For my 13th birthday, my best friend John Doyle gave me a vinyl copy of Rush’s Moving Pictures. Being a very young drummer myself, this album of course changed my life, as I began my lifelong Rush obsession on that humid July afternoon. Quickly buying up their back catalog, I had a special affinity for [...]

They took my pens.
While being re-admitted for Day 2 of the 10th annual New England Hardcore & Metal Festival at the Palladium in Worcester, Mass., the frisker at the door takes my ballpoint pen and black Sharpie out of my pack and unceremoniously throws them away. “Hey, are you serious?!?” I state. “Yeah, they don’t [...]

For those fans too ADD to sit through any previous albums by 5ive, these Boston psych-drone warriors return with their most accessible and arguably their best album yet. Hesperus is the band’s first long-player since 2001’s Telestic Disfracture, with two EPs (2002’s The Hemophiliac Dream and 2004’s Versus) and a solo project (guitarist Ben Carr’s [...]

Prolific is a word that’s often used to describe the Toronto-based experi-metal duo Nadja, as they’ve released over a dozen recordings in the past two years. How many of them are worth a listen is another story, but Aidan Baker (guitars, vocals, woodwinds, drum machines) and Leah Buckareff (bass, vocals) dip into their past on [...]

Brant Bjork has always exhibited a trademark laidback attitude about rock music, having first cut his teeth in the mega-influential stoner-rock icons Kyuss, then departing that success to join the looser but no less phenomenal Fu Manchu. With a slew of formidable solo records, Bjork now gathers Kyuss alum Alfredo Hernández on drums, Cortez on [...]

Miami’s Consular must hail from the swampiest sections of the Everglades, for their molasses-slinging hurricane of sludge begins with the typical scavenging of spare chords from Grief, Eyehategod, Iron Monkey, and the like. But this four-piece stops there, adding instead more melody without detracting from the sheer density of their sound. Their debut Don’t Cross [...]

Rarely does a band stack up to their ambitious bio, but UK’s End of Level Boss do in excess. Flirting with Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Metallica, and Godflesh on their 2005 debut Prologue couldn’t even hint at what was in store for this London quartet on Inside the Difference Engine—and now, thankfully, every semblance of [...]

When Brian Danilowski isn’t plucking his bass in Baltimore math-metallists Trephine, he straddles the time/space continuum with his experimental/noise solo project Darsombra. 2006’s Ecdysis only hinted at what was to come from this creative soul, as the new Eternal Jewel wraps the listener around sheer volume, both layered and frayed.
“Auguries” resembles a classical-styled (with chant-like [...]

You can take a kid out of punk, but you can’t take punk out of a kid, and Jonah Jenkins is a prime example. As the vox of some truly great Boston-based underground bands (Milligram, Miltown, and Only Living Witness to name a few), Jenkins resurfaces at the helm of Raw Radar War. The oddly-titled [...]

Despite most tribute albums being overblown, indulgent, and downright selfish, Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess jumps on the crowded bandwagon with his own homage to his primary influences—but the difference is The Road Home doesn’t suck…at all. Rudess chooses a varied set list and hand-picks his musician friends to pull it off correctly. Emerson, Lake [...]

Predating their forthcoming debut full-length, Sigillum Luciferi on Richmond, Virginia’s Forcefield Records, is the four-song Kingdom EP by sludge monkeys Cough. Setting out to be the “loudest and heaviest band in Richmond,” this four-piece adds more depth to the subgenre alongside Cavity, Bongzilla, and Hawg Jaw.
Beginning with Iron Monkey-ish feedback, “The Misanthrope” lopes along with [...]

Boston-based Constants turn in another chapter of spacey post-rock with The Murder of Tom Fitzgerril, the follow-up to their excellent 2004 debut, Nostalgia for the Future. Fans of the ambient, more mesmerizing side of Isis or even Tool will dig the band’s approach to songcrafting: cyclical, engaging chordal progressions coupled with vocal lines that complement [...]

With a weird moniker and a disturbing cover photo (three grown men dressed in knickers and plastic hats, sitting closely together on a couch in the clouds), there’s little immediate attraction to France’s Mörglbl. However, one spin of their newest platter, Grötesk, and all prog fans will be clearing their calendars to witness the band [...]

