With Tom Delonge having enjoyed critical success with his post Blink offering Angels & Airwaves, it’s now turn for the other two thirds of the arguably most successful pop punk band of our generation to step up to the plate.
Frontman Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker have teamed up with Craig Fairbaugh (who already played with Barker in Transplants) and Shane Gallagher (The Nervous Return), and bought onboard bought Blink producer Jerry Finn as executive producer, to create an album that maintains the best elements of Blink, but is slashed through with a darker, most progressive electronic sound.
Debut single ‘Lycanthrope‘ was debuted on Tony Hawks Project 8 Xbox game, and whilst there’s no escaping that Hoppus’s vocal will forever bring you back to Blink tracks about banging the neighbour and the girl at the rock show – this is like Blink all grown up. Hoppus remarks “We’re not divorcing ourselves from the past, but we are pushing beyond..” The sound is more mature, Jerry Finn’s concocted a masterpiece of a mix, with keyboards, electronic drums and a gently throbbing bassline caressing a catchy but not cheesy chorus. As Barker himself puts it “If Blink was the daytime, Plus 44 is the nighttime.”
This is in exciting debut from a band who are moving and growing, Hoppus and Barker have maintained the accessibility of Blink, but +44 is darker and edgier. If you thought you’d outgrown Blink shrug this on for size – after all, what’s not to love about a band named after the UK dialling code?
The album “When Your Heart Stops Beating” is released on 13th November.
There are few new bands out there that could sell out Brixton Academy four nights straight, but Las Vegas scenesters Panic! At the Disco can add that to their ever growing list of accolades.
This is the debut album from Californian sextet I Am Ghost, and a gloriously overblown affair it is too. Imagine Atreyu and Dragonforce hosting a jam session in Avenged Sevenfold’s tourbus, and you’ll have a rough idea of what these guys (and girl) sound like. Songs like ‘Our Friend Lazarus Sleeps’ and ‘Dark Carnival Of The Immaculate’ are a feast of widdly solos, soaring vocals and choruses huge enough to house an entire army of eyeliner-clad fans.
Well if the title doesn’t say it all then what the fuck do you want? Well the insanely fast guitars, drum machine and the gnarliest vocals in the world and the longest, most fucked up song titles, prove this to be the best thing since sliced heads.
Surreal & DJ Balance have come out with a cracking new album, Future Classic and have brought their own mix of jazzy vibes and boom bap goodness to the forefront with this release. This track, Permanent Ink, features the vocal additions of Braille and Sivion and is the stand out track on the record.
As you might have guessed from their name, Fucked Up aren’t out to make friends, or to fit into someone else’s preconceptions of what constitutes ‘punk rock’.
After their rapturously received Carling Stage headline slots at the recent Reading and Leeds festivals, Canadian reggae trio Bedouin Soundclash have returned to give us our first taste of new material since the release of last year’s highly acclaimed ‘Sounding A Mosaic’ album.
The majority of heroin addicts have always mentioned that doing the drug itself is like being wrapped in cotton wool and once the come down takes effect, your body suffers the withdrawal symptoms and needs to be refilled quickly to endure the pleasure of the highs on offer once indulged.
It’s been almost ten years since The Lemonheads disintegrated post Reading ’97, following frontman Evan Dando’s very public battle with drug addiction, and following a ‘Best of’ release by Atlantic, all went quiet on The Lemonheads front.
What do you get when you mix the unrivalled intensity of 80’s thrash metal with the blood-splattered gore of Dawn of the Dead? That would be Leeds based zombie crew Send More Paramedics, of course.