What music are you listening to?

[YI]

I really dug the first Matchbook Romance album, but "Voices" did nothing for me, and people have been ranting and raving about it.

In fairness, it helps to be in an emo state of mind.

[ROC]

I really dug the first Matchbook Romance album, but "Voices" did nothing for me, and people have been ranting and raving about it.

In fairness, it helps to be in an emo state of mind.

[RPS]

Rancid - Indestructible

5.5/10

I don't think it'd be humanely possible for me to fail a Rancid record, but if it was going to be any Rancid record it'd be this one. There are some great punk rock tunes on here and there are some pretty shitty ones. It was nice for Rancid to go out and make a major record label debut, but nothing holds up to their previous work. Its a decent CD and I'll listen to a select few tunes, but that is it.

[VerbalPuke]

G.G. Allin - Rock and Roll Terrorist Vol.2

For those of you familiar with G.G. Allin, the man needs no introduction. He was the king of extreme rock and roll, leaving nothing sacred or untouched. A lot of people could call G.G. Allin's stage antics a schtick or gimmick, but the man lived as we saw him on stage. He lived for violence, drugs, chaos, defecation, sex, and urination, it was all a part of the real man born under the name "Jesus Christ Allin".

This album is a collection of his later work with the Antiseen and various other bands he worked with. It also features some of his demented spoken word performances which are interesting to say the least.

The music is great on the album giving the listener a brutal but competent performance from the various bands he worked with. This album also features G.G.'s voice right before it deteriorated beyond coherency, many believing this to be the best vocal work of his career. The songs chosen for the album are mainly from his work with Antiseen, but also feature a few other goodies from a few brief recordings he did prior to the Antiseen album. As expected the songs pull no punches and deliver a good kick in the ass suitable for the rock and roller at heart. Lyrically, this is quit possibly some of G.G.'s most decadent material, especially with the song "Ass Fucking, Butt Sucking, Cunt Licking Masturbation" opening things on this chaotic album. His lyrics, as usual, focus on disgusting lyrics that not even the most degenerate mind could conjure in their wildest dreams.

The spoken word is fun for a listen for the hardcore G.G. fans. It's interesting to say the least, following the same formula as his lyrics but without music and spoken as poetic verses. The spoken word tracks lack cohesion, and are absolutely absurd, but do seem to indicate that there was something of an evil genius behind the inane ramblings.

The album is a far cry from the pop punk he did with the Jabbers, and is probably best compared to his work with the Scumfucs. It seems to follow a formula of hardcore punk, but only in the spirit of it being fast, loud, and abrasive, as it wouldn't fit the mold of the D.C., Orange County, LA, or NY variety.

A brilliant album, but best suited for those that really appreciate G.G. Allin beyond an infatuation with his stage antics. Another thing to note, if you're buying the album for the tracks recorded with Antiseen, you're better off just purchasing the full length album he recorded with them. It features all of the tracks found on the album, plus other songs omitted from this hodge podge of his work.

9/10

Selected Tracks: Fuck the Dead, Sister Sodomy, War in the Head

[YI]

"Maybe I'll Catch Fire" by Alkaline Trio

It's such a cliché these days that a bands old material is better than the newer stuff, but that is very much the case for Alkaline Trio. I still really enjoy the material they put out, but nothing comes closer to touching "Maybe I'll Catch Fire" in terms of quality. The UK release featured 14 tracks, 4 of which were featured on the "Alkaline Trio LP" (WHICH ISN'T A REAL ALBUM DAMNIT!!!) are thrown onto the end, in "This Is Getting Over You", "I Lied My Face Off", "Snake Oil Tanker" and "Goodbye Forever". After a convo with IAceI, I decided I'd rather have "Bleeder" (making it the "I Lied My Face Off EP" thrown on the end( on there instead of "Snake Oil Tanker". SOT is a good song, but Bleeder would fit the album better. There's not a single bad song on this album, in fact there's very little 'slip-ups' and the band seem to hit the mark every time. It may not be as catchy or as later releases, It's also home to the Alk3 'classic', "Radio", but also features many other GREAT tracks, which are often overlooked, such as; "You've Got So Far To Go", "Madame Me", "5-3-10-4", "Fuck You Aurora" and "Tuck Me In"...well all the tracks are great. I doubt Alk3 will be able to produce an album like this ever again.

