Review: Asva – What You Don't Know Is Frontier [2008]

Supplying seventy minutes of severe doom and drone, the latest effort by Asva is a sparse slow-churning affair that tries your patience more times than you can count before making good on resonating thick empiric riffs from the bowels of despair (“Christopher Columbus”). Interjecting odd nuances such as female choral vocals into its pitch black […]

Review: Banner Pilot – Resignation Day [2008]

Minneapolis punk trio Banner Pilot steps up with their second offering, the 12-track RESIGNATION DAY. Determined to keep sneering punk rock front and center, songs like “Saltash Luck” and “Wired Wrong” may suffer from sounding a bit too much like one another, yet ths troupe’s tried and true let it all hang out punk rock […]

Announced: Crue Fest 2009 Summer Tour Dates

Crüe Fest featuring Mötley Crüe is back for its second year this summer and will also include the following hard rock bands: Godsmack, Theory of a Deadman, Drowning Pool, and Charm City Devils. In addition, Mötley Crüe will perform their classic album Dr. Feelgood in its entirety on this tour. Sun. Jul 19 Camden, NJ […]

Review: M. – In Absentia [2008]

NYC artist Marthyn (or M. for short) pieces together a smorgasbord of jagged lo-fi juxtapositions, further developing this middle-ground musicians’s rulebending visions and unique style in the process on the 13-track IN ABSENTIA. Seemingly strung together from a bizarre crop of spoken word rants, woe is me electronic melancholy, mashed-up DJ grooves, artsy space folk, […]

Review: The Becoming – Volume 1 [2008]

Christian Goth punks? Sheesh. The Becoming take the word of the Lord and inject some HIM into the mix for this slickly produced exercise in transparency. Labeling this quintet of Hot Topic models as a dark rock group is downright shameful, as their Bon Jovi meets Anberlin hooks heard on “Silent As the Grave” and […]

Review: MxPx – On The Cover II [2009]

After nearly 15 years since the release of On The Cover, Christian pop punk rockers MxPx are serving up a second helping of cover songs. On The Cover II features mainly renditions of 80’s cuts such as The Proclaimers’ “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles),” The Ramones’ “My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes To […]