Mediocrity might be acceptable in a cheap early-morning cup of coffee, or maybe a hotel room, but not when it comes to art. Anberlin is a fairly mediocre band – albeit with a very talented lead singer. Still, that only goes so far. Ivoryline, on their 2008 full-length There Came A Lion sound like a mediocre version of Anberlin – a mediocre band.
This review is dedicated to Buck Fitzpatrick, an old friend that used to relentlessly pimp Baptized in Blood to whoever would listen. This was when the band had like, 17 guitar players or something, and were a bit of a mess live. Still, he used to play “Kickin’ Ass And Takin’ The Blame” nearly every time we partied for a few months at a time…
Of all the bands named After The Fall that I came across trying to find these guys’ contact information, they’re certainly the best. That’s not saying much, but it shouldn’t take a way from the band, either. Fort Orange blazes through its 13 tracks in under 30 minutes, offering up a nice mix of fast, technical, and anthemic. It’s like Daggermouth but more intense; Bad Religion with some Comeback Kid; basically, just a cool…
This is a pop record, pure and simple. You can toss in terms like “new-wave,” “synth,” “dreamy,” and so on, and they might help narrow down what kind of pop it is, but really, it’s the pinnacle of pop. Fans of pop music will dig it, or at least some of it, and others probably won’t. It’s quite simple. So is the music.
Set Your Goals’ debut full length Mutiny! made it pretty easy for me to get into them. The record was punk enough, fast enough, catchy enough, and lighthearted enough that the few flaws that existed (namely, weak lyrical content and some misplaced vocal delivery here and there) were easily forgiven. So many songs on the…
Experimental deathcore act Arsonists Get All The Girls have whipped up quite the aural beatdown in their latest release, Portals. These eleven tracks find the band borrowing from all shapes and forms of heavy music for a pulsating record that doesn’t let up too often – and that’s a good thing. While I’d never consider deathcore to be my kind of thing, there are some undeniably awesome tracks found throughout this release with just the right amount of balls-out heaviness combined with well-placed programming and smooth synth leads for contrast.
If a picture’s worth a thousand words, then how many is a song worth? The answer would need to be relative of the song at hand, of course, but for a band like Isis that’s so consistently able to create sonic landscapes with the tools of their crafts, one could argue that one of the band’s tracks holds a higher verbal value than…
Boston emotional hardcore act (sorry one-sheet, that’s the only way they’re being described around here) Transit have have offered up a pretty decent release within a genre that, incidentally, they don’t like to use to classify themselves. I’m skeptical to agree that there’s “surprisingly complex, innovative songs” found here, though they…
How exactly is one supposed to approach critically assessing a best-of collection? Since none are really designed to be a collection of songs arranged in a predetermined sequence that offer a glimpse into a band at one particular point in time, the options are numerous and spread out. Do you evaluate each song individually…