RATING : 9+/10

BEST SONGS : "You've Got So Far To Go", "5-3-10-4", "Madame Me", "Fuck You Aurora", "Goodbye Tomorrow", "Maybe I'll Catch Fire", "Radio", "I Lied My Face Off", "Tuck Me In"......fucking hell, the whole album is too good.

[Can't find a picture of the album cover]

"Putting Two And Two Together" by Scallywagon

I went on a downloading binge recently, focussing on bands that have good names. Whilst not up their with "The Mystic Knights Of The Oingo Boingo", "Scallywagon" seemed like a pretty good band name, so I decided to give them a shot. They appear to be defunct, and have about 20 people listed as listening to them on Last.FM, so I guess they weren't really that big. But I was pleasently surprised as what greated me was some really good, tech-punk rock, similar to the likes of Whippersnapper and A Wilhelm Scream. Much like those two bands, it suffers from being a little disjointed at times, as the riffs and sections of the songs don't always. However, often unlike these two bands, they focus on great, catchy melodies, blending in some riffs and choruses that wouldn't be out of place in a pop-punk band, instead of going for shredding, metal, styled riffs (And totally RAPING the concept of guitar harmonies...YES I'M LOOKING AT YOU AWS...YOU GUITAR HARMONY WHORES!!!) The production is not outstanding, but it'd got an amazing, rough around the edges feeling, whilst still remaining incredibly tight, which all good tech-punk should. Much like Whippersnapper, these are one of those bands who I feel never got recognised by the punk-rock community, or anyone in general, as they've very rarely, if EVEER, talked about. I'd never heard of Scallywagon until I randomly saw their name on a download site, and thought it looked cool. Much like good screamo, tech-punk seems to have the curse that all the 'great' tech-punk bands are no more (well...Scallywagon and Whippersnapper at least). A real talented bunch of musicians, some great melodies, seriously, track this shit down, I beg of you...BROADEN YOUR HORIZONS, DAMNIT!! And get "The Long Walk" by Whippersnapper while you're at it.

RATING : 8.5/10

BEST SONGS : "Checkin' Out", "All New Engine", "Three Minute Memory", "Everybody And Everything" and "Another Chapter".

"The Decline" by NOFX

I love my punk-rock, but I FUCKING HATE, NOFX. They do absolutely nothing for me 9/10's of the time. Yet just about everyone runs up their arse. Lyrically they're pretty poor. When they try and bring the comedy, 9/10 of the time they fail. However, this is one release that I do really like from the band. Basically, it's an EP consisting of one 18-minute song, which is basically many songs, all running on from each other......see kids, "Jesus Of Suburbia" was so much cooler when it was called "The Decline"......which in turn was so much cooler when it was called "From The Cradle To The Grave" Lyrically it's basically your above-average NOFX stuff, but at least they don't try to be funny. But the entire thing is just so god damn catchy, it's hard not to get into it. There's enough variation between the 'movements' to keep things fresh and exciting, yet there's still recurring themes and the like throughout each part, to justify it being one long song. I also really like the trombone riff, it's so simple, but is so catchy, and it appears often throughout the song. There are things I dislike about the song though. At the end there's a key change for absolutely no reason, and there's no modulation, so it just sounds totally stupid. And the last 3 minutes could be condensed down into about 1-1:20 because of it. It also doesn't flow all that well in places. All in all, I think that this is NOFX at their best, very little, if anything wrong with it. Shits on "Jesus Of Suburbia" at least.

RATING : 8.5/10

BEST SONGS : "The Decline"......DUH!!!!!!

