I’m not breaking any news here. Californian quartet Modern Color have been around for about five years now and have garnered attention for both their unique post-hardcore and their DIY approach to making it- from creating their own artwork to booking their own tours. Portuguese Bend 7" by Modern Color The release of ‘Empty Rooms’ today though, feels like an […]
Read moreThe best punk rock records are less than half an hour long. Personality Cult know this. The North Carolina outfit- members of Paint Fumes, Last Year’s Men, Sweet Talk and more- rattled through their 2018 debut at reckless speed. It left a mark though, infectious velocity for fans of The Marked Men, The Hives, and The Ramones. S/T by Personality […]
Read moreNew year, new music. And from the continued return of Canadian post-hardcore royalty to German doom-jazz and British drum-and-bass, I hope you find something to love. ALEXISONFIRE- Season of the Flood HOLY FAWN- Candy CASPIAN- Ishmael DESERTA- Save Me GRANITE HANDS- The Machine VASA- Heroics INSECT ARK- Tectonic BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE- Sag mir, wie lang KEEP- Pendulum […]
Read moreIt’s not a great name, no getting around that. But the first forays from this Kentucky-based duo are excellent. You might expect aggression and relentless intensity from a former member of Breather Resist and Young Widows but Nick Thieneman and partner Amber have combined to create dark ambience, melancholy rock and thick funereal dirges. Their debut album, ‘Dark Woven Light’ […]
Read moreSam Molstad has a way with titles. Over the past decade he’s used words from science and nature to label his self-produced sounds and they so often make perfect sense. ‘Ascending the Hill, ‘Off to Sea’, ‘Stasis in Green’. Even if you haven’t heard any of his previous outings under the Orchard Thief moniker then the name of the first […]
Read moreHoly Fawn’s 2018 album, ‘Death Spells’, was a very special record indeed. But it didn’t necessarily come easy for the Arizona outfit, the result of years of focussed passion, hard work and careful planning. This is different. Where before there was only the band– writing and recording and mastering everything themselves- here there is Triple Crown Records and veteran producer […]
Read moreThe boys are back in town? Maybe, just maybe, Maybeshewill might be back. The Leicester outfit posted the video below midweek and, for the minute, that’s it. Whether it means more live shows, (maybe an ArcTanGent headline slot?) or, whisper it, new music, remains to be seen, but right now i’ll take what I can get.
Read moreThe debut album by Ohio outfit, Honeymoon, is made of fantastic separate parts- chunky, post-hardcore guitars, spacey atmosphere, and plenty of 90s nostalgia. But too often the pieces don’t quite fit together. Where opener ‘Sensor’ should be seamless, it judders, and struggles to get going. Actually, it gets going fine, it’s just that it gets going about five times over in the […]
Read moreTides From Nebula shrunk to a three from a four-piece before recording this, their fifth full-length, but the pare down actually seems to have powered up their music. Oh, the Polish post-rock outfit have always favored the epic and atmospheric but, at its best, ‘From Voodoo to Zen’ crackles with new electricity and soars seriously spaceward. Opener ‘Ghost Horses’ swells […]
Read moreFirst, Caspian went dark. Their last album, ‘Dust and Disquiet’, might not have been their loudest but it was certainly their most intense- a storm cloud of post-rock influenced by anxiety, uncertainty and death. And then Caspian went quiet. That shadowy opus was easily a career-best but they’ve followed it up with five years of silence. The Massachusetts men don’t want […]
Read more