Prong’s Tommy Victor recently remarked that metal bands can’t play in standard E tuning anymore because they’d “sound like the Eagles.” Not that Meshuggah ever had anything to worry about, but about midway through the band’s career, the guitarists switched from using already-low seven-string guitars to an eight-string approach in…
“Everyone else who gets the one-hit-wonder tag had real hits,” chuckles Nada Surf frontman Matthew Caws. Caws should know about real hits. His band scored one in 1996 with the song “Popular,” off the band’s debut album, appropriately titled High/Low. With its slow-creeping guitar line, loud/soft alterna-rock crunch, and increasingly…
“Honestly I’d rather fuckin’ be drawing a comic strip like Garfield and have it be syndicated,” laughs Mindless Self Indulgence frontman Little Jimmy Urine. “I’d just draw one joke every day and collect giant wads of cash.” For now, though, that dream will have to wait, because Mindless Self Indulgence’s…
Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan may have embraced new-agey spirituality and wine-collecting in his middle age, but one thing’s for damn certain: The guy’s still got a warped sense of humor. And he’s bound to hit Tool fans where it hurts on this, his first solo release. Keenan has been…
Pop-punk arguably wore out its welcome yesterday. But the lads in Good Charlotte have at least had the good sense and decency to spice up their sound on their last two albums, especially the latest, Good Morning Revival, released in March. New Times recently caught up with the band’s almost…
On Still Stuck in Your Throat, the band’s first album in six-too-many years, Fishbone once again presents us with its merry-go-round assortment of horn-driven ska, funk, punk, soul, metal, and reggae music all wrapped into the legendary band’s signature style. Although the energy jumps out of the speakers before the…
Billy Joel After more than four years off the road — which included a rather ill-fated renouncing of pop music for classical — Billy Joel returns to (what else?) woo us with his legendary catalogue of songs. Aw, why not? Joel’s work came ready-made for nostalgia 30 years ago. The…
Punk and metal bands don’t die like they used to. These days they just keep coming back. In the case of seminal SoCal surf/skate trio Agent Orange, they come back again and again and again — like punk-rock zombies. This time around, the band promises to play its 25-year-old songs…
As a director, Woody Allen has demonstrated infuriating narcissism and lobotomy-worthy judgment by continuing to cast himself in his own films. While the rest of his actors outdo themselves at their craft in order to fulfill his still-vital ideas, Allen insists on burdening his work with his overworn nonacting, essentially…
The criterion for this list was simple: Only the hardest, heaviest metal albums were considered. Bands who play a hybrid style of metal that is not thrash, speed, death, black metal, hardcore, grindcore, or some amalgamation thereof were not included. What follows is pure f’n metal. Bang your head off…
Miami’s favorite Cuban émigré, Latin jazz luminary, professor, and Dizzy Gillespie acolyte Arturo Sandoval will lay down his scorching Cubop trumpet lines on his own time at his own place. Billed as “The Trumpet’s Journey Through Cuban Rhythms,” this show appropriately features Afro-Cuban big band and bebop but also highlights…
Drawn to “creepy things” since childhood, Melora Creager wrote her first song, which was about Lizzie Borden chopping up her mom, at the age of five. The tune featured stabbing piano chords to capture the force of the 40 whacks Borden gave her mother with an ax. Creager describes her…
Though few luminaries from jazz’s golden era are still alive, and though performances from that small group become increasingly rare, the question remains: Why should you see one of them today? Well you could reason that you probably won’t get another chance because they’re getting old. But you have to…
In light of Los Amigos Invisibles’ obvious allegiance to shaking butts and getting audiences lathered up into a licentious Latin dance frenzy via adolescent-minded songs like “Disco Anal” and “Ponte en Quatro,” the thought of highbrow David Byrne taking interest in them seems comical. But as anyone who has seen…
Like some unseen beast that emerges only in shadows to claim its prey, indie rock stalks Miami with as much Omaha, Nebraska soil between its toes as sand. Four-piece Whatever Happened to the Dinosaurs and their compatriots in Blue Moon, both from Miami, do their absolute best to channel Bright…
Although Brittany Murphy’s attempt to raise temperatures with her sex-o-licious purring on Paul Oakenfold’s latest single, “Faster Kill Pussycat,” is bound to score with postadolescent Maxim readers, anyone who has ever set foot in a club knows it takes more than heavy breathing to heat up the dance floor. The…
It’s not easy for a band to induce reflective or even somber moods and entirely avoid languor, but that’s precisely what the Six Parts Seven does with its instrumental postrock. Like its previous work, the Kent, Ohio group’s latest album, 2004’s Everywhere and Right Here, maintains a gentle cadence from…
Though much has been said about Helmet’s founding member and principle songwriter Page Hamilton and his influence on nü-metal, his real impact has been way more far-reaching — remember, when Helmet first appeared, it didn’t fall neatly into metal or hardcore, and acts as distinctive as Primus, Tool, Failure, Barkmarket,…