Exile on Mainstream Records
Trying desperately to be different, the dynamic Dutch duo known as Dÿse (say “DOO-zee”) have some most unusual cover art: a dead baby mouse supported by an exotic flower and lying in a bowl of milk. Their eponymous debut, however, is less singular but still captivating. Featuring members of Volt and Rodeo [...]

Arizona’s crippling summer heat has forged some of the underground’s most abrasive bands, including Unruh (1999’s Setting Fire to Sinking Ships on Pessimiser), Wellington (1999 split with Noothgrush on Deep Six), and Carol Ann (2003 split with Noothgrush on Catchphraze). Phoenix’s Black Hell—starring Unruh bassist Mike Bjella, Wellington guitarist Charlie Goodwin, and two Carol Ann [...]

San Francisco aggro-doom trio High on Fire check in with their latest, Death Is This Communion. This marks the departure of Smilin’ Joe Preston (show of hands, who didn’t see that coming?), bassist extraordinaire from Thrones, Melvins, Earth, et al. but not quite metal enough to handle such a thunderous mantle. Enter Holy Terror axeman [...]

From the opening chords and snare march of “Voice Electric,” fans will realize that Cave In frontman Stephen Brodsky has hit total paydirt with this side project while his main band is on indefinite hiatus. The band’s debut album—and probably their last, since Brodsky has since moved on to front Pet Genius—is the best effort [...]

With each successive release, Portland, Oregon’s indie-prog saviors 31 Knots veer further from their point(s) of origin. What began long ago as what seemed like Yes synthesis has become an astonishing insouciance for past influences, as the band capriciously shows their current penchant for odd electronica, loops, and samples. Repeating the EP-preceding-LP pattern for their [...]

Since 1988, New York’s Unsane have laid waste to the hardcore competition with every successive release. Pioneers of the noisecore subgenre, their 1991 debut featured a decapitated man on a train track (an idea that Mexican death-metal junkies Brujeria would later tweak for their debut album art), and every album cover since then has highlighted [...]

When Boston doom-metal mavens Grief rose from the ashes of crust/punk band Disrupt in the early ’90s, even the band didn’t think they’d last as long as they did. Unknowingly, they helped to found sludge metal/doom alongside Crowbar, 13, Eyehategod, and Buzzov*en. After five critically acclaimed albums on various labels—including a one-off on Century Media [...]

A peculiar name for a peculiar band, Seattle’s Lesbian operate with the same style-hopping liberty as Kayo Dot, Estradasphere, Mr. Bungle, and Between the Buried and Me, in that they phase between techniques/moods much like hyperspace micro-jumps in the Star Wars universe. Unlike these comparisons, however, they tend to frequent doomier and more psychedelic realms, [...]

Volumes have been written on North Carolina’s Between the Buried and Me and their meteoric rise to math-/post-core demigods. For those latecomers who started paying attention after 2005’s benchmark Alaska, Victory has re-released the band’s sophomore album, 2003’s The Silent Circus, with expanded liner notes by the group and a bonus DVD of concert footage, [...]

Sometime after their 2004 split with noise-mongers Burmese on Crucial Blast, Ohio sludge-slingers Fistula parted ways with drummer Aaron Brittain and lay idle for a year or two. Discussions with -16-/Scumchrist drummer Jason Corley lead to his joining the group and recording this five-song EP in anticipation of their full-length album, due later this year.
The [...]

The term “hella” is the West coast equivalent of New England’s “wicked,” an intensive adjective used frequently to strengthen expressions, and both can be used interchangeably: “it’s wicked (= very) cold today” or “she was driving hella (= extremely) fast.” While Wicked is also the name of a book made into a Broadway musical, Hella [...]

As true music fans, we hate to see our favorite bands go their separate ways, and the eventual break-up of Kansas City, Missouri’s post-hardcore heroes Shiner in 2002 was the equivalent of the earth cracking open and fire raining down from the skies. Thankfully, the recent trend of reunions allows us to look forward to [...]