Many things define the popular hard rock/metal band Black Veil Brides, depending on whom you ask. For some, it’s their distinct appearance of black makeup and paint (decreasing more each year), tight black studded clothing and long hair. For others, it’s their inspiration (some might call it a blatant rip-off)…
As I’ve come to learn living in Arizona for my first summer ever, there’s a new motive for looking forward to summer vacations: getting the hell out of town. 110-degree weather isn’t my cup of tea, so why not a quick get-away? This time last year I was leaving the…
A confession: When Jay Z writes his lyrics, I feel as if he is writing them for me, a white woman from suburban Pennsylvania. His soulful rhymes about drug-dealing, his forlorn verses about incarceration, and his triumphal beats about being a pioneer in the music industry are all things I…
On Nashville-via-New York string trio the Howlin’ Brothers’ debut record, Howl, the band doesn’t “re-create” a specific moment in Americana music so much as run wild and wooly through great big landscapes of it. Recorded by Brendan Benson (the Raconteurs, The Maine) for his Readymade Records imprint, Ben Plasse (upright…
Last week at the O Music Awards, rock musician Andrew W.K. set the world record for Longest Drum Session in a Retail Store after he spent 24 consecutive hours (from June 19-20) at his drum set. While the songwriter/instrumentalist/party connoisseur was hitting the skins, lots of other rock musicians sat…
Everyone’s tripping over themselves to parse out the complicated and conflicted political posturing going on in Yeezus, myself included, so it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that, for all its ground-breaking, this record is still chock-full of hilarious Kanye lines. He’s always been funny (that light-skinned/dark-skinned Michael Jackson…
Much to the enthusiasm of my pop-loving girlfriends, I agreed to go to Wednesday’s Ke$ha show at Ak-Chin Pavilion. The tickets were free, and we had a car with a driver, so I figured I could at least drink enough whiskey to dull the shame brought on by my seething…
Watch enough infomercials for Time-Life ’80s compilations, and you’ll come to this conclusion: Some albums are of their time because they were released at the peak of a particular trend, and some albums were a trend. She’s So Unusual, Cyndi Lauper’s famous debut, is so important to our conception of…
Courtney Marie Andrews has been a Phoenix institution seemingly forever — she was on our cover three years ago — but she won’t turn 23 until November. In the five years since her debut release, Urban Myths, she’s toured and recorded with fellow institution Jimmy Eat World, continued to release…
It’s almost like a local indie supergroup! No Volcano features Colorstore guitarist Jeremy Randall, bassist Jake Sevier of Letdownright and Kingfathand, and drummer Chris Kennedy and vocalist/lead guitarist Jim Andreas of the mid-’90s outfit Trunk Federation. And perhaps you’ll recall Trunk Federation’s mirrored head that would spin like a disco…
Kendrick Lamar isn’t the first young rapper to spend the better part of his breakthrough album asking what it means to be a good person. He’s not even the first young rapper to frame said album with a vague concept. But where Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon: The End…
It’s been a couple of weeks since Edward Snowden ratted out the National Security Agency, and most of America’s still in a twist over revelations of our government’s Orwellian-style surveillance tactics. And maybe in the mood to riot, stage a few protests, or — at the very least — preach…
Given what we know about Kanye West, a comparison between his newest (best, maybe) record and the long-dead punk rock movement seems like a tough case to make — the dude telling God that he’s stacking his millions seems like an odd choice for a continuation of Never Mind the…
Even from the first sound of the album, it is clear that Yeezus is a very different album from any of Kanye West’s other works. There is no introduction; the album begins with “On Sight” which features heavy, wonky synthesizers and a pounding Chicago house beat provided by Daft Punk…
By Alex Distefano I have been a heavy metal fan for over 50 percent of my existence on this planet. But when you’re talking about the all-encompassing musical genre known as “heavy metal,” you might as well be talking about something as infinitely complicated as the universe. It’s that vast,…
Phoenix doesn’t just boast talented music makers, we also got this cool seraglio of directors. And when you combine the two, you get the kind of music vid that’s worthy of all your indie cred. Cash it in right here with three kickass, locally produced music videos. Bogan Via -…
Extreme metalheads have at least two festivals on their calendars for this fall. Each promises a collision of heavy metal and horror, and both are looking very exciting. The first is the inaugural Housecore Horror Film Festival on October 24-27 in Austin, hosted by none other than Down/Pantera front man…
Few metal bands rocked as hard as Pantera, and few of the many tribute bands that try to project their image on stage are up to the task. The biggest Pantera tribute bands are either appreciated or hated, and most of them don’t even merit consideration. On stage, Arizona’s Cowboys…
It wasn’t until Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s seminal work on Paul Simon’s Grammy-winning Graceland that the world truly took notice of the South African a capella group, but the ensemble’s been on a cross-cultural journey from the moment the members came together in the early 1960s. In the years since, they’ve…
If you’re going to be a quasi-one-hit-wonder in the United States — at least as far as Casey Kasem is concerned — you could hardly do better for name recognition than these shrewd Scots, who had the IQ to enshrine forevermore their band’s name in the title of said hit,…
She climbed the entertainment ladder by writing songs for artists like Britney Spears and Flo Rida before releasing her debut album, Animal, in 2010, and its follow-up, Warrior, in 2012. To this day, her party anthem “Tik Tok” is the second-best-selling digital single in history. Her live performances are known…
It’s been more than a decade since legendary crooner Waylon Jennings shuffled loose the mortal coil and headed for the big honky-tonk in the sky, leaving behind an ample discography of 50-something albums of magnificent down-home material and a heritage as one of country’s bona fide outlaws. According to local…
