Thomas Giles has a pretty cool day job. As Tommy Rogers, he fronts American prog metal outfit Between The Buried And Me, adding idiosyncratic touches to albums like Colors and Coma Ecliptic. During downtime, Thomas Giles emerges with fresh music that is itself unique and compelling.
Velcro Kid begins with Immersion Highway – a song that sounds like a Muse remix until Thomas Giles’ vocal enters. From that point on there’s no doubt as to who you’re listening to, although Read more…
As the band who brought The Trees Are Dead And Dried Out, Wait For Something Wild into the UK metal scene’s collective consciousness, Watford tech-metallers SikTh were under no small amount of pressure to beat the legendary sophomore blues and deliver something special with Album Two. Had they stacked it, nobody could have blamed them; even the most talented creatives are capable of losing the War of Art. In the event, however, SikTh won out – and the result was Death Of A Dead Day, a titanic juggernaut of an album rammed full of exquisitely brutal genius Read more…
Ten letters more than capable of sparking instant controversy. For some, it’s a stigma, a mark of deep shame associated irreversibly with giant egos battling each other for the sole purpose of selling out and cashing in Read more…
This single sentence encapsulates the core of my perspective on music. I love hearing one person give birth to an entire creative project, aided ideally by others who have as little input as is necessary to get the job done. Creative control freaks hold the key to my heart, whether they be virtuoso guitarist-composers such as Steve Vai, or erudite musical polymaths like Devin Townsend.
Plus, if you Google that same sentence, this image comes up:
If my perspective is always right and never wrong Read more…
Until today, I was always that guy. The Dillinger Escape Plan fan who said, in the face of the still-epic Option Paralysis and One Of Us Is The Killer, “…yeah, they’re sick, but Ire Works is still easily their best album.”
Normally, nothing makes a potential listener’s ears glaze over faster than the words “bonus material”. A collection of letters that instantly bring to mind haphazard collections of half-hearted acoustic songs, iffy remixes, and just plain shitty live recordings. Bonus material is for superfans only; it’s a long-established fact.
Listening to the career retrospective of an artist you’ve only just discovered can be a dangerous proposition. If it sucks, you’re fine; life continues as normal. If it’s great, on the other hand, you may be at serious risk of kicking yourself half to death for your ignorance.
So, if you’ve never heard of Carina Round before now, you’ll need to focus in order to keep your feet rooted to the floor rather than buried in your own backside. Deranged To Divine covers fourteen years of temporal ground, collecting cuts from four solo albums and an EP alongside two previously unreleased recordings (namely Gunshot and an alternate take of Want More), totalling nineteen tracks if you buy it on iTunes. It is also, to say the least, pretty fucking good.
As well as counting herself a member of Puscifer – the electro-industrial brainchild of Tool’s Maynard James Keenan – Carina Round has collected her fair share of legendary fans, among them Lou Reed, Ryan Adams, Billy Corgan, Dave Stewart and Brian Eno. You don’t get to that level of respect without demonstrating exceptional dedication to your art. But if Carina Round’s credentials aren’t enough, the music contained within Deranged To Divine is Read more…
Life as a music critic is nothing if not unpredictable. Day to day, the search begins anew, casting a metaphorical net over the actual Internet in the hope of discovering a genuinely unique artist. Some days, I collapse exhausted and forlorn before my laptop, my mind numbed by the knowledge that all my efforts have given me is RSI Read more…
Sometimes words get in the way when you’re trying to say something. Emotion is preverbal, whether we’re dealing with joy, anger, grief, bliss, or depression. We feel something – then we express it somehow.
Russian Circles’ back catalogue is perfect proof of the fact that you don’t need to be lyrically verbose in order to make a statement or pose a question. These guys are masters of moving listeners without actually telling them to move. Listening to Guidance, it’s hard not to be struck by the fact that music alone can speak volumes Read more…
As the keyboard wizard whose constantly evolving taste for texture has added infinite depth to Dream Theater’s back catalogue from Scenes From A Memory to this year’s ever-expanding epic, The Astonishing, Jordan Rudess has brought his A-game to the biggest of big leagues for coming up on two decades. As a solo artist, Rudess has pushed his own boundaries relentlessly, exploring everything from mind-warping electronica to solo Steinway piano pieces and even full-on orchestral explorations. Then, there’s his collaborative project with King Crimson’s Tony Levin and The Aristocrats’ Marco Minnemann Read more…
