The Sword

Over the course of previous releases — a split album with Swedish doom-monger Witchcraft and two CDs on their own — these Austin-bred metal apologists have never ventured too far from well-worn paths. But so what? There’s actually a sort of poetry to The Sword’s metal homages — kinda like…

Various Artists

Finding out that Nigeria had thriving psych-rock and funk scenes in the Seventies is akin to discovering Yemen harbored a killer ice-hockey league in the Phil Esposito era. But several bands in the Lagos area were absorbing the Anglo-American funkadelic Zeitgeist and putting distinctive spins on freaky groove construction, largely…

Local Punk Rock Band Guajiro Release an Ode to Obama

Miami/Hialeah punk stalwarts Guajiro are never ones to shy away from a little controversy. The band’s affable frontman, Will Lopez, has been talking for months about recording a pro-Obama song because he feels like no other local acts are doing anything to get people stirred up for the presidential race…

Lazaro Casanova “Venganza” Remixes Now on iTunes

If you were part of the Revolver scene back in early part of the decade, you know Lazaro Casanova, who we picked as “Best Local Electronica Artist” in this year’s Best of Miami, very well. Then again, if you haven’t heard him spin in a while, you probably don’t know…

Last Night: Modest Mouse at the Fillmore Miami Beach

Logan Fazio Modest Mouse with The Dirty Dozen Brass Band Friday, June 23, 2008 The Fillmore, Miami Beach Better Than: The mental meltdown scribbling in your seventh-grade diary. Modest Mouse and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band kicked off their North American tour together last night to a packed, enthusiastic audience…

Spanish Soprano Montserrat Performing in Miami Beach Wednesday

Montserrat She doesn’t sound very concerned with how many bodies will – or won’t be – occupying seats inside the Byron Carlyle in Miami Beach on Wednesday night. “That’s out of my control,” says Spanish soprano singer Montserrat. “As long as the people there accept my work and I’m able…

Major League Drops a New Video

If you haven’t heard of the Fort Lauderdale based hip-hop group, Major League, they’ve been making a strong name for themselves as one of the hardest working groups in South Florida for close to a year now. They gig all over town, throw a weekly every Friday at the White…

Lil Wayne Confirms Formation of “Supergroup” with T-Pain

VH1 reported yesterday that Lil Wayne finally confirmed the rumors floating around that he’s forming a “supergroup” with T-Pain. In typical Weezy, uh, succinct fashion, he confirmed it thusly: “Yeah.” (T-Pain, however, was a little more talkative on the matter.) Still, that’s just two people; technically it would take at…

Reviewing the Reviewers

It’s been a tough couple of years for the Futureheads. Following the mixed reception to 2006’s ambitious News and Tributes, the British postpunk quartet was dropped by its label and briefly considered packing it in. Instead, they soldiered forward, forming their own label and releasing their third album, This Is…

Rancid

Like Green Day, Rancid was once reviled as a band of poseurs by much of the punk-rock intelligentsia but is now seen as a standard-bearer for the genre — and sheer persistence is a big factor. Early discs such as 1995’s And Out Come the Wolves were so derivative of…

O Rappa

One could say Jamaican singer Papa Winnie had a serendipitous hand in the creation of O Rappa, the Rio de Janeiro-based fusion reggae/funk-rock band that performs this weekend in Pompano Beach. In 1993, Winnie arrived in Brazil for an extended tour with no backing musicians. A pick-up band was quickly…

Modest Mouse

The most bizarre voice in rock these days belongs to Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock. His Tom Waits-esque yowl guides an array of drunken characters through the churning guitar swirl that has been the band’s bread and butter since its earliest recordings with Calvin Johnson. Now proud members of the…

Head Spins: Drop.D

Less knowledgeable folks might be tempted to consider Drop.D nothing but another DJ in a long line of hip-hop-spinning wide boys who’ve come to set up shop in South Beach. But they would be wrong: The kid called Drop.D (a.k.a. ill skill) outclasses his half-ass predecessors, and does so at…

Trashy Treasure

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. And nowhere is this more evident than in a Southern small-town thrift store, where beer helmets and broken furniture end up as impromptu amusement park rides on lawns and libidinous nights. It’s the place in a college town where students and townie kids…

Paul van Dyk

The course for superstar trance DJ Paul van Dyk is all-ahead full. In Between, his fifth album of original songs, remains the record he’s been giving the most push since its release in August last year. And deservedly so, what with the high-profile collaborators who appear on the album, such…

Your Company Name Here

With corporate-sponsored arenas, America’s sports teams were among the first to pimp out naming rights for a buck. And lately our nation’ rock stars have been lining up for their own slice of the pie. It seems these days that nearly every beverage, clothing line, and car maker sponsors its…