Pop-punk may be a massively oversaturated genre, but good music remains good music nonetheless. Who could ever get tired of infectious songs that mix darkness with upbeat energy? While there are plenty of bands who stick to a formula in order to sell, there will always be a place for those musicians who use a given genre template to express themselves with raw passion, sincerity, and good humour.
WSTR made a huge impact with their 2015 EP SKRWD, a set of six sick tracks that got them deservedly noticed by fans-in-waiting. Now comes crunch time: Album One, Red, Green Or Inbetween. Read more…
Eclectic punk godfathers AFI are the kings of keeping going, progressing over more than twenty-five years from outsiders to insiders to chart-topping legends. At this point, they have little to prove – but AFI are not yet ready to settle back on their laurels and fossilize into a nostalgia act. They still have plenty left to give – and more than a few fans hungry for more music.
AFI – also known as “The Blood Album” – is precision-engineered to Read more…
As the music industry slows down, its alternative end hibernating while the pop-enamoured mainstream hungrily ogles Christmas shoppers, the time has come to look back on a seriously strong year for organised soundwaves. For me, it’s been heavy, intense, and a hell of a lot of fun thanks to the releases listed below.
With so many exceptional contenders in the running for the top spot, the thought of ranking them in order of quality is plainly ridiculous. So instead, I’ve picked out three releases that had memorable impacts on me when I first heard them, and assembled the others in alphabetical order.
The Pretty Reckless’s Who You Selling For – along with previous effort Going To Hell – is conclusive proof (if it were honestly needed in 2016) that women belong in rock music, and are fully capable of kicking ass. The sexists of the music world are like Wile E. Coyote; they’ve run off the edge of the cliff, nothing surrounds them but empty air, they’ve looked down, and they’re panicking. Sonic Boom Six’s The F-Bomb picks up where that image leaves off – it’s cheeky, chirpy, happy and hard-hitting (sometimes simultaneously), addressing a wealth of gender-related issues and providing a great ska-fuelled party soundtrack as only Sonic Boom Six can.
Musically, Dissociation is The F-Bomb’s polar opposite. The Dillinger Escape Plan’s swan song is crammed with brutal and ultra-experimental mathcore – but it’s also Dillinger’s most delicate and diverse album. The Dillinger Escape Plan are living proof that you can achieve great things without compromise, by sticking to your guns and just going for it.
Beyond that point, you’re free to dive into an epic range of albums including solidly grooving rock sets, monolithic slabs of military-grade metal, and progressive masterpieces. Since I’ve not reviewed many EPs this year, I’ve also included a pair of extended-playing mind-blowers in the form of Dorje’s Centred And One and Toska’s Ode To The Author. Dorje specialise in utterly idiosyncratic rock tunes with added progressive spice, while to me, Toska (made up of Dorje’s backline, namely guitarist Rabea Massaad, drummer Ben Minal, and bassist Dave Hollingworth) represent the future of instrumental metal.
Both Dorje and Toska are bands on the rise – and they fully deserve to hit the same peaks enjoyed by the biggest names on this list.
There’s little more to say; for me, this list represents the top albums of 2016. Enjoy the full reviews linked below, follow TMMP on Twitter, subscribe to my brand new YouTube channel, and stay tuned for more world-class music next year!
Everyone is angry right now. Not just angry, in fact – infuriated, livid, countless light years beyond merely “pissed off”. Whether you’re talking rejoicing extremists such as the KKK and Al Quaeda or the millions still compulsively facepalming themselves while trying to come to terms with the fact that Donald Trump, a minted and racist reality TV star, is now the world’s most powerful – and dangerous – man, everyone has anger in common no matter which side they’re on.
If there’s a bright side to one of the biggest political shitstorms in recent memory, it’s this: Read more…
Iggy Pop is pretty good at picking out quality collaborators. In 1977 – almost forty years ago – Pop and David Bowie produced a pair of legendary albums in The Idiot and Lust For Life. Both were billed as Iggy Pop solo albums – as was this year’s Post Pop Depression, produced by Josh Homme of Queens Of The Stone Age and featuring the additional talents of Queens’ Dean Fertita and Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders.
Post Pop Depression: Live At The Royal Albert Hall is a full-scale onslaught of art-rock songs cherry-picked from the aforementioned albums. It also showcases one of the music world’s most famed and infamous characters in Read more…
When your band’s been going for well over three decades, keeping things consistently fresh is a tough ask. Mike Muir and Suicidal Tendencies have nonetheless managed it, mostly through a long line of lineup changes and the assimilation of a wide range of genres, from punk to funk to prog, into one singular STyle.
That said, the latest Suicidal Tendencies lineup is literally something else, a thrash fan’s wet dream come true. Suicidal Tendencies Version Fuck Knows By Now comes complete not only with brand new bassist Ra Diaz and guitar mangler Jeff Pogan, but also Dave Lombardo – the skin-beating ex-Slayer legend who barely needs any further introduction.
Practically every pop-punk band on the planet wish they were Blink-182. Since hitting the big time way back in 1999 with Enema Of The State, Mark Hoppus, Tom Delonge, and Travis Barker have rarely been far from the limelight whether together, or working in a wide assortment of solo projects. More recently, Alkaline trio guitarist/vocalist Matt Skiba replaced Delonge following the most recent in a series of internal spats – and California, its title paying tribute to Blink-182’s home state, is the band’s seventh studio album, their first since 2011’s Neighborhoods. Read more…
Camden High Street is a busy place at the best of times. Bargain hunters crowd its world-famous market; tourists take selfies in front of outlandish shopfronts; alternative fashionistas strut around in their latest cutting-edge purchases.
Add in Camden Rocks, a twenty-venue, two-hundred-band music festival stretching from the vicinity of the Roundhouse down to Mornington Crescent, and you’re talking the coolest kind of chaos imaginable Read more…
With their new album Celebrate (reviewed in full on TMMP here), Tiny Moving Parts are flying the flag for manically complex, yet still emotionally evocative rock. With that in mind, I chatted to TMP vocalist/guitarist Dylan Mattheisen about Celebrate, motivation, golf, and more… Read more…
Too often, punk-inspired music seeks to do little more than recycle the ways of the past. The cookie-cutter pop-punk path has become especially well-worn, with countless bands applying generic formulae to their own music. When a band take a fresh approach to punk, though, greatness results.
Celebrate has given me reason to celebrate. Cheers, Tiny Moving Parts.
Tiny Moving Parts’ songs are freakish but friendly mutants. Like Beast from The X-Men, they’re Read more…
