Killswitch Engage
It’s going to take more than crappy computers and jacked-up hard drives to keep Killswitch Engage’s melodic metal from the masses. Every time this five-piece is finished and ready to hand over a new record to their label, Roadrunner Records, something always goes wrong. But 10 years and five records as a band has taught bassist Mike D’Antonio to back everything up-over, and over, and over again.
Triple protection might seem like overkill for most, but not to this graphic artist and grease truck junky who could use the extra space for all his KsE artwork. From posters to album covers,…
SAYREVILLE, NJ-More than four years removed from their celebrated reunion and the release of their latest record,
The Formation Of Damnation, Testament have proved to skeptics that even more than 25 years into their career they can still write great new music and put on an exciting show. Friday night at the
Starland Ballroom was no different.
Having seen Testament both indoors and out in the past year there was no question that, as their thrash metal roots would suggest, they are still a club band at heart. Touring this time around with always entertaining pseudo-thrashers Unearth, Testament made it clear that even…
Au Revoir Simone
Au Revoir Simone are three long-legged long-haired lasses living in Brooklyn who weave gossamer pillow-talked seductions through minimalist melodic symphonies, futurist lounge pop, celestial ambient abstractions, and buoyant cybernetic Kraut-rock. Customarily using vintage manual input devices, their most accomplished set yet, ’09’s Still Night, Still Light, refines the ethereal Casio-glazed gauzy linearity, buzz-y electro whirs, and pulsating crystalline balladry previously put forth.
Equally dividing multiple keyboard duties, Colorado-bred Erika Forster, Connecticut-bound Jerseyite Heather D’Angelo, and Long Island native Annie Hart got an early buzz doing loft parties as a tea-drinking living room band. A friend recorded a patchy do-it-yourself demo and…
I can’t lie-there’s something about Wilco (The Album) that really rubs me the wrong way right from the get-go. In all likelihood, I probably would have overlooked the fact that the first track on the Chicago sextet’s seventh release is called “Wilco (The Song),” if the lyrics to the chorus weren’t actually “Wilco… Wilco… Wilco will love you.” No, that’s not a joke. Your eyes did not deceive you. That’s really the chorus -officially propelling Wilco into the “what the fuck?” realm with this doozie of an opening track. Prior to its release, the PR pitch for Wilco (The Album) was that…
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Miles Davis
Sketches Of Spain Legacy Edition
Columbia
by Patrick Slevin
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What may be the last (but don’t count on it) in a string of legacy edition reissues from the Miles Davis catalog, Sketches Of Spain is just shy of turning 50 years old. That distinction it will receive next year, but that same fact didn’t prevent Kind Of Blue from getting the half-century moniker prematurely.
I suppose that’s why they left it off this edition of Sketches Of Spain, whose repackaging is largely treated in the same way. However, as Kind Of Blue’s legacy edition was essentially Kind Of Blue and 958 Miles slapped back-to-back with a few false starts and one “live” take of…
The Paper Chase
If The Paper Chase frontman and de facto leader John Congleton was found reciting the lyrics of his latest masterpiece, Someday This Could All Be Yours Vol.1, to passersby on a city street, he would probably find himself in a padded cell. If instead he recited his prose on public access in a cheap suit with an 800 number below him, he might have a few million followers. Luckily, Congleton, known for his producer or engineering credits on Modest Mouse, Erykah Badu, The Roots, Marilyn Manson and The Mountain Goats is not a T.V. Evangelist or a homeless crackpot (that…
NEW YORK, NY—Few guitar players can flow from heavy and thunderous shredding to soft and sweet sliding within seconds, using the utmost level of melody and never letting it diminish. There is absolutely nothing that Jeff Beck cannot play on his loyal Fender Stratocaster. You think Jimmy Page is a guitar god? Well, when inducting Beck into the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall Of Fame this year, he called himself and everyone else “mere mortals” in comparison.
April 10, 2009 was night two of Beck’s sold out shows at the fairly intimate Irving Plaza, and onlookers there to witness the magic included…
