so the…
“I Am The Light” starts off in a much different vein than the following tracks would indicate. This is because “Jaxbac” is a purely vocal track that rivals (but does not emulate) throat-singing, while both “Blood Doesn’t Lie” and “Nowhere To Land” approach the industrial, early-nineties goth sound without abandon. The music on tracks like “I Am The Light” seem to be drawn from the Middle Eastern tradition of music,…
Aside from the wonderful new-plastic smell of the CD booklet, Ivy’s Butterfly strikes me at the beginning of their CD for another reason : the rich layering of vocals and the guitars unafraid to be both explorative and to rock out. Ivy’s Butterfly also provides me with a slight problem, as with Go Rimbaud, the sheer work they do on each track renders it virtually impossible to assign a generally-acceptable…
The dreamy pop of Ivy is cultured, having been refined for the last decade over four albums. The music that starts off the disc, especially “Nothing But The Sky”, does not cut as deep as it could. Everything seems to traverse the same narrow swath during the 5:12 of the track, ultimately leaving a certain hollowness and lack of depth that plagues the band throughout the disc. “Thinking About You”…
Okay, so I went into It Dies Today’s “Sirens” pretty negatively. The first verse of the first song had me making my “Eww, all yelling metal crap.” But, you guys won me back over. The growls and yelling were used tastefully, backed by vocals I actually quite enjoy. And the yelling is pretty unique; I can still make out all the lyrics. “A Port in Any Storm” actually had some…
Ism – Monkey Underneath I had started writing my review of “Monkey Underneath”, but after writing about half of it I realized that the music that was playing from my speakers was in reality not Ism but Him or Avenged Sevenfold, coming out of one of my friends’ Myspace. Oh well, Ism sounds quite different from either band, so I can’t salvage much besides “and” and “the”. The style of…
I loved The Unicorns a great deal when I heard their “Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone”, and to hear that some of the members of that band are in the Islands, I began to get excited about “Return to the Sea”. The album breaks away from the traditional pop act sound by incorporating a number of vocalists as the focal point of the band. In this sense,…
It is true that Oceanic fits well with the sound that Isis puts on this disc. For “Weight”, done by Fennesz gives listeners a sense of being by a sea. This sea sound, created by white noise, is one of the better emulations of nature. This compilation of “reinterpretations” is interesting to say the least. While Fennesz has a very solemn and sedate sound dominating their track, Ayal Naor creates…
Scheduled for release on June 8th, 2010 by Seeland Records, the label owned by legendary culture-jammers, Negativland, GiTAr’s “STUFFED” has the potential to make you more than you are without it. GiTAr members Ellipse Elkshow and I Cut People were raised in Evansville, Indiana, home to major polluters, factories, cancer statistics, pharmaceutical manufacturing and a test town for new products cooked up by various fast food giants. In that cold…
I’m not sure exactly if having two non-song tracks to start out your album is necessarily something a rapper attempting to reach that next level of fame really should be doing. When J. Isaac starts the song section of eir disc with “Baby Ez Up”, a lot of this doubt disappears. “Baby Ez Up” starts out in a Sisqo vein, but the backing beat seems to be a little anemic…
There are albums that are re-released for a number of reasons seemingly every day. Expanded editions, discs with new tracks on them, but very rarely is it that a deleted, long out of print album will see the ligh of day again. It probably will not happen in regards to Warren Zevon’s Terminus City or Neil Young’s Trans, but to see that there are individuals that will take it upon…
The style of music that Irving plays is something that has not been heard quite as much since the end of the eighties. The very dusky, retro sound of Irving is done with a quality that will make individuals find something to love about the band, even if the individual’s tastes are far removed from the band’s style. For example, a song like “Situation” is something that is heavily based…
This is hardcore that should be called such, instead of jock-metal. This mixes thrash, punk, and Slayer-like metal to create something that is hard enough to bang one’s head to but not dark enough that a killer mosh pit couldn’t be started. The band, which has members of Sick of It All, Nausea, and Killing Time in it, really shows a maturity that goes well beyond the amount of time…
Fresh off their 2007 effort, “Read The Signs”, DownTown Mystic have just cut their latest album, “Standing Still”. “Standing Still” represents an evolutionary step forward for the act, while still maintaining cohesion amongst the disc’s thirteen cuts. “Backdoor” starts out with a bit of blues-tinged rock that allows Robert’s vocals to approach the timbre and quality of a Warren Zevon or Jimmy Buffett. Despite having a sound that would easily…
Iron Age – Constant Struggle / 2006 Youngblood Records / 10 Tracks / http://www.myspace.com/youngbloodrecords / Reviewed 01 April 2006 It was not an accident that Iron Age makes their actual CD for Constant Struggle” look like an eighties CD. The style put forth on tracks like “We’re Dust / The Violator” looks back to bands like Megadeth and their ilk for influence. Still, the production values of “Constant Struggle”, as…
More than a decade after they formed, it’s still amazing to think that John K. Samson, the voice behind Canada’s The Weakerthans, is the same punk rocker that used to play bass for the skate punks in Propaghandi. The sounds of both bands are so drastically different. While Propaghandi had the angst-ridden teen market in mind, The Weakerthans churn out beautifully-crafted, melody-soaked, deeply introspective indie rock. Recorded before a hometown…
Ion Dissonance – Solace / 2005 Abacus / 10 Tracks / http://www.iondissonance.com / http://www.abacusrecordings.com / Reviewed 16 November 2005 While it is hard for me to typically appreciate the style of technical hardcore that bands like Converge play, I feel that Ion Dissonance moves beyond that sound in trying to put the hardest type of music down on disc. Individuals may say that this is just a chaotic mess, that…
The Invisible Eyes – Laugh In The Dark / 2005 Bomp! / 16 Tracks / http://www.myspace.com/theinvisibleeyes / http://www.bomp.com / Reviewed 09 December 2005 Psychedelic seems to be the major fuel that drives bands in 2005. Between the Invisible Eyes and The Coffin Lids, there seems to be a single-handed resurrection of the style by Bomp! bands. The Invisible Eyes are more sedate than The Coffin Lids, tending to be more…
Intronaut – Void / 2006 Goodfellow / 7 Tracks / http://www.intronaut.net / http://www.goodfellowrecords.com / Reviewed 10 August 2006 It may take a few seconds for individuals to be properly welcomed (assaulted) by Intronaut, but when you hear the band cranking themselves up during “A Monolithic Vulgarity”, you know that something impressive awaits just around the corner. The track is not just a minute of introduction and then something that drops…
Intrinzik – Double U I Double L / 15 Tracks / 2004 Intrinz Ink / http://www.intrinzikweb.com / intrinzik@fall-guy.com / Reviewed 18 April 2004 Intrinzik is a key member of Arizona’s Fall Guy, and this album is an album in which we finally see where Intrinzik wants to go. We are immediately assaulted with a diverse sound that mixes together Cypress Hill, House of Krazees, and Kid Rock, along with nu-metal…