In about three to five years, the subgenre of “doom” — and, to a lesser extent, its subset of “drone” — may become as ubiquitous and stale as “surf garage,” or whatever happens to be the flavor of the moment enjoying underground-bordering-on-mainstream popularity. But it won’t be because of the…
Children of Bodom (due tomorrow night at the Gothic Theater) formed in 1993 in the Finnish town of Espoo. Lead guitarist and singer Alexi Laiho and drummer Jaska Raatikainen formed the band around the age of fourteen under the name Inearthed. By the time the outfit released its debut album,…
TANTRIC PICASSO @ BLUEBIRD THEATER | 2/2/12 Sometimes when bands come out on stage and look like they dressed for the show it can seem like a put-on. But when Tantric Picasso came on they looked like a band that had stepped out of a door to the early 1970s…
Tantric Picasso (due Thursday, February 2 at the Bluebird Theater) started in 2008 among a group of friends who met at school, which is typical enough, but in naming the band, the fivesome created a personal mythology (partly detailed below) that is somewhat embodied in the name with hints of…
The Sting and the Light, Le Divorce’s latest effort, starts off with “Six Feet Under,” a bit of a rocker that quickly evolves into a surprisingly straight ahead pop song with jazzy undercurrents. In “Under Boxcars,” a breezy melody meets textured rhythm, while the layered atmospherics of “Splinter Song” evoke…
Having changed its name from Inearthed to a reference to the infamous Lake Bodom murders of 1960, this Finnish band continues to defy easy categorization in any specific subgenre of metal. The band’s precision and furiously fast and melodic riffing are clearly influenced by the new wave of British heavy…
In 2007, singer-songwriter Cass McCombs told the San Francisco Chronicle that he wants his tombstone to read “Home at Last.” McCombs’s subtle and sardonic humor, enmeshed with a poetic truth, also informs his songwriting. Although he doesn’t really sound like Roy Orbison, his lushly evocative tunes resonate with the same…
Ghosts of Glaciers has a name that could alternately be an oblique reference to global warming or a poetic nod to the crags — inexplicable rock formations and giant rocks left on the ground when the most massive of glaciers from the last great ice age passed into history. The…
GHOST @ MARQUIS THEATER | 1/27/12Even before Ghost took stage, people started chanting for the band, which was interesting considering this is the outfit’s first big tour. But that enthusiasm was rewarded when the strains of “Masked Ball” by Jocelyn Pook came over the P.A., with its reversed Romanian words…
Descendents (due tomorrow night at the Fillmore Auditorium) didn’t exactly invent pop punk, but the band’s musical influence can be heard throughout that movement whether latter day poppy punk bands know it or not. Starting in 1978, Descendents were early compatriots of what later became the hardcore scene in southern…
Leo Kottke (due tonight at the Boulder Theater) is a legendary and beloved master of finger picking guitar and a gifted raconteur. He got his start with John Fahey’s Takoma Records in the late ’60s, and he’s been releasing noteworthy albums of some of the most inventive and interesting acoustic…
Ghost (due tonight at the Marquis Theater) is a metal band from Sweden that might also be considered a bit of a performance art troupe. With one member dressed as the Satanic counterpart to the Pope and the other five as hooded, essentially faceless acolytes, all decked out in reverse…
Secret Chiefs 3 (due tonight at the Bluebird Theater) is the brainchild of Trey Spruance, whom you may know from Mr. Bungle. With Secret Chiefs 3, Spruance seemingly follows every musical idea he can think of down every rabbit hole imaginable. Along the way, he has learned to play a…
Dengue Fever (due tonight at the Bluebird Theater) was born of Zac and Ethan Holtzman’s fascination with the pop music that had come out of Cambodia prior to the Khmer Rouge takeover of that country in 1975. Pre-Khmer Rouge Cambodia had a thriving pop and rock scene that was influenced…
In the Whale started out in Greeley as a side project of What About Pluto? and Trailer 77, but guitarist Nate Valdez and drummer Eric Riley wanted to do something more raw as an outlet for sublimated frustration and angst. A former counselor of juvenile delinquents, Valdez undoubtedly had plenty…
The eleven minutes and six seconds of this single track sound as if Tom Nelsen watched The Last Temptation of Christ and Kingdom of Heaven simultaneously and then did storyboards for a graphic-novel version of Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. It is ambient in the same sense that the most abstract…
With the release of 1981’s Fat EP, the Descendents became one of a steadily growing stream of hardcore bands from Southern California. And, as was the case with many of those early acts, their music was a youthful catharsis informed by a wickedly absurdist sense of humor. Until Napalm Death…
ZetaKaye House has been curating a series of compilations for the past couple of years featuring some of the best music created in Denver. The latest in the series, This Ain’t No Cowtown Volume III Kings, is being released as a fundraiser for 3 Kings Tavern co-owner and longtime supporter…
YOB @ LARIMER LOUNGE | 1/22/12 Mike Scheidt of Yob was replacing a string on his guitar that had just snapped and he told us, “Two more songs and we’ll end it brutal.” True to his word on behalf of the band, Scheidt and company escalated quickly into the rampaging…
GARLAND JEFFREYS @ LION’S LAIR | 1/21/12 There was no opening act for Garland Jeffreys on Saturday night, and the show got started around 9 p.m., so if showed up thinking it would start later, you missed some songs. This wasn’t the usual sort of show for Lion’s Lair, where…
Garland Jeffreys (due Saturday, January 21, at the Lion’s Lair) should be a household name considering some of the shoulders with which he’s rubbed during the course of his long career: He met Lou Reed and Maureen Tucker before the Velvet Underground were properly a band, when Jeffreys and Reed…
Trey Spruance first came to prominence as the guitarist in Mr. Bungle, with Mike Patton and Trevor Dunn. Spruance also did a brief stint in Patton’s then-more-famous band Faith No More. After Bungle effectively quit being an active unit in 2000, Spruance took his interest in myriad musical styles, and…
