In Bad For Business, Scholars have crafted one of those rare tunes that lodges itself firmly in your head yet doesn’t cause annoyance no matter how long it sticks in there. This song is insanely catchy but also packs a punch with its assured guitar riffs and propellant drum beats. It’s written from the perspective on an employee right at the bottom of the food chain but the catharsis in the lyrics is conveyed with such a fun swagger that you can’t help but sing along with glee.
Bad For Business is a bouncy, upbeat, party of a track which is guaranteed to get everyone dancing. Serious undertones there may be but this is one band whose tongues are firmly planted in their cheeks. They can have fun with any subject matter they tackle and produce upbeat pop-rock along with the best of them. Throw in a snappy music video which required the construction and destruction of a multitude of cardboard boxes and you’ve got a band whose get-up-and-go rock’n’roll music you can’t help feeling would be far from bad for any business. Or at least bad in a good way. If you see what we mean.
You may remember this band playing a killer live set at our Camden Crawl date last year at the Barfly. They have been writing new material which is about to see the light of day and from what we have heard, it’s fantastic.
This week, the Holy State released an amazing, new video for track Dial M For Monolith which sees the 4-piece tackle outer space on a budget, but pulling it off remarkably on the effort front.
The track is described as a “story of evolution through space and time, taking us from the dawn of humanity to to beyond the infinite” with the video a tribute to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
You can check out the video below and get ready for the band’s debut album Electric Picture Palace, which will be released by Brew Records on April 30th.
It’s Valentine’s Day as I type this and what more to my ears crave more than ever right now? A band that have the psychedelic charge of Hawkwind with the rawness of Black Sabbath. Combined, this could sound like a lot of bands but Los Angeles based Zig Zags have made the past and present clash with filthy panache on A-side track ‘Scavenger’, and just enough goodness for me to spread this love and bring it to you today.
This 7″ that is available in your local record store and for download today has a tale of two sides. The B-side ‘Wastin My Time’ is more reminiscent of the type of jam that you will find spread all over the tunes of Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Stripped back guitars and upbeats pushing a laid back Stooges style vocal that keeps driving you all the way home aurally.
This 3-piece band are meant to be pretty raw live, so get on this 7″ from Mexican Summer today and spread the love if you like it. There’s also a 5 track EP below here for free download an EP from their bandcamp if you want more.
Pulled Apart By Horses have always been a thrillingly chaotic live band, but on their self-titled debut album, they often struggled to walk the fine line between twisted hardcore genius and the musical equivalent of a ‘death pint’ (i.e. great ideas mixed together in a muddled, slapdash way).
Nevertheless, the promise was definitely there, and on Tough Love they’ve served up a more convincing, confident record, without sacrificing the raw edge that made them so appealing in the first place. Most notably, they now boast great riffs by the bucketload; the kind of filthy, thunderous riffs of which the old guard of the early 90s (Soundgarden, Helmet, even RATM) would surely approve.
For the most part, Tough Love does a fine job of capturing the unhinged energy of the band’s live shows. Those aforementioned razor-sharp riffs, the propulsive drumming, and vocalist Tom Hudson’s signature screech will all sound imposing enough on your stereo, but they’ll no doubt serve even better as a soundtrack to a throbbing mass of sweaty bodies, roaring themselves horse as they tumble over monitors, microphone cords and each other.
It’s not one great big hardcore free-for-all, though. They manage to shift down a gear for the gloriously QOTSA-esque chugging rhythms of Epic Myths, and Tom even manages to sing pretty convincingly on Give Me A Reason. The musical teeth are never far away, though, and it’s testament to the band’s confidence that they can rein themselves in from time to time and still sound unmistakeably like Pulled Apart By Horses.
The first great British rock record of 2012? Quite possibly, but – as you’ve probably gathered by now – it’s in the live setting where PABH truly shine. They’ll be touring the UK in mid-February; check www.pulledapartbyhorses.com for details.
2012 is shaping up to be a pretty vintage year for decent albums so let us introduce you to yet another contender that should stoke you out if you like your garage rock and country.
