Photo Credit: Lindsey Byrnes The fifth full-length album by electronic music producer and DJ Nicholas Daniel Miller – known professionally as Illenium – opens with “Starfall,” an all-synth electronic instrumental. This is hardly the curtain-raiser a listener might expect if they choose to look ahead to the sixteen-song track listing, to see that upcoming cuts… Read more
Photo Credit: Anton Corbijn In music journalism, there’s a concept known as the five-album-test: any band that has released five consecutively great albums passes. The test is imperfect and controversial – rewarding consistency over irregular bursts of excellence – but the bands who pass it, undeniably, belong to the very highest echelons of music. Most would… Read more
Sure, one could argue that being a household name within the music industry in any way should disqualify you from complaining. Still, there are plenty of groups out there that deserve way more appreciation than they get. Here is a list of ten groups – new and old – that we think should be talked… Read more
To have something important to say and to know how to say it – that’s the art of succeeding with your debut album. Some debut albums have such an important message that they change the world forever. Some of them are just incredibly well executed, burning with the energy of a new artist who finally… Read more
Photo Credit: Chuck Berry via Universal Attractions (artist management) “Hail, hail rock and roll // Deliver me from the days of old.” – Charles Edward Anderson Berry Rock and roll always had a problem orienting itself from the beginning. It is the musical product of a dozen styles of American music blended through time and… Read more
Mark Josephson, Executive Director of the New Music Seminar said back in 1988 that “alternative music has real strength, real quality, real excitement, and it has to be socially significant, as opposed to Whitney Houston, which is pablum.” That’s a great explanation of what started during the late-‘70s to early-‘80s as college radio features like Dead Kennedys… Read more
Photo Credit: Ebru Yildiz Laurel Hell was never meant to exist. In June 2019, Mitski Miyawaki announced that a September show in Central Park would be her “last show indefinitely.” “Indefinitely”, she assured fans, did not mean forever, but privately, she had already decided she was quitting the music business. However, she later realized, her recording… Read more
In the rock era alone, there have been many, many cover versions recorded and released. From live-only interpretations to deep album cuts, to #1 hits (even the Beatles, who we’ll get back to in a minute, started as a cover band). In some cases, artists’ cover songs are well-known just because the original already proved… Read more
Projekt Revolution Tour 2007 at the Tweeter Center Camden, New Jersey Fort Minor H.I.M. Linkin Park My Chemical Romance Saosin Taking Back Sunday Photography by: Steve Trager
Photo Credit: MTV VMAs This year’s MTV Video Music Awards (which aired live on September 12th) tell us pretty much all we need to know about how the state of rock ‘n’ roll is 2021. Actually, we can even go all the way back to 1997: The award category that had once been “Best Heavy… Read more