Illinois – What The Hell Do I Know / 2007 Ace Fu / 7 Tracks / http://www.illinoistheband.com / http://www.acefu.com / Reviewed 23 April 2007 Ace Fu is coming out with a number of clients that do not seem to be any bit similar to An Albatross; diversification is great but hell for the reviewer that assumes that clients will be similar in sound and scope. Anyways, “What The Hell Do…
Il Divo – Siempre / 2006 Sony / 10 Tracks / http://www.ildivo.com / http://www.sony.com / Reviewed 15 January 2006 Il Divo is an act that can best be described as a boy band for the upper crust. Simon Cowell (the individual behind American Idol) founded this act after hearing to Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman. Much like those two, Il Divo’s music represents an approachable foray into classical and opera…
Iggy Pop has went too long without a comprehensive discography, especially considering the sheer weight of eir contributions to the state of current music. EMI has found this fact to be particularly fitting and really have hit a home-run with this disc. Now, there is nothing wrong with the collection of tracks – all the hits are there, whether it be “Raw Power”, “Lust For Life”, “Real Wild Child” or…
British Steel is for many the quintessential Judas Priest album, despite being their sixth studio album, recorded a full 11 years after the band was founded. This is due to a number of features, primary of which has to be the band’s output. “Rapid Fire”, the track’s first salvo, is exactly that – those listeners that originally stuck the needle on their new vinyl copy back in 1980 would have…
The repetition that starts out “Dying Sounds” is on the verge of being unbearable; there can only be so many times that a band can expect a riff to win over the crowd. A number of times on “Pleasure of Consumption”, especially during tracks like “Blood For Blood” “the drumming moves beyond the realm of what can be done a human and honestly sounds as if someone looped the hits…
I Farm are beyond quick in their style. A screamed out vocal style is present that is not quite unlike Leftover Crack, where there is a high amount of early (1,039-era) Green Day hidden amongst these screeched-out vocals. Tracks are almost always under two minutes; if a song is going badly for I Farm, there is ample chances for the band to bail. During a track like “Luck (Likes The…
“Lounge Music For Punks”; no. Alternative music with strong ties to Radiohead and Jane’s Addiction, yes. Beginning their disc with “Outstamp”, an over-distorted track that has hints of “Street Spirit” in it, a mess of two and three voices that really doesn’t get far off the group, especially with the 60s-influenced guitar work in the bridge. The odd time-signature and squeaky, Incubus-esque vocals of Ben van der Poorten during the…
The sound of idiot Pilot looks back to the shoegazer rock of the mid-nineties, slowly gliding over tracks like “Losing Color” with controlled chaos (in terms of the guitar riffs) and ethereal-feeling vocals. The much more noisy “A Day In The Life of a Poolshark”, specifically the Jeckyl/Hyde nature of the track allows for all listeners to see another side of the band. The look-back towards Radiohead’s “Ok Computer” is…
It is rare when a band puts their biggest hit as their opening track; when a band is newer, like I Am The Avalanche it may just be the smartest move that they could do. With a bouncy bass line and a mixture between screaming and smoothed-out vocals. The production on tracks like “New Disaster” is strong and sure; when the track moves between the different speakers, one knows that…
I Am The Avalanche start out this self-titled disc with an intensity that reminds one of Vinnie Caruana’s previous band The Movielife. The overall sound of the disc’s beginning track “New Disaster” is still inexorably linked to pop-rock and feels groomed for popular radio, but there is no denying that the music of “Dead and Gone” has a certain edge to it that just was not found in Vinnie’s previous…
I Am Ghost – We Are Always Searching I Am Ghost – We Are Always Searching / 2005 Epitaph / 9 Tracks / http://www.iamghostmusic.com / http://www.epitaph.com / Reviewed 14 October 2005 Coming out much more like the Eurhythmics than the Nekromantix, the smooth vocals really provide a contrast with the rapidly increasing fuzziness of the instruments during “The Dead Girl Epilogue: Part One”. When the band actually gets into their…
With all the energy of the Ramones, The Hypstrz seem to “Englishify” the original Ramones sound enough to re-cast all their tracks in a favorable veneer. With tracks crashing into each other all willy-nilly like, the live songs here have a studio sensibility to them that belies their freshness and spontaneity. Crafted in such a way that ensures listeners will not be tired, the average Hypstrz track hovers right at…
With a rushed style to it, The Hybrid, a local band from Greencastle, Indiana, comes out with their first disc. Coming through with 13 tracks, of which two are original songs, we mainly get a view of The Hybrid as a band that does a lot of covers. This isn’t necessarily the case, as the band is getting a number of originals, but certain things can be said about their…
Thin tendrils of music start off “Country Falls”, with dreamy vocals doing much more for the construction of a musical identity than the furthering of certain lyrical ideas. “Summertime Cowboy” shows Husky Rescue re-cast their sound, sounding much like a sixties girl-group than the dreamy-pop that opened up the disc. Therein lies the most interesting fact about the band; they can completely change their style up in the space of…
Hush’s true introduction to this disc (“Hush Is Coming”) is pretty impressive, bringing a nice flow and coupling it with a rock backdrop and one of the most recognizable rappers in the game, Nate Dogg. The tinny blips that “let It Breathe” has really provide a higher tone against which Hush’s vocals really shine. The incorporation of seventies/early-eighties style of synthesizers to the track further differentiate the track from the…
This is one of the only new hard rock bands that does not take the sound of acts like Disturbed and 10 Years to heart, deciding to mix a little Tool and Kenny Wayne Shepherd for something that weaves its way around genres for five and a half minutes (“Rapture”) before sputtering out. The track is diverse enough to really be able to connect to a large segment of the…
“Falls Apart” is the first track on “Vol. 1” and it is a track that mixes together all of the disparate styles of radio rock that have made it big in the last fifteen years. The track shows that Hurt loves acts as wide as Live, Tool, and Linkin Park while not just rehashing each band’s style. In much of the same way, “Forever” shows Hurt as a band that…
Pretty much everything that Andy Cabic and Devendra Banhart get their hands into is going to have some larger implications for the music world. If it is not Vetiver or Devendra’s solo music, it is Jana Hunter. Where individuals throw fits about the fright that artists like Marilyn Mason and Alice Cooper instill in youth, my vote would have to with Jana Hunter’s music on “Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom”.…
Christian rappers can be good. For examples, Cross Examination and KJ-52 both are pretty solid rappers, even when one takes the Christian element out of their music. Hunter Brown is interesting, and to say that ey is good or bad is a little confusing. The backing beat that is present during the title track is something that is solid, a beat that takes on the instrumental style of a number…
Hundred Year Storm comes forth on their “Hello From The Children of Planet Earth” with a rock style that takes emo into consideration pretty seriously. The type of emo that the band likes to play is of the type that was famous in the nineties, not the sort of watered down pablum that is currently infecting the airwaves of today. What results on tracks like “00:01” is something that is…