Firstly, it’s best to mention that Diamond Rugs is a project that was conceived back in August last year. John McCauly and Robbie Crowell from Deer Tick, Ian St Pe from Black Lips, Bryan Dufresne of Six Finger Satellite, Steve Berlin from Los Lobos and Hardy Morris from Dead Confederate went down to Nashville, Tennessee together to lay down some tracks and miracles happened. Speaking to Morris back then, he mentioned to us on a telegram that: “We were planning on recording 5 songs, and we did 14, so I guess you could say we had fun! It’s got a couple of Ian’s songs, 4 of mine, and the rest are John’s and other folks. Should come out early next year, I’ll keep you in the loop.”
Fast forward to January 18th and Diamond Rugs has surfaced online with a taster of what’s to come in a tune called ‘Gimme a Beer‘. The result, a mighty fine slab of catchy, slide guitar and horn assisted, country-rock’n’roll with a dirty Southern edge that makes you want to shake your shit over and over. I quote the words, “Damn it feels good to be a gangster!”
Check it out for yourself, download this tune for free and look out for an album announcement for the UK pretty soon.
For those of you record nerds that looked at this and thought that Sub Pop’s Pond from the early 90’s had reformed and releasing new material let’s make this clear that this Pond is full of new life, is not a grunge band and lives down in Australia.
Made up of 2 of Tame Impala’s touring members, Pond have unleashed one of the coolest psych records of 2012 so far with brand new track ‘Fantastic Explosion Of Time‘. Made up of of a mix of late 70’s pop punk rhythms and a large dose of 60’s psych, the rollercoaster trip this track omits is a ride that everyone should be on by the time the full length record is released this March 5th in the UK.
Previous releases have seen the band delve into Bowie/MGMT 70’s rock vibes so the forthcoming album Beard Wives Denim that will be released on Modular Recordings should be quite a melee of goodness to look forward to.
For now, feast on this single that is up for free download from the soundcloud link below and try not to play it again and again. Magical stuff.
Common has always been a rapper that everyone has enjoyed, he’s had his hits and he’s made a name for himself both in and out of the music world. But when he dropped his new album, The Dreamer, The Believer at the tail end of 2011, there wasn’t a great deal of hype surrounding the record. It’s a shame, as it turns out, as this is a great album, full of big production and an authoritative voice not heard from Common in quite a while.
After an opening salvo from Maya Angelou, Common and guest Nas drop bombs over No ID‘s thumping bass kicking the album off with a bang that doesn’t relent throughout. Lyrically, Common is on point, sometimes being a lot more forward that usual but always maintain his prowess with words in a voice that could only belong to him. With few guests appearing on the album [especially in this era of guests on almost every song], his vocals cut harder and with more meaning, clearly no bad thing.
Having No ID produce the entirety of the album also helps gives the record a consistency that might have been missing if the MC had cherry picked beats from a variety of beatmakers. Whether dropping a sample from ELO’s Mr Blue Sky or crafting a more intropsective beat for the track Gold or a larger epic sound to carry the John Legend guested The Believer, the producer continually finds sounds that fit Common’s delivery perfectly.
If this had been released in the middle of the year, or indeed anytime before the last couple of weeks in December, it would have definitely been in the top 10 of 2011. As it is, I wasn’t able to listen to it as much as I’d like before making my list, but don’t get it wrong – this is a fantastic album and, dare I say it, the best of Common’s already stellar career.
For a loosely termed musical genre that developed as a tougher edged take on first-wave Punk, ‘Hardcore’ has been subsequently sliced, diced, and generally misappropriated by a whole host of chancers, eager to put a credible spin on marketing their musical output, and even career aspirations. Gawd help us!
So let’s be clear, Section 13 are very much Hardcore as derived from the source, laying down 13 (what else!) bruising and whipped up blasts of anger driven music, with an attitude firmly rooted in Punk Rock. Singer Ian Murphy goes all the way back to mid-Eighties shining lights Visions of Change (from the then scene hotbed of Leamington Spa) and after time in the wilderness returned to action with S-13 a few years ago, “regrouped, reviewed, came back with strength renewed” – Hell yeah!
