With each passing year, humanity spends a little more time glued to its screens and a little less looking up. Although the Internet is home to much of the world’s recorded creativity, it’s also healthy to stand up, stretch your legs, and get some fresh air. With Hold On To Your Heart, The Xcerts are back with a new batch of songs guaranteed to leave listeners feeling Read more…
It’s easier to play with smoke and mirrors than it is to tell the truth – and Tonight Alive’s latest album is all about the latter.
Underworld is fuelled by brutally honest psychological self-exposure, exploring as it does vocalist Jenna McDougall’s dark side. Having fought an extended battle against chronic fatigue and depression, McDougall displays an impressive willingness to tackle her mental health issues head-on using words, melodies, and one epic vocal Read more…
Few people are pushing the keyboard’s boundaries as relentlessly as Jordan Rudess. Rudess’s willingness to experiment with all manner of digital gizmos from the Roli Seaboard to his own range of synth apps is well documented. On Intersonic, renowned synthesist and composer Steve Horelick joins Jordan Rudess for a largely improvised voyage past the boundaries of what was once thought impossible Read more…
Mike Dawes is the acoustic guitarist’s acoustic guitarist.
Try saying that ten times in a row Read more…
To members of the UK’s underground rock scene, Jamie Lenman is nothing short of a hero. Since his old band Reuben split almost ten years ago, the memory of their albums Racecar Is Racecar Backwards, Very Fast Very Dangerous, and In Nothing We Trust remains in many brains and smartphone hard drives, as well as 2000 Trees institution Camp Reuben, where die-hard Lenman fans gather to sing Reuben covers all night long. Read more…
Marilyn Manson is nonconformity personified. Against a consistently stagnating musical landscape, 2015’s The Pale Emperor (reviewed here) stood out a good mile or two. That album also heralded Marilyn Manson’s return to form – but as I mentioned in the aforementioned review, it also felt restrained.
Heaven Upside Down is not that Read more…
August Burns Red are more than just a metalcore band. For most of the past twenty years, the music industry has been stagnating – and since Killswitch Engage dropped The End Of Heartache about thirteen years ago, plenty of bands have stuck rigidly to the same old same old formula. Why stick your neck out when Read more…
Prophets Of Rage is literally the sound of today.
For proof, just turn on the news 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…