Here’s yet another incredible album of rock action from the fine folk at Deranged Records who just keep on pumping out the hits. Following hot on the heels of recent godlike releases from Career Suicide, Dead Stop and Fucked Up, Brutal Knights effortlessly fuse the sheer speed and raw power of early eighties hardcore with the gurning garage punk of bands like Zeke and the New Bomb Turks.
It’s an awesome mix and thunders along at break-neck speed, played at maximum intensity with all the suitably of a band that sound like they’ve had their fingers removed and replaced by hammers to play their instruments with. They’re from Toronto, we’ll probably never get to see them live but fuck it, buy this CD, turn it up and peel your own skin off baby.
Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlitt’s cartoon creations will be involved in this weekend’s Inside Outside festival on London’s Southbank. In honour of Hewlitt’s nomination for this year’s Designer Of The Year, four Gorillaz videos will be beamed onto the side of the National Theatre on March 24th.
King Biscuit Time aka Steve Mason and his cohorts take to the road in May for 6 dates around the UK. Kicking off in Mason’s home town of Edinburgh on May 17th, the tour takes in a show in at London’s Scala on 18th.
The South By South West Festival brings together the best upcoming bands in the world to Texas every March and as you would expect, things get a little out of hand, and rightly so at any party full of booze and people.
Much hyped Gnarls Barkley have just announced they are going to play two dates in the UK. The duo, DJ Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo, will be on the bill of the Wireless festival this coming June, starting with the London date and then following up the next day in Leeds.
If there’s one thing that ‘Can’t Stop Us’ proves, it’s that punk rock is truly a global phenomenon; uniting like-minded people in areas where you might least expect the genre’s influence to exist. This DVD is essentially a two-part documentary, featuring plenty of live Casualties footage, which follows the band on extensive tours of Mexico and Japan.The band play strictly old-school street punk in an Exploited/GBH vein, and unsurprisingly incite moshpit chaos at every show. It all sounds pretty repetitive after a while, though, and the quality of sound is varied, at best. The band/crowd interaction is far more interesting; especially in Mexico, where vocalist Jorge – a son of Hispanic immigrants – is able to sing and speak to the band’s fans in their native tongue. Don’t worry, folks, there are English subtitles included.
‘When punk first started I wasn’t even allowed in this shop,’ laughs Slits frontwoman Ari Up fixing one of Selfridges security guards in her line of vision. ‘This one’s called ‘Shoplifting’ so go and do it.’
The Buzzcocks are not a band to wallow in nostalgia. It’s not like they’ve reformed to cash in on past glories because they’ve never really stopped and new album ”Flat-Pack Philosophy’ is up there with some of their finest material. Arriving onstage with more energy and enthusiasm than men half their age, they blast through a short sharp set comprising of some key tracks from the aforementioned album and then proceed to pile headlong through a greatest hits set that includes pretty much every Buzzcocks song you could want to hear squeezed into 30 minutes. Happy Birthday punk rock, here’s to the next 30 years!
Westonbirt Arboretum in Gloucestershire’s Tetbury will host legendary act Massive Attack on July 30th with Terry Callier, who appears as the guest on their last single, as support for the group. Tickets go on sale this coming Friday [24th March] and will set you back £27.50. A bargain for all fans.
A full 9 years after his death, Biggie Small’s shooting is being re-opened for investigation by the LAPD. Recently, the family of BIG had sued the LAPD for allegedly trying to sabotage the investigation to cover up for former policeman on the force who had been linked with the murder. A new piece of evidence was “found” which helped the LAPD officer’s case and when this was brought up, the judge declared it was a mistrial and ordered the force to pay Biggie’s family over $1.5m dollars.