Burning Bridges is the band’s debut album and comes to a crunching finish a shade under 30minutes. You do the maths. This is super fresh sounding old time Hardcore, that’s screaming for a change, and banging its head against the wall. The lyrics are introspective, venting spite and frustration at personal failings and being disconnected with a world consumed by hate and division such as “I stand outside all those neat lines, not on the fence, not using that defence”.
It all adds up to fast and melodic Hardcore that keeps the true spirit alive, a reason why I am most certainly liking this album a lot! You won’t read about S-13 in glossy music magazines, they will never (ever) be Flavour of Month, endorsed by a sneaker company, or on a backpack sponsored tour. But they were never playing that dumb game in the first place. No shit, this is the real deal, and I cordially instruct you to go check it out pronto!
By all accounts 2011 was a quiet year for Melbourne, Australia’s ECSR, as they pulled up the handbrake, and retreated from the public eye. Their solitary release being a 12” (on Captcha Records) with the moody repetitive opus Walking in Unison being the only all new song. Word is that new material is in the pipeline, but in the meantime So Many Things has landed; a collection of singles, compilation tracks and general obscurities, 22 in all, and destined to plug some gaps in collections of all but the most obsessive audiophiles.
So yeah, you gotta listen to this album with its collective intention in mind, and respect that the dynamics alter from that of a straight studio album format. The levels vary and at times the fluidity gets off track but – regardless – the music is electric. You can dig that? Ok, then you’re sure as hell gonna dig this.
For me, the ECSR charm is in their simplicity, and ability to string out rocking classic numbers from the most primordial riffs, and rudimentary subject matter. They utilise the spirit of The Velvet Underground, Modern Lovers and The Stooges coupled with an injection of grubby punk attitude, that pays a debt to the likes of The Victims, Scientists and of course their hometown’s own Chosen Few, whose murder-punk staple T.A.L.O.I.G.A (as in “there’s a lot of it going around”) is executed in fine style.
You’ll also find a deconstructed reprise of Cleveland, Ohio’s Pagans (Boy, Can I Dance Good) and L.A.’s Go-Go’s good-time stomper We Got The Beat – although I preferred Poison Idea’s version to be honest. And then of course there are a slew of filthy raw ECSR originals to pollute our minds which turns up an opportunity to hear primitive versions of a few numbers that were later laid down to album – Get up Morning and Precious Rose especially (from their first LP) are stunners and the pulsating You Let Me Be Honest With You (from LP #2) is a plain rampaging stomper. It’s about zero degrees outside, but I have beams of warmth and sunshine being omitted from my speakers as this disc skips along.
To reiterate, Eddy Current Suppression Ring are possibly the greatest band in the world that you’ve never heard of. Go seek, and get your feet on the ground!
Former Black Flag member Chuck Dukowski and Oxbow’s Eugene Robinson are kicking off 2012 with a Black Flag inspired musical journey that should excite the most hardened hardcore fan.
Dukowski played a big part in the history of Black Flag from day one. He joined forces with Greg Ginn back in 1976 and kicked off their first shows in Redondo Beach, California, bringing with him him the ability to write classic songs such as ‘Spray Paint’ from Damaged, the anti-authority filled ‘I’ve Heard It Before’ and the epic ‘My War’ tune, although he had left the band before ‘My War’ made it onto vinyl at SST.
This new project titled Black Face is fueled by four songs that Dukowski wrote for Black Flag all those years ago but never actually recorded. These tracks have all been released on one 7″ available from Hydrahead Records and bring those menacing, meandering guitar licks and traumatic vocals associated with Black Flag that we have all learned to love. Eugene Robinson does well in delivering a punching vocal that even back in the day could have warranted a slot in the original line up, so overall, Black Face gets the big thumbs up from here. Look out for touring plans and a more releases this year.
In Bad For Business, Scholars have crafted one of those rare tunes that lodges itself firmly in your head yet doesn’t cause annoyance no matter how long it sticks in there. This song is insanely catchy but also packs a punch with its assured guitar riffs and propellant drum beats. It’s written from the perspective on an employee right at the bottom of the food chain but the catharsis in the lyrics is conveyed with such a fun swagger that you can’t help but sing along with glee.
