The annual springtime ritual has arrived. Time to listen to :Wumpscut:’s latest work, Siamese, and examine its strengths and weaknesses in comparison with at least 12 other full-length albums. This year’s task is made all the more difficult because Siamese arrives on the heels of last year’s Fuckit and Bunkertor 7 Resample, two highpoints of Rudy Ratzinger’s long music career. So…
15 years the release of the perplexing punk rock cover album Spaghetti Incident, Guns N’ Roses have returned with the long-overdue Chinese Democracy. Or rather, Axl Rose has returned with an album featuring no original members, except for Dizzy Reed who joