Xenophobia is experiencing a real renaissance in the UK right now. Anti-EU attitudes seem to be a real talking point around these parts – and frankly, I think they’re fucking stupid. European people are badass – and if you need proof of that fact in musical form, this album should do the trick.
Although Read more…
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As one of the UK rock scene’s most hotly-hyped bands of right now, Black Peaks are a band you’ve probably at least heard of, and definitely need to hear. Talked up with huge enthusiasm by Jamie Lenman during a recent TMMP interview, behind the praise and acclaim Black Peaks are more than a mere “hype band”. On record and onstage, Black Peaks have Read more…
Prog is, at times, a strangely divided world. On one side are the true progressives, fiercely determined to push music forward into the future. On the other side stand the stuck-in-the-mud individuals whose primary objective is to cling tenaciously to the ways of the past.
Cheating the Polygraph is guaranteed to ruffle the latter camp’s feathers. A collection of Porcupine Tree songs reworked using Read more…
Nine Inch Nails. Tesseract. You Me At Six. Strange stylistic bedfellows maybe, but Grumble Bee (aka ex-PaperPlane man Jack Bennett) has succeeded in welding them all together and creating something you absolutely have to hear immediately.
Two of my favourite TMMP genre categories are “Genre Terrorism” and “Complete Batshit Insanity” – and few acts fit those labels quite as snugly as Read more…
Tuesday was a good day until I got to this show and realised it had started earlier than predicted, and I’d missed not only openers Sutek, but also one of my favourite new bands of math-metal maniacs, Let’s Talk Daggers. Sad face indeed. Still, Swim Good soothed my cravings for complex tunes with a loose but still awesome set. These guys can do no wrong, even when beset by technical issues. They really are that goddamn good. Happy face: restored for the rest of the night.
Yearbook (think a pop-punk Reuben augmented by the occasional bit of fancy guitar work) never fail to Read more…
In today’s world of shuffled playlists and single-track cherry picking, there still remain artists firmly committed to the album as valid self-expression format. The progressive rock world is home to a good many of those individuals – and within that world, Steven Wilson’s name carries a lot of weight.
Given Wilson’s status as a prog-rock luminary and the calibre of his backing band (Guthrie Govan on guitar; Nick Beggs on bass; Adam Holzman on keys; Marco Minnemann on drums; and Theo Travis on sax and flute), it goes without saying that Read more…
Prog-hardcore mixed with Korn-esque riffage? Sounds pretty damn epic to me! North Seasons are really pulling away from the post-hardcore herd with this track, chucking in Read more…
Three guys made this album.
Three guys.
Seriously.
What the actual fuck?!
To be completely honest, death/black metal is something I don’t often listen to outside of that scene in Californication where a post-vasectomy Hank Moody holds an ice cube tray against his balls while his daughter Becca sulks in her room blasting said types of metal…but I can happily make an exception when Read more…
In an endless ocean of heavy-shredding soundalikes, instrumental rock guitarist Yossi Sassi stands out a mile. Fusing impressive compositional skills with masterful technique and no small amount of hard-earned feel, Sassi quickly dives into subtle time signature changes on the mellifluous Marty Friedman collaboration Orient Sun before Read more…
In an age of unrelenting retromania, music desperately needs to move forward. In the rock and metal underground, we’re lucky to be a part of that movement in supporting bands like Red Seas Fire. Massively syncopated, sensorily hyperstimulating, and modern yet emotive and non-clinical, Blood Bank forms just one quarter of Read more…