North Dakota Preps the Release of New Record, Pat Waggy

Among the many accomplishments baroque folk songwriter Michelle Blades achieved while she was in Phoenix was fronting the exuberant glee-punk trio North Dakota, which placed her normally taut voice in a virulent garage rock context facilitated by bandmates Mo Neuharth and Emily Hobeheidar…

Chelsea Wolfe Writes Her Drone Folk From a “Different Perspective”

Despite cultivating an audience that includes both folk lovers and metalheads, the gorgeously downcast songwriting of Chelsea Wolfe has been mistakenly typecast: The stark cover of Wolfe’s feral, cacophonous 2011 album, Apokalypsis, showed a portrait of the California native with whited-out eyes, an image she has said was intended to…

Chelsea Wolfe Isn’t Goth, But She’s Not Afraid to Get Dark

Despite cultivating an audience that includes both folk lovers and metalheads, the gorgeously downcast songwriting of Chelsea Wolfe has been mistakenly typecast: The stark cover of Wolfe’s feral, cacophonous 2011 album, Apokalypsis, showed a portrait of the California native with whited-out eyes, an image she has said was intended to…

Avian Architecture @ The Rogue Bar

Psych fans and math-rock devotees both enjoy technical drum feats and guitar pyrotechnics, but each group has its preferred flavors of jam. Mathletes tend to like riffs that show the science at work, geometric patterns that confound in exciting ways. Psych rockers like their technical proficiency to offer an escape,…

The Cigs: Defunct Tempe Rockers Peddle Mystery and Feces References

A band with genuine mystery is hard to come by in the Internet age, but Tempe scrap-pop outfit The Cigs had it: Not much is known about the short-lived project, but last week, the band posthumously released its second full-length, Marble Red, on Bandcamp. The band started in January 2012…

The Sword @ Club Red

Austin metal quartet The Sword is keeping it simple. In 2010, the band had its greatest commercial success to date with the dazzling Warp Riders, a high-concept album that was the metal equivalent to a sci-fi novel. For Apocryphon, the band’s newest release for indie label Razor and Tie, singer/guitarist…

Top 5 Genre-Bending Electronic Albums of 2012

I initially conceived this list as a starting point to further explore of one of the biggest albums of the year: “Ayo, if you liked that Grimes record, this shit is pretty good, too.” The Korean and Japanese pop influence on Visions made it easy to like, but it was…

The Sword’s J.D. Cronise: “All Rock Is Stoner Rock”

Austin metal quartet The Sword has gone through some significant changes since the release of 2010’s Warp Riders, a high-concept album taking place on the halves of a fictional planet each locked in eternal day and nighttime. They replaced their drummer, signed to a new label, and toned their earlier…

Dethklok @ Marquee Theatre

It’s one thing to make a cartoon that affectionately sends up the theatrics of death metal. It’s another thing entirely for Brendon Small, co-producer and co-creator of the animated Adult Swim show Metalocalypse, to make three albums of astute extreme metal under the guise of his imaginary creation. Metalocalypse is…

Young Prisms, Rhythm Room, 11/19/12

Young Prisms @ Rhythm Room|11/19/12The best shoegaze achieves what I think of as negative guitar momentum: distorted or whorled chord effects that, even when paired with hard and steady rhythms, are capable of washing out the meter to give the feeling of moving backwards. It’s related to the weird serenity…

Otro Mundo Explores Shared Memory and Psychedelic Liberation

Vibes are optimal right now for Tempe pupil dilators Otro Mundo. Their cassette debut of gnarled grunge-pop gems, Jellied, got them in the pages of British mag NME earlier this year, and now they’re hard at work on new material and a December tour with New York punks Psychic Blood…

Indie Rock Is Worth Hating

“Don’t rock the boat, sink it!” commands the anonymous scribe behind I Hate Indie Rock, a fiery Twitter account that has been launching crust-punk-tinged salvos at publicists, nostalgia and vapidity in the indie rock realm. The account has been around only since October, and at this point, the feed has…

Colin Marston of Dysrhythmia Discusses Test of Submission

When he’s not playing music with a trove of inventive New York metal bands or sitting in the studio recording other such acts, guitarist and recording engineer Colin Marston is probably sleeping or in the shower. In addition to various ambient projects and solo ventures, Marston currently plays bass in…

Nick Warren @ Bar Smith

The rising EDM boom in America is one vulnerable to trends: even has-been nü-metal troglodytes Korn have added bass drops to their ham-fisted, distorted chords. UK DJ Nick Warren, a specialist in house and progressive techno, has been spinning and mixing for over 20 years, and though his career has…

My Stolen MP3 Collection Got Stolen

My house got robbed over the summer and among the items taken were my laptop and iPod. I had backed up none of my data. I would estimate I lost somewhere around 12,000 songs. It also feels safe to estimate that 95 percent of my MP3 collection was not purchased…

Busdriver @ Rhythm Room

L.A. avantcore rap doofus Busdriver has been tripping lyrical booby traps for over 10 years. In that time, Bus has gone from tongue-stepping on top of Bach flute minuets to cross-breeding with art rockers Deerhoof. Even with his high-speed rhyme skills, it’s not easy being the strangest rap-game reality sandwich…