Edited March 4, 2007 by YI

[YI]

"Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues" by Strung Out

It's been 11-years since STWB, the sophomore album from Strung Out, was released, And in the eyes of many people (such as myself), not only is it the best release Strung Out have put out, it's also quite possibly the greatest punk-rock album ever penned. Basically, STWB is the epitomy of modern day punk-rock. It's horrifically fast in places (Man should not be able to drum that fast ), brilliantly catchy, sweetly melodic, it has also got a good amount of variation and some metal influences just poking their nose through. Lyrically it's sound. It's a great improvement over "Another Day In Paradise" in that regards. Lyrically Jason probably isn't as strong as he is now, but his lyrics are a lot less metaphor and imagery ridden on STWB, than say EIO, giving them a more down to earth feel. On the surface STWB is for the most part, such a 'happy' and 'poppy' album, but this is in stark contrast to the lyrical content of the album. You've got your songs about relationships (...and not just your whole boy/girl relationship), general mundane life, war, addiction, longetivity and security guards ( ......okay the last one isn't true but the band started a 'rumour' that "Solitaire" was about security guards, and lots of people actually bought it for a while). There's probably cooler stuff, but I'm not one to really analyse lyrics and stuff. You can pick up the gist, but at the end of the day, it's just cool. Musically STWB really shines. It's not full to the brim with solo's or amazing technical riffs, it's more straight up in your face kind of stuff. From the riff kicking off "Firecracker" to the drum fill ending "Wrong Side Of The Tracks" the album is non-stop awesome'ness. Every single track on here is of the utmost quaity. Most find themselves in heavy rotation on the live sets (9 or 10 of the 13 songs are played fairly reguarly...granted not all on the same show, and if any song off the album was played, the crowd would certainly eat it up), which is pretty amazing seeing as this was released 11-years ago, was their second album, and since then have released 4 albums (5 if you include the demo compilation...but that doesn't really count ). Whilst the band have 'improved', nothing they've produced has been able to top STWB in terms of quality, in fact, I doubt anything will. Seriously. One of the best albums of all time. I can't really do it justice.

RATING : 10/10

BEST SONGS : "Gear Box", "Wrong Side Of The Tracks", "Solitaire", "Speed Ball", "Firecracker" and "Better Days".

Edited March 6, 2007 by YI

[LexChaney]

I have been watching The Young Ones over the last few day's and loved the bands they had on there show one that stuck out was "The Damned" so i asked a friend of mine who had a load of there CD's so i brought them home and had a listen the best music i have heard.

Selected Songs of The Damned

From "Strawberries"

-Ignite

-Stranger On The Town

From "Machine Gun Etiquette"

-Smash It Up

And the best of all

From "The Light At The End Of The Tunnel"

- Nasty

The Damned get a 8/10 for there music and the best song i heard was "Nasty" also watched a few music video's and some stuff from when the late Gary Holton did a few thing's with them.

Edited March 6, 2007 by Lex Luther

[Styk]

Korn - MTV Unplugged

Being the big Korn fan that I am, i rushed out this morning to pick this up. I'm pretty impressed overall though the song selection could have been better. Freak on a Leash with Amy Lee stands out to me, as does the cover of Radiohead's Creep, I also like the versions of Blind, Falling Away From Me, and Love Song.

Overall - 8/10... if there were a few of my favourite Korn songs on here it probably would have garnered a 9 or 10, but I still really like this album.

[Fitzy]

That Unplugged is a horrible cd in my opinion. Korn just isn't a band to do acoustic.

Skillet - Comatose

Pretty good album here. I like "Rebirthing" and "Whispers In The Dark" the most.

[METALMAN]

I listened to Myths of the Near Future by Klaxons today. It's pretty enjoyable and it offers something a bit different to what I normally listen to. It has plenty of catchy melodies and synth lines. My favourite songs are "Not Over Yet", "As Above, So Below", "Golden Skans" and "Magick".

