The House of Vans is a unique place. Half music venue, half skate park, it’s exactly where you would expect to discover cultural components that only fit far outside the box. Dorje, naturally, fit right in. Read more…
Arch Enemy know what they’re good at – and they also know how to stay true to themselves, no matter how the music world twists and turns around them. Over the course of years and decades, they’ve earned the respect and admiration of many a melodic metal fan, and kept it all going through multiple major lineup changes.
Arch Enemy’s latest lineup – now including six-string wizard Jeff Loomis – is Read more…
In order to create, you sometimes have to destroy. Ripping everything up and starting again can be cathartic, reinvigorating, exciting, terrifying, relieving, overwhelming, and/or everything above all at once. Forcing yourself to confront the truly blank page takes a hell of a lot of heart, and Arcane Roots certainly have that.
Through their first album Left Fire, Arcane Roots became synonymous with air-guitar-inducing acrobatics and the kind of time changes that would make the world’s physicists weep with despair Read more…
In an age of constant content overload, it’s become increasingly difficult to create something that truly stands on its own. So much has been done before; so much has already been done to staggeringly high standards. Still, with 2014’s Language the Contortionist pulled off the near impossible.
Listen back further to 2012’s Intrinsic and 2010’s Exoplanet, and you’ll see how far the Contortionist leapt on Language. Over time, their fusion-flavoured influences crowded out the Contortionist’s heavy side until the results became mellower, more soulful, even ambient. Language was ultimately an uplifting prog album with strong shades of metal spliced in at just the right moments. Read more…
Oceans Ate Alaska have found a solid solution to Second Album Syndrome. Too many bands fall at that fateful hurdle and sink swiftly into creative oblivion. Oceans Ate Alaska, on the other hand, have pulled off what can only be described as a win.
These guys have already made themselves synonymous with stuttering tech-riffage Read more…
Sleep Token split open not just one can of worms, but at least two.
The first concerns that most easily maligned approach to marketing music: The Gimmick. According to the press materials which landed in my download folder alongside Two, Sleep Token are “the mortal representatives of the ancient deity known only as ‘Sleep’, led by Read more…
As Animals As Leaders’ only UK show of 2017, this gig was literally one of a kind. As is becoming my custom at Koko, I set up camp near the ceiling and prepared for a bird’s eye view of a very special show.
Nick Johnston (95%) was the only act on this bill I hadn’t seen live before, although having reviewed his previous two albums Remarkably Human and Atomic Mind and chatted to him at length about the former for this interview, I knew to expect great things Read more…