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…
Prophets Of Rage is literally the sound of today.
For proof, just turn on the news Read more…
The House of Vans is a unique place. Half music venue, half skate park, it’s exactly where you would expect to discover cultural components that only fit far outside the box. Dorje, naturally, fit right in. 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…
With so many progressive bands hastily jumping on the djent bandwagon, Leprous’ latest is a breath of fresh air. Already known for their special blend of modern prog influences (The Mars Volta, Tool, Karnivool, Devin Townsend, Symphony X, TesseracT and Dream Theater, to name a handful), Leprous have struck out for rockier pastures than those occupied on 2015’s The Congregation. Read more…
Marco Minnemann is prolific. This is a fact well established over the past few years and albums such as Schattenspiel, Above The Roses, Celebration, and EEPS – to name only the releases which have received the review treatment here to date. Of course, on top of those projects you also have to add in Marco Minnemann’s work as a sideman to the likes of Joe Satriani and Steven Wilson, as well as his position as one third of The Aristocrats.
That’s a lot of work, enough to keep any musician occupied to the point of burnt-out, overstretched insanity Read more…
Since Maxi Curnow dropped the original version of STEM back in 2014, he’s been one of my all-time favourite progressive musicians.
STEM – a through-composed, twenty-five-minute behemoth of a song structured in five movements and home to some of the most original musicianship I’ve ever experienced – was, in a word, immense. In two words: Read more…
As the world struggles with an onslaught of serious issues, it’s nice to be able to take a break every now and again and just have some fun. CHON provide an ideal soundtrack for said festivities; their back catalogue is crammed with cutesy cleans, playful and mostly instrumental math-based tunes, and good vibes aplenty. Up to this point, these guys have emphasised the clean side of instrumental guitar – but on Homey, their focus has firmly shifted Read more…
Online guitar connoisseurs will doubtless be familiar with Andy James. Having established himself as one of the Internet’s most fleet-fingered go-to guitar teachers as well as a key member of former outfit Sacred Mother Tongue and current band Wearing Scars, Andy James’ solo output has long been slavered over by legions of six-string fanatics. With his most recent solo outing Exodus available to devour in full – and reviewed here – I got talking to Andy about the full story behind said long-player’s origins and the assorted intricacies of life in a working band… Read more…
When a band’s legacy and reputation endures for as long as CKY’s has, it’s obvious they’re on to something special. Last night, CKY’s latest tour came to an end with the second of two shows at legendary London rock venue The Underworld – and some 500 residents of the capital’s underground scene watched them close proceedings with a sonically pummelling set Read more…