Overall - 8/10

[Styk]

Blitzkid - Let Flowers Die

Blitzkid's second album. Overall this isn't a bad album, though none of the songs particularly stand out to me. There are a few good songs don't get me wrong. The best song to me is "The Fog"

Overall: a generous 5 out of 10

Blitzkid - Trace of a Stranger

The follow up to Let Flowers Die, and to me this CD is immensely better than LFD. It also features what is probably my favourite Blitzkid song "Love Like Blood", in addition there are a few other stand out songs; being "Dead Again/Cold Skin" and "She Dominates".

Overall: 7 out of 10

[Gene Kiniski]

KoRn- See You On The Other Side

Some good songs and a more mature Korn make for a pretty good album from the group.

[thuganomic]

Ben Folds - Rockin' the Suburbs.

As much as I would like to hate this pretentious fucker, it's a very good CD and I might have to start listening to more of his crap, especially with him coming here for the Spring concert. Damn college kids.

[METALMAN]

Ben Folds is fantastic. I saw him roundabout Christmas time last year and it was brilliant. Have you heard his new album?

[YI]

Ben Folds is fantastic. I saw him roundabout Christmas time last year and it was brilliant. Have you heard his new album?

Edited March 8, 2007 by YI

[Tarheels.]

Ben Folds

I've been listening to Josha Radin- We Were Here a LOT lately, which makes me a lot more excited since I just found out he's coming to Raleigh April 2nd. Anyways:

Joshua Radin- We Were Here

9/10

I love this album. Love it, love it, love it. Its got a good mixture of a bit more upbeat songs and others that actually make you depressed (especially if you've seen Scrubs). Winter is probably one of my favorite songs right now, which is big considering I'm on a huge Death Cab and Bayside fix right now. Radin has been the only thing I've been playing lately.

Standout Tracks: Winter, Closer, Amy's Song, Sundrenched World, These Photographs

[YI]

"Death Alive" by Death By Stereo

Okay..."DANCE PARTY"...they're the two words that come to mind after hearing this album. Okay, you've had like 10+ hardcore punk, nonstop, face melting awesome tracks. Then suddenly...there's a minute long 70's disco funk instrumental...YES...FUCKING RANDOM!! But it's bloody brilliant. So yeah, this is a live album from DBS. It was recorded shortly after the release of "Into The Valley Of Death", meaning there's no "Death For Life" stuff on here. It was originally released with some magazine with 2000 copies available, but they're tossing it back out onto the market as "Death Alive". There's pretty much all the greats on here. The top tracks from "Into The Valley Of Death" are here, with "The Plague", "Unstoppable" (Which is much better here than on the album...mostly due to it being faster), "Let Down And Alone", "These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things", "Beyond The Blinders", "Wasted Words" and "Shhh...." all finding their way on the album. To be honest, I'd have been happy with anything from ITVOD, as it's all awesome. You've also got an awesome selection of older songs, featuring the greats of "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Salvation", "Lookin' Out For #1", "Sow The Seeds", "Sing Along with the Patriotic Punks" and "No Cuts, No Butts, No Coconuts". Hands down, it's got nearly all the great DBS tracks (Pre "Death For Life")...just a top notch live album. Some great humourous banter going on between songs. Not quite up there with Lagwagon's, "Live In A Dive" ("LETS HEAR IT FOR BOOKS!!") but stuff like "There's a disease that's spreading...**CAMEL TOE (-From the crowd-)**"...quality stuff. A top class live album. I've heard better. But this album really does prove that DBS are one of the top hardcore-punk bands today, and fuck those who say that punk at its bearest bones is dead. It's great to hear the older songs without the really annoying snare drum...the band just sound so good here. I want to see them live.

RATING - 8/10

BEST SONGS - "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Salvation", "Unstoppable", "Lookin' Out For #1", "The Plague", "Let Down And Alone" and "No Cuts, No Butts, No Coconuts".

