Music

God Forbid musters some of the most anthemic riffs and choruses in metalcore, injecting its music with megadoses of classic thrash without ever succumbing to necrophiliac retro impulses. The act’s most recent album, IV: Constitution of Treason, is nearly operatic at times. One of the best metal discs of 2005,…

While Blur was busy parading around the globe to great acclaim in the ’90s, showing off the Brit-pop crown and racking up tabloid headlines, the Charlatans UK were quietly amassing a stable of number-one hits and headlining gigs. Fast-forward to 2006, and it’s more of the same. Although the elder…

At youngliars.blogspot.com, the most recent post reads, “Earth to People: Love is the ultimate truth at the heart of existence. Treat each other with care. To be cynical is no longer useful and wildly irresponsible. Please, be here now.” This is the professed Internet axiom of blogger DAS, who, presumably,…

Leon Russell is a living link to several different musical eras. As a teenager, he gigged with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis in his fireballing prime before moving to Los Angeles and becoming a studio regular on Phil Spector productions such as Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain…

So I say to my editor, “How about this Pretty Thigh band?” He turns, looks down at me (because I’m shorter) and, blunt like a cigar, the dude replies, “I’m hip,” and “I like them.” And it’s true. He is hip. But even more, Pretty Thigh is a band to…

New-school drum-and-bass dons Nicolas Ruoff and Florian Harres, known collectively as Phace, are taking over the scene. Close friends since their school days in southwest Germany, the two cut their teeth on the massive sounds of U.K. D&B, and it wasn’t long before their passion for the style led them…

Basically,” says bassist Curtis Durham, “we’re just four guys who were sick of all the crap from our other bands and got together.” Durham’s joking, but from the sound of it, the members of this local pop-rock outfit complement each other, and together they communicate better than any other group…

Tool sucks live — if you’re a casual concert-goer expecting all the trappings of a classic rock show that is — because a Tool performance has no pyro, no special effects, no stunning light show or outrageous antics. Last Wednesday night, I was one of more than 2,000 lucky bastards…

The formula is simple: Add Sabbath to Zeppelin and multiply by Hendrix. The result — as every snooty writer from Vice to NME to Rolling Stone has concluded — is Wolfmother, an Australian band three decades too late. But really, the math doesn’t add up. Wolfmother is much too cheery…

Melody Thorton’s brain moves a mile a minute — but this particular Pussycat Doll doesn’t always seem to know where it’s going. Consider this verbal ejaculation: “But I think…BLUBLUBLUBLUBLU BLUH! Excuse me! I’m sorry. Hahaha! I’m losing my train of thought because I’m, like, looking at the mirror at something…

Snow Patrol’s third album, Final Straw, helped the U.K. band explode abroad in 2004, and the members are hoping that their latest, Eyes Open, will firmly establish them here in the States. Whether they acknowledge the comparisons or not, however, they’ve been dogged by the success of Coldplay ever since…

Mike Patton should have worn out his welcome by now. After all, the guy’s got more side projects than he’s got sides. Yet the Good General’s music is usually interesting enough to justify its existence, and Peeping Tom’s debut is no exception. Despite the disc’s artsy concept (Patton and his…

To spectators of the Rust Belt garage-rock revival, the Raconteurs must seem like a dream come true. For Detroit darling Jack White, the band is the perfect chance for him to ditch his lubberly sidekick, Meg; for his Motor City counterpart, Brendan Benson, it’s a way to grab some sack;…

It’s a shame that Pearl Jam is a great album. Not because there’s anything wrong with Pearl Jam putting together a pop-rock album with fire and vigor; the first three songs, particularly the radio-perfect “World Wide Suicide,” showcase a screaming, off-the-walls Pearl Jam that sounds straight out of the mid-’90s…

Kill Rock Stars is owned by a man named Slim Moon who has better taste in music than you do. His ears are irrefutably sharp: The KRS roster is a dense handbook on indie-underground innovators and breakthrough wonders ranging from Sleater-Kinney and Elliott Smith to the Gossip and Xiu Xiu…

Maybe for his next trick, illusionist David Blaine will arrange to have himself sewn up in the rotting carcass of an elephant. He could eat Funyuns, watch TV and beat off in there — then emerge triumphantly at the next Republican National Convention, weeping messiah-like as red, white and blue…

Guitarist Mark Turner’s Homebrew is less a band than a platform upon which a swarm of Denver’s best-known (and best) blues and R&B players can cut loose. And despite the disc’s title, smoke and mirrors aren’t required. The sounds on display here aren’t of the gutbucket variety. Instead, the disc…

Dropping Daylight, Brace Yourself (Octone). On a blurb affixed to the cover of Brace Yourself, members of Hawthorne Heights liken Dropping Daylight to a “punk-rock Ben Folds Five” — a terrifying description if ever there was one. In truth, the band doesn’t venture far from the pop-emo template, but Sebastian…

The jokes about tentacles and ink could write themselves, so we won’t bother. What we will do, however, is note how gleefully the members of Austin’s Octopus Project plow through their glitched-out post-rock instrumentals. Armed with an arsenal of toys, keyboards, drum machines and samplers, spouses Josh and Yvonne Lambert,…

Max Cavalera is an icon in the world of metal. As frontman for Brazilian legend Sepultura, he helped elevate thrash and death metal to new heights. Following his departure from that band, he founded Soulfly in 1998 and began anew, fearlessly incorporating programmed drums, keys and acoustic instrumentation into his…

The Rocket Summer is Texas native Bryce Avary, who on each of his albums has played every instrument and sung almost every vocal with such frenzied energy that he makes power pop actually seem dangerous. Imagine Ben Lee singing Christian rock while doped up on so much speed his head…