Photo Credit: Jimmy Fontaine / Atlantic Records While the cover artwork and a couple of the song titles (“Blood Runs Red,” “Lawless Dream,” “Twisted Tongue”) might suggest that it’s a heavy metal album, Matt Maeson’s second full-length album Never Had to Leave is instead a tight and compelling collection of well-produced alternative rock and folk… Read more
Photo Credit: Helen Kirbo Surely you haven’t heard a more ambitious album concept in 2022 than this: a 105-minute concept album – the first installment of a trilogy – that traces the journey of a character escaping a fundamentalist home only to meet a gruesome end at the hands of a cannibalistic psychopath. All of… Read more
Photo Credit: Travis Shinn Chicago’s Disturbed is already one of the most successful heavy metal bands to debut (on record) in the twenty-first century, boasting among other accomplishments four consecutive studio albums going to number one in the U.S. since Believe in 2002 (even Immortalized topped the charts in 2015, despite the band taking an… Read more
Photo Credit: Paul Elledge During the early and mid ’90s, the Smashing Pumpkins (hailing from Chicago) became probably the most popular and influential band to come out of the alternative music boom who were not from (or connected to) the Seattle grunge scene. Lead singer/multi-instrumentalist/principal songwriter Billy Corgan dissolved the Pumpkins in 2000, but after… Read more
Photo Credit: Max Montgomery In 1994, Nasir “Nas” Jones burst onto the frontiers of hip hop seemingly out of nowhere with Illmatic (though, in reality, his first major break occurred when he featured on Main Source’s 1991 debut LP). Now considered the “gold standard” of conscious, boom-bap rap, it captured something profound, incredibly timely, and… Read more
Photo Credit: Black Eye Peas via Facebook In the nearly two decades since they broke through with the 2x Platinum-certified Elephunk, LA trio the Black Eyed Peas have been the butt of many a joke – especially as their star continued to grow throughout the noughties. “What the f**k happened?” was the question on the… Read more
Photo Credit: Danny Clinch At the outset, a major artist doing a studio album comprised entirely of songs made popular by other artists may seem like a lazy way to stay in the public eye and/or take care of one contractually-obligated release. However, it’s probably closer to being a rite of passage, as Bob Dylan,… Read more
Photo Credit: OVO/Republic It’s not uncommon for an artist to lose their passion – their fire, their spark – as they move up the echelons of stardom. That doesn’t make it any less disappointing to watch it happen in real-time. Case in point: Drake. After releasing three successive career-bests in the form of Take Care,… Read more
Photo Credit: Joji via Instagram To be a YouTuber-turned-musician is to have any and all of your musical output treated with suspicion. It’s understandable why; when most people hear the phrase ‘YouTuber-Turned-Musician’, they probably think of someone like Dream – the viral gaming star who received widespread mockery last year following the release of his… Read more
Photo Credit: Amber Paredes Dayseeker – the Orange County quartet formed a decade ago – has always been a difficult band to categorize. “Post-hardcore” and “metalcore” are the labels most frequently assigned to the band, but said labels tend to obscure the nuances and peculiarities of their sound – their inclusion of synths, their capacity… Read more