Good Old War seems to master the art of adorable folk music with their three-part harmonies and amorous tracks. On their new album they attempt to break away from this reputation, but it’s obvious they can’t escape it.

The self-titled album’s first track is a foretelling of what listeners should…

Acting as a visual document of Clutch’s most recent holiday East Coast run, Maryland’s finest purveyors of bluesy American rock took 2009 as an opportunity to perform their 1995 self-titled album in its entirety, something that I take some responsibility for (see page two of October…

The Night’s Last Tomorrow is the third CD released by the frontman for Cemetery-and-Western band, Ninth House, and it is rich with both new material and mature, acoustic reinterpretations of songs, often featuring brave and innovative instrumentation to accompany Mark’s chocolaty vocals. Some have appeared on Sinnis’ two prior solo…

This spastic array of fusion and rock from former King Crimson bassist Trey Gunn is more a record of a man exploring his own musical limits than an album in any traditional sense of the word. Of course, when someone composes over a 51-minute drum solo by one of the…

Sometimes to uplift your mood, an upbeat album is all you need. Houston mellow rockers Alpha Rev have succeeded in creating just that with New Morning. The band’s second album covers the subject of breaking up and moving on in a lot of their songs, but doing it in a…

Here Lies Love, a beautiful package containing two CDs, a DVD and a 120-page hardcover book, sub-titled “A Song Cycle About Imelda Marcos & Estrella Cumpas,” is the true and fascinating story about the life of Marcos (the widow of the corrupt Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos) and her childhood friend/caretaker.…

Even though it may seem like everyone was in The Misfits, there are only a handful worth naming. No dude, being the Misfits’ drummer for a week before they were called The Misfits doesn’t get you on their Wikipedia page! Or does it?

Violinist Regina Carter has crafted an intricate, poly-rhythmic journey steeped in African folk, with strains of worldbeat, gospel, classical, soundtrack (for a movie that doesn’t exist) and even klezmer, but make no mistake about it. This is a jazz album.

It’s trite to call her a genius but she won…

Traced In Air, the reunion record for the underground prog-metal men of myth Cynic, received near-universal acclaim from anyone who had ears and the will to hear in when it was released in 2008. The sophomore album was an unexpected success, and they subsequently toured the hell out of it…

In the instrumental post-metal genre, there is Red Sparowes and there is everyone else. Rather than merely relying on the tenants of the post-rock genre and eliminating the vocals like many others, they voice their three-guitar sound with a result that sounds less like a rock band and more like…