One of my favourite things about the Internet is easy access to music from across the world. Here at TMMP, I’ve been honoured to hear music from the UK, the USA, Belgium, France, Israel, Japan, and many other territories besides. Júlio Stotz hails from Brazil – and his debut EP Suspended In Reverie is a confident, flamboyant, and solid-as-concrete construction. Read more…
Finally, on their third album, Animals As Leaders have sold out. Gone are their trademark twisting riffs and über-dense polyrhythms – all of their previous idiosyncrasies have been ironed out, replaced with a light and airy, easily digestible, radio-friendly approach sure to see them bothering the pop charts. In fact, Miley Cyrus made headlines just hours ago when she tweeted “OMG cant get enuf of da noo AAL record! Mega luv #nextalbumtobeallgent”. Time to jump ship, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Only kidding. Read more…
On arriving at Camden’s legendary Electric Ballroom, I learnt three things:
1) The main room is smaller than it looks, since one wall is partially mirrored;
2) When you walk up to said wall and realise at the last second that it is in fact mirrored, you look like a prat;
3) The Safety Fire are fucking awesome. Read more…
Very few bands give as few fucks as Baby Godzilla. Even fewer bands use this trait to their advantage; there’s a very fine line between “putting in no effort” and genuine fuck-giving-free music. Baby Godzilla, however, are on the right side of every line. Every track on Knockout Machine is intensely chaotic, and yet makes perfect sense. In fact, if you were to force Baby Godzilla into a tightly-quantized corner, the results would most likely lose every last iota of structural integrity, and just dissolve into something utterly unlistenable. Read more…
Well, fuck me. These kids are pretty angry! Hardcore prog-punk’s been a fairly trendy genre since the rock world wised up to the genius of The Dillinger Escape Plan, and few bands following in Dillinger’s wake have made a serious, crystal-clear-obvious effort to escape their heroes’ back-flipping, ceiling-walking, onstage-shit-flinging shadow. But on Tell-Tale Hearts Now, Voyager do precisely that. Read more…
Whether you love or hate these guys, one thing cannot be denied: Periphery are not your standard metal band. While many acts continue to follow the well-travelled offline career path – centred primarily around toilet circuit gigs, the occasional EP, and appeals to labels to fund an album – Periphery head honcho Misha Mansoor made his name online, releasing solo material under the alias ‘Bulb’ and constructing his brand through unconventional (but clearly super effective) communication channels. Although it is popular in some circles to regard online audience-building as the mark of the heretical, double-dealing cheater, in the music business it’s just good sense.
Today, as if to affirm that conclusion, new YouTube bands are born on a daily basis, while labels focus increasingly on ‘platform size’ and ‘audience engagement’ as key metrics when considering a future signing. In a world where everything is on the table – not just the likes of Alex Day and Dorje but more or less every musical performance that has ever taken place in front of a functional video camera – sitting on your laurels guarantees, now more than ever, the inexorable certainty of crushing failure.
Fortunately, Periphery have proven more than aware of this fact, making a clear and conscious effort to consistently push themselves out of their collective comfort zones. Of their work so far, nothing proves this point as effectively as Clear. Read more…
I’ve never made a big secret of the fact that I love Guildford’s music scene. The sheer amount of musical talent hidden below the level of fashion-clone high street shops and uppity snobs with Come Dine With Me dreams is mind-boggling. Scratch away the net-worth-obsessed surface and you’ll find pop singers, gypsy jazz quintets, folk dreamers, alt-rock groups and, in Doomed From Day One, prog-metal titans in waiting. When they get big, many will assume DFDO’s success to have been some overnight phenomenon – but that’s simply not true. Doomed From Day One have already spent countless nights slogging around the local gig circuit, and their hard work is finally paying off. Nine Fingers is evidence of this. Full track-by-track analysis below: Read more…
Welcome to Part Two of The Musical Melting Pot’s Guide To Project RnL! Click here for Part One, where we looked at Project RnL’s YouTube-based output to date. This time around, we’ll be looking at the extracurricular work of Project RnL’s core members: keyboardist Eyal Amir, and vocalist Ray Livnat. Read more…
Opinion
Change Persona
Unfortunately I missed the evening’s openers, Origami Heart – but Change Persona kicked off my evening with a fun and entertaining set of well-practiced punk tunes. Throw in a Sum 41 cover, an enthusiastic crowd, and a frontman in a dress, and you have all the signs of an act with great punk-centric potential. Nice job! Read more…
Fiction
His back stiff against the steel monolith, Frank struggled in vain to escape the wrist and ankle clamps that kept him in place. His head throbbed. The featureless white walls of his cubic cell met his gaze and stared back blankly. He had awoken here, helpless and physically unharmed bar the chafing of the unforgiving clamps against his bulky forearms and calves. His last memory was of the comforting glow of his computer screen as he slid on his prized studio headphones and pressed play. Now he racked his mind in a plainly hopeless attempt to come to terms with his predicament. Read more…