Devil In Detail – ‘Goodbye, Red Admiral’ [Review]
Hitting the eardrums like a boxer’s glove-free knuckles, Idle Hands pulls no punches. All biting cynicism and Read more…
TMMP’s Top Albums Of 2014
The “death of the album” has been declared many times in recent years – but nonetheless, musicians keep making them and are showing no signs of stopping (and thank God for that!). Almost a decade and a half into the twenty-first century, there still exist bands and artists capable of composing immersive, engaging, and fully satisfying collections of songs that stand up to repeated, unshuffled listens. Here are fifteen of them. Read more…
TMMP’s EPs & Tracks Of 2014
I have a very strong emotional attachment to many of the releases listed below. Choosing this list was exceptionally tough; I’ve been fortunate to discover some incredible bands and artists over the past year, and it’s safe to say that outside this list lie a great many immense tunes that can be found via a quick browse through TMMP’s archives when you’re done with this lot. However, the following choices are the cream of the crop. Read more…
Alright The Captain – ‘Contact Fix’ [Review]
If your plans for the night of February 2nd 2015 involve chugging absinthe, spinning round in circles until you fall over or puke or both, repeating the above until you pass out, and then waking up and putting on your coat and going to work, this album is the soundtrack you need. Read more…
Swim Good – ‘Little Victories EP’ [Review]
Swim Good consistently rock good – and this fresh threesome continues the winning streak so far upheld by previous release Yeah Yeah Great Yeah and a pair of storming live sets. Little Victories contrasts undeniable catchiness and jaunty guitars with vicious, go-for-the-throat lyrics; Love Don’t Tempt Me shines through live demo-level production that lends a surprisingly invigorating rawness to proceedings; and the closing cover of Ella Eyre’s Comeback is slinky, shiny, and entertaining. Read more…
Palm Reader – ‘I Watch The Fire Chase My Tongue’ [Review]
Hardcore isn’t normally the kind of music I can get into outside of live shows – but with this track, Palm Reader just became an exception to that rule. Maybe it’s the ultra-complex DEP-meets-the-theme-from-28–Days–Later vibe; maybe it’s my fresh, indignant anger at YouTube’s incessant insistence that I spend my time on their site consuming some Creationism-endorsing crapfest; or maybe it’s the bleakly abstract video below efficiently complementing this track’s relentless and ear-rending catharsis. Well, whatever – I Watch The Fire Chase My Tongue is fucking excellent, and if this is just a taste of what to expect from Palm Reader’s next album (Beside The Ones We Love, due out in 2015), then it’s also a reason to get very goddamn excited indeed. Read more…
Fish Tank – ‘Friends’ [Review]
Biffy vibes, buckets of energy, raging outro riffs, and one of the most random videos I’ve seen this side of Baby Godzilla’s YouTube channel. All of my yes is being given to Fish Tank right now. Definitely a band to watch out for in 2015. Read more…
SikTh / Heart Of A Coward / Idiom [Live Review – Concorde 2, Brighton, 11/11/14]
Outside Brighton’s favourite seafront venue, the wind is whipping up white waves that crash heavily into the shoreline. Inside, the air is moving even more violently as Idiom tear through a barnstorming set, followed in short order by Heart Of A Coward‘s crushing djent-fuelled brutality. Both bands deserve their dues for effortlessly eliciting manic reactions from a crowd set on saving their energy for the headliners. Read more…
Hearts Under Fire / Swim Good / Fallow Fields / Rival Empires [Live Review – The Boileroom, Guildford, 6/11/14]
2014 has been a good year for awesome album launches at the Boileroom. This time around, opening act Rival Empires lived up to expectations by delivering a strong set backed up with energetic stage presence and buckets of passion. Current TMMP favourite If I Was A Whale (prefaced by a short grammatical debate as kicked off here) sounds epic live, overshadowing the inevitable Paramore comparisons with nostalgic reminders of how good Lostprophets were before Ian Watkins started touching kids. It’s all about the clean sections in that tune, while elsewhere we got unexpectedly brutal riffs and shades of the Foo Fighters and Incubus. Add to that some solid musicianship and a guitarist capable of throwing up the devil horns mid-riff without missing a subdivision, and you have a brilliant up and coming British band. Read more…
Signals. [Live Review – The Star, Guildford, 19/10/14]
To say that I was looking forward to this show would be an understatement. Long-time TMMP followers will have already seen me wax lyrical about this Southampton-based math-pop quartet – but until this night, I’d not ticked off the final – and most important – box on the ‘Band To Watch’ checklist: The Live Show. No matter how good a band sounds on record, if they suck live it’s going to be tough to justify really getting behind them. Read more…