Broadway Calls is an interesting sign by State of Mind. When I hear the name State of Mind, I imagine hard rocking, hardcore or metal acts. What Broadway Calls does on their “Call The Medic†CD is create a brand of punk music that blends together Screeching Weasel, Blink 182, and The Lillingtons into one cohesive unit. The disc may only has six tracks, but the band will stick to…
The poppy sound of Brightman’s vocals during “Probably On A Thursday†really allows eir to achieve an audience that may not have been tapped previously. In some sense, there seems to be a timeless pop sense to the tracks on “Love Changes Everything†that was most prominently shown during Cyndi Lauper’s earlier rock. The tender guitar work that wins out at times on the aforementioned “Probably On A Thursday†is…
One does not understand exactly how far Sarah Brightman has been in the music industry until they pick up a copy of “Diva: The Singles Collectionâ€. Most of the tracks on the disc fall within the two-decade block between eir Phantom of the Opera recording and the current period, so without going into multiple CDs, this disc is as full as it could possibly get. For the Brightman completist, this…
The Bright and Hollow Sky come forth with their “Gem Stateâ€, starting off their disc with “Cloudâ€. â€Cloud†takes tacks from a number of different influences, mixing together thee disaffected vocals of Conor Oberst with a tempo and quicksilver attitude that sees early-nineties pop-punk as a cousin. The next high-point of the disc comes during “Going Downâ€, which uses “Killing An Arabâ€-era Cure-like bass lines to really push forward the…
The Briefs are one of those bands that really tie together a number of different genres in order to come up with something new. Sure, there are tracks on here that recall The Adverts and the Newton Neurotics, but the major influence of the band during tracks like “Move Too Slow†has to be the A-F records roster, namely The Code and Justin Sane.
The beginning of “Seriously†has an incredibly long lead-in, to which a set of vocals are weakly draped over the grinder-like guitar riffs. The same guitar riffs are kept for nearly two minutes, after which Luke’s vocals attempt to take the track in a different path, only achieved after a minute-long struggle in which nothing is sure. What does excite one about this inaugural track of “Seriously†is the dynamic…
Hey, Dan Precision is a founding member of Rise Against, and is the vocalist for this band. And I wondered why “Near Life Experience†sounds like a harder-edge RA album. Mixing the elements of mid-nineties stand at the mic and scream hardcore with melodic, emotional punk a la AFI, Break the Silence is best described as a bipolar band. Each track shows this bipartite dynamic strain over their completely different…
While I was expecting Breaking Benjamin to sound like every other modern-rock band out there, with threads in their music that whole-heartedly ripped off bands like Tool and Disturbed, the fact with “We Are Not Alone†is that the disc is on the whole much more melodic than anything that has came before it. Theb and is tight, musically-satisfying, and the dynamic between Aaron (lead guitar) and the smooth-down-easy vocals…
What I was imagining when I got this CD was a death-metal act that would pretty much sing about killing me and having sex with my dissected body. My fears were almost confirmed when I heard the opening spastic horns, which sounded like the machine-gun drumming so common among these bands. This 5 piece act from Australia could not be any farther from a death metal band; in fact, I…
Recalling the best of Hellacopter and Gluecifer with their straight-forward rock attack, New Jersey’s The Break starts out “Handbook For The Hopeless†with “The Wolves Are At The Front Doorâ€. However, The Break does not infuse this opening track with enough energy to keep this fresh and different; by the third minute, every one of their tricks has been used ad infinitum. The same pseudo-new rock (in the style of…
It has been nearly 3 years since I have reviewed Brazil. A lot can happen in three years, so what I felt about the band in 2004 should not be influencing what I feel about Brazil now. “On Safe-Cracking and Rubella†is an opening track that uses mundane noises to make a track. The disc’s first musical track comes during “Crimeâ€, and it provides listeners with an interesting look into…
Mixing some electronics (Nic) into the traditional emo formula is how Brazil has turned the music world on their ear, and each anthemic emo track is proof that these two elements can be successfully combined. While some of the guitar work in a track like “The Novemberist†is cliché beyond belief (the spaced-out guitar), Jon’s vocals (in the style of The Goodlife and Brand New) are what really captures the…
The style of hardcore that Bravo Fucking Bravo is similar in a sense to that of the technical-core bands, but there seems to be a heavy hard rock/metal influence that moderates the amounts of effete wankery that the band can burden on its listeners. The most interesting thing about Bravo Fucking Bravo is the tension that they create with each of their tracks; the screaming present by Myke is always…
The Bravery’s self-titled album starts out with their first single, “An Honest Mistakeâ€. A sibling to “This Fire†by Franz Ferdinand, The Bravery moves completely into the retro-synthpop espoused by bands like The Aeffect. The synth solo that is allowed to churn up emotion bridging the two halves of “An Honest Mistake†just is a logical extension of The Darkness and “Alwaysâ€-era Blink 182. Moving into “No Breaksâ€, with its…
My sister was a little too old to be smitten with Bratz dolls, and I am not close enough to any member of my extended family that would have had them. I worked at Kmart and had to stock toys some times, so I was familiar with the dolls. However, until I received this CD, I was unaware that Bratz did anything music-related. “Forever Diamondz†makes sense as an album;…
The Death and Taxes EP, even after a year, has been one of my favorite CDs of all times, and “Ain’t No Trip To Cleveland†was one of the top tracks of the year. It is 2004, and “Send Us A Signal†is one a major indie (The Militia Group). Brandtson is one of the only bands that can mesh nineties indie rock with the more common, more present-day thread…
Brandtson starts off their “Hello, Control†with an extraordinarily restrained style that just feels as the band will kick into full rock mode just a few seconds later. It takes a mature band to break listener’s expectations, but Brandtson does it in a masterful way on “A Thousand Yearsâ€. The inclusion of a synthesizer with tracks like “Denim Iniquity†makes the band sound a little bit like The Bravery or…
Hey, its a guy with an acoustic and a smooth voice. Haven’t we heard this already through about a thousand iterations, through Matthew West and Dave Matthews and John Maher? Well, we have, but that isn’t really the issue with “Cursed”. Brant’s voice is smooth with that slight amount of grit to it, somewhat like the aforementioned John Maher, but with subtle hints of Don Henley. Minor amounts of drums…
Very approachable music from this Deep Elm act that really breaks the mold that is characteristic of the musical style of most of the Deep Elm acts. This band is incredibly clean and polished sounding, while having tight songs that will immediately throw themselves into a listeners’ head. By no means a band that is new into the scene (having recorded material since 1998 for Deep Elm), this EP really…
Another of the fabled Deep Elm splits! What can I say about Brandtson that I haven’t already covered? Well, the one track on this disc makes it hard for me to get any more than a brief taste of what they are currently doing. Still, “Dead Animals†is straight-forward post-hardcore music with dual-harmony at times. Instead about being directly about the lover scorned, Brandtson has changed up the typical subject…