Alkaline Trio has appealed to the pop-punk-loving masses for nearly two decades now by finding the midpoint between the macabre themes of The Damned or The Misfits and the hopeless-romanticism of bands like Saves the Day and New Found Glory. Tales of love and woe are what attract many female…
You’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but fuggit, man — you can go ahead and judge Fu Manchu by its album covers. It’s all there: launching dune buggies, UFOs, shredding skateboarders, babes in bikinis, hot rods, vans. It’s not rocket science; it’s simply Southern California rock…
Ryan Avery, wearing a safari hat, ran around with a megaphone. JRC turned on a record player and asked the crowd to arrange themselves from shortest to tallest. Then he grabbed random people, spun them around three times, put a cardboard box over their heads, and had them hit a…
Lots of artists stand out for designing some kick-ass metal covers — like the recently deceased Storm Thorgerson, for example, who lent his art to everyone from Led Zeppelin to Black Sabbath over the course of 30 years. But when it comes to weaving together the heavy metal standard of…
The annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California is attended by thousands of music lovers who pilgrimage to the mountains each year for their fill of live performances from emerging and established acts, including Grimes, the Wu-Tang Clan, and Local Natives. The Real Coachella is a local music…
Record Store Day, the annual event in which stores put out their best inventory, dorks jostle for those elusive RSD exclusive releases, and everybody throws down a nice all-day party, is back again. There are plenty of festivities at all the Valley independent retailers, and, hey, maybe this year you’ll…
Imagine taking a demonic ride through a girl’s mind, filled with fantastic illusions, haunting, heavy melodies, and vengeance against a world that has forgotten her. To get there, you could spend an evening with Otep, one of the most prolific female-fronted bands of the past decade — or have a…
Listen, man, guys don’t like talking with other hombres about emotions and feelings and self-doubt and all that. I read about it in a men’s magazine, in an article written by a male human solely for dude perusal, all right? J Mascis and Lou Barlow, the two songwriters behind legendary…
Tinariwen is the plural of ténéré, which simply means “desert” in the African language Tamashek. The name is fitting for these Sahara Desert musicians, and their music captures the beauty, hardships, longing, and isolation of their nomadic lifestyle. Tinariwen began in Libyan resistance camps in the 1980s when most members…
If you know someone who gets so excited about jewelry and new shoes that they write songs about them, is your acquaintance A) a Scottsdale princess with too much money and a digital recorder or B) a modern hip-hop star? Trick question! Either way, it’s a prima donna with daddy…
Nathan Williams always had a good thing going with Wavves, whose string of buzzy, snotty pop-punk records has thrilled certain members of the blogosphere since 2009. The formula is clear: scuzzy guitars, crunchy drums, and an abundance of California slacker cool. But there’s always been a nagging question lingering about…
Excuse our local beat-juggler boosterism for a moment, but there are some turntablists in town whose skills are so unearthly we reckon they might just have brokered their everlastings soul to Lucifer in trade for prodigious abilities. And if they haven’t, they might want to consider the deal. Every extra…
The weekend drinking and dancing action at EPIQ Nightclub in Scottsdale gets so fierce that it appears as though people are climbing the walls while frenetically partying their brains out. Okay, that ain’t literally the case, mind you, but damned if don’t look that way, thanks to all the smoke…
It looks like all these Record Store Days are paying off. In 2012, global sales for vinyl records hit $171 million, their highest point since 1997 — the same year that Hanson’s “MMMBop” topped the charts. This Saturday, April 20, marks the sixth annual Record Store Day, when artists and…
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Justin Vernon, the reclusive mind behind Bon Iver, said Poliça is the best band he’s ever heard. If that doesn’t get your indie sensibilities all hot and bothered, nothing will. (We’re assuming that Vernon, crowned King of Indie by the Grammy committee in 2012, has heard…
Minimalist R&B-inspired music is riding a wave of popularity right now, but not all makers of breathy, sexytime music are created equal. The sensuality in the music of The xx — comprising Romy Madley Croft, Oliver Sim, and Jamie Smith — is one that The Weeknd and James Blake can’t…
In an recent interview with New Times’ music blog, Up on the Sun, eccentric bassist Les Claypool confessed: “Primus was never supposed to be on the radio, never supposed to be on MTV, never supposed to sell platinum records.” One imagines that Isaac Brock, the singer/songwriter behind Modest Mouse, must…
There’s no getting around it: Icelandic band Sigur Rós is utterly ridiculous. First, there’s the language singer Jonsi often sings in: Vonlenska, or Hopelandic, a gibberish dialect consisting of mewls and coos. And then there’s the blasted pretentiousness: The band named an album ( ), for Pete’s sake. Looking like…
The DJ/producer duo of Adolfo “Dolphz” Salazar and Logic Ali, better known as TrapZillas, has an absolute monster of a weekend planned. The pimped-out trap specialists — who hail from Phoenix and L.A., respectively — will spend the night of Friday, April 12, pulling off back-to-back gigs at two EDM…
Although we’re loath to admit it, the full force of summertime’s fury is a few weeks hence, if not (gulp) sooner. And thanks to that whole climate-change nightmare that the right-wing nutters seem to be in unapologetic denial over, it’s gonna be more uncomfortable than ever ’round these parts. Some…
Mike MezeulLil Wayne has just released his 10th studio album, I Am Not a Human Being II. It’s been 18 years since his first album, True Story, as one half of The B.G.’z. In that time, he’s been a lesser-known member of an embattled Southern hip-hop group, a scrawny kid,…
Black SabbathBy Nicholas Prell Okay, we get it. You like Sabbath. Everyone does. But out there is a whole big world of ’70s metal bands beyond Sabbath — even beyond Sir Lord Baltimore, if you can believe that. The ’70s offered so much in the way of doom-and-gloom heaviness that…
