Give it to me, Straight

Not to be confused with the ultra-polished Indiana University a cappella group of the same name (though that would be funny as shit), this extreme metal outfit dares to go where most of its peers fear to tread. Which is to say: awkwardness. Yes, Straight, No Chaser will still melt…

Straight, No Chaser

Not to be confused with the ultra-polished Indiana University a cappella group of the same name (though that would be funny as shit), this extreme metal outfit dares to go where most of its peers fear to tread. Which is to say: awkwardness. Yes, Straight, No Chaser will still melt…

Hot Topic Summer Slaughter Tour

With 10 like-minded bands on the same bill, it’ll be damn near impossible to avoid death metal overkill here. But if you can find a way to conserve your energy, the Summer Slaughter tour features two Montreal death metal bands that go together like, well, an ax and a freshly…

Daughters, and Russian Circles

Any band that puts out an 11-minute recording and presents it as a full-length album obviously has a sense of humor. Like Slayer’s shorty classic Reign in Blood (which is twice as long!) and Napalm Death’s Scum before it, Daughters’ Canada Songs is an attempt to capture a metal sub-genre…

Hagar Twang

If you haven’t kept up with Sammy Hagar since his rockin’ “I Can’t Drive 55” days, you might find yourself alternately shocked, horrified, and amused by Hagar’s recent plunge into country music. Then again, the public had more or less the same reaction in 1985 when Hagar was announced as…

Cowboy Junkies

On the one hand, you can look at the nagging tendency of veteran Canadian acts to hover at cult-level popularity in the U.S. as a bad thing. On the other hand, a group like Cowboy Junkies has arguably benefitted from not getting huge. Certainly, the band’s audience has. Household names…

Megadeth ends this year’s Gigantour in Mesa

With Ozzfest now firmly entrenched as a cultural institution (read: over-bloated corporate circus), Megadeth leader Dave Mustaine must have suspected that he could fill a different niche and compete on his own terms with Gigantour when he launched the package festival in 2005. Now in its fourth year, Gigantour, which…

Dios Malos

Dios Malos gets points right off the bat for arousing the ire of none other than Ronnie James Dio, who, in a particularly befuddled show of hubris, ordered the band to change its original name, Dios (which, for those of you who don’t know, means “god” in Spanish). Another obvious…

Tera Melos

To play math rock, especially the heavy, spazz-out variety, pretty much means to beat a dead horse. Audiences have become so accustomed to bands trying to freak them out that they don’t get freaked out anymore. Like so many others, Tera Melos’ stock in trade is the freak-out that requires…

Meshuggah

Prong’s Tommy Victor recently remarked that metal bands can’t play in standard E tuning anymore because they’d “sound like the Eagles.” Not that they ever had anything to worry about, but about midway through Meshuggah’s career, the band’s guitarists switched from using already-low 7-string guitars to an 8-string approach in…

Duran Duran

When Duran Duran made its U.S. splash in 1981, the heady excess and glitter of the era, along with the surging energy of MTV, made it difficult to tell whether or not the band would amount to a flash in the pan. Certainly, the pouffy-haired fivesome looked good and the…

Today Is the Day

An underground extreme-metal institution, Today Is the Day makes some of the most compellingly ugly music you could ever hope to hear. While pushing shock buttons is nothing new, bandleader Steve Austin has kept TITD at the cutting edge for almost 20 years, with a sound so harsh that bands…

The Doctor Is In

It’s fitting that Muppet Show creator Jim Henson based his Dr. Teeth character on pianist Dr. John, who has served as unofficial mascot-ambassador for the city of New Orleans and its indigenous musical forms for a good fifty years now, arguably filling the shoes of none other than Louis Armstrong…

Dr. John

It’s fitting that Muppet Show creator Jim Henson based his Dr. Teeth character on pianist Dr. John, who has served as unofficial mascot-ambassador for the city of New Orleans and its indigenous musical forms for a good 50 years now, arguably filling the shoes of none other than Louis Armstrong…

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks

“The Jicks is funky music. They is a powerhouse.” So it says in the artwork that accompanies this third offering from Stephen Malkmus’ post-Pavement outfit. On first glance at said artwork, with its nonsensical collages — not to mention the beginning of opening number “Dragonfly Pie,” which drips with midtempo…

Asylum Street Spankers

While musicians who play “old time” music tend to be reverent toward bygone traditions, reverence is just about the last thing the Asylum Street Spankers have on their minds. An almost entirely acoustic ensemble that revisits old-timey forms and updates (read: skewers) them with a modern twist, the Spankers come…

Nile

Everybody together now: Anoint my phallus with the blood of the FALLEN!! With that quaint little sing-along, South Carolina death metal institution Nile takes cock rock to an all new level. Potential latent menstruation envy aside, you gotta give Nile leader Karl Sanders credit for sticking to his, uh …

Cavalera Conspiracy

It goes without saying that Sepultura’s indelible impact on metal hinged on the chemistry between the band’s sibling co-founders, Max and Igor Cavalera. But despite the buzz surrounding their reunion, Inflikted (the pair’s first collaboration in more than 10 years) sounds more like the product of a weekend spent jamming…

Alive In Wild Paint

In a world, as Elvis Costello recently described it, full of noisy things, it takes a lot of perseverance and guts to be quiet. If Ceilings, the Equal Vision debut album from local four-piece Alive In Wild Paint is any indication, the band is on a mission to spread tranquility…