"City Of Echoes" by Pelican

It's gotten to the stage that recently a lot of instrumental bands are becoming more and more popular. It's basically also gotten to the stage where 2/3 of all instrumental bands have decided they'd like to sound like Explosions In The Sky. So Pelican, much like Do Make Say Think and Maserati, come as a breath of fresh-air to me (All for different reasons), an instrumental music lover. Pelican can perfectly mix whimsical, sweet guitars with crunching walls of noise, pulling out some amazing riff'age as they go. They've got the instrumental thing off to a tea, with you never getting bored at all during listening. They're not afraid to experiment with syncopation and tempo. Despite having no vocals, the songs are full of amazing riffs and melodies, you just can't help but nod your head along to the tunes. With bands like this, there's often a habit that things don't flow, they try to be too clever, but here everything flows together perfectly. Riffs and sections of the tunes are seemlessly brought together, there's never once that you think "Hmm...that sounded weird" (In a bad way at least). I admit to not knowing much about these guys before this album, but I've picked up all their old stuff off the strength of this release, that's how good it is. I'm just blown away at the number of great riffs that are present in these songs. It never gets boring, or old. You've even got an acoustic track in there to spice things up. Definately a breath of fresh-air in instrumental rock, and in music in general.

RATING - 9/10

BEST SONGS - "City Of Echoes", "Dead Between The Walls", "Spaceship Broken - Parts Needed" and "Far From Fields".

[RPS]

Dizzee Rascal

Boy in Da Corner

9/10

Sometimes I can't understand a word the guy is saying. Sometimes the tracks are so weird that I don't know what is going on. But it doesn't stop it from being the best damn record I heard that year and still am addicted to. When I heard he was putting out some new shit, I had to listen. Just had to.

[Skummy]

Grinderman - Grinderman

I liked this. I liked it an awful lot. But I didn't like it nearly as much as I felt I should have. For those of you who don't know, Grinderman is the new band of Nick Cave, and some of his merry men the Bad Seeds, and it's been hyped up in some form or another for many a month, ever since Dark Saint Nick first spouted his dodgy rapist 'tache, almost. But all the hype suggested that this would be such a drastic move away from the Bad Seeds, a journey back to Cave's "punk" roots (conveniently forgetting the existence of the Boys Next Door), and practically being an ersatz new Birthday Party album as far as its rawness, aggression and untamed sexuality goes. In countless interviews, Nick explained how he needed to record this album, and how he couldn't possibly release it under the Bad Seeds name.

With all that in mind, it's disappointing. There's nothing that comes close to matching the unparallelled raw manic energy of the Birthday Party's "Release The Bats" or "Mutiny In Heaven", and it just about scratches the surface of early Bad Seeds weirdness like "Tupelo".

Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic album, and parts of it ("Love Bomb", "No Pussy Blues") are the musical equivalent of violent sex, with Cave's unmistakable voice growling and bellowing over some aggressively masculine post-punk noise you really wouldn't expect from a 48-year old family man living in Hove, and his lyrics making something of a move away from the Bad Seeds usual melancholy and into a more black humour vein, and continuing the theme of pop culture references he seemed to start in a big way with "There She Goes My Beautiful World" on the last Bad Seeds studio album, Abbatoir Blues/Lyre Of Orpheus.

Parts of this album are as dirty and sleazy as anything you can expect to hear in the music business today, with some fantastically filthy bass, and the uniquely piercing sound of Warren Ellis' electric bouzouki, but you get the feeling that if this had been put out as a Bad Seeds album, the press would herald it as a return to Cave's roots, and we'd probably see the same "midlife crisis" accusations levelled at him as we do today, but other than the lack of a piano...no one would really notice. Mr Cave would like us to think of this as a completely seperate body of work, and something entirely seperate from the Bad Seeds catalogue...but it's just not different enough, it's not what he seemed to promise us. It's a brilliant album all the same, but not the change in career direction that we were lead to expect.

[RPS]

Patrick Wolf

The Magic Position

10/10

Where has Patrick Wolf been my entire life? I was bummed I had to wait a few more months for the new Final Fantasy CD, but... than I heard this. Its folk, its glam, its electro - its a classic. Its so left-field, its so brilliant and its my new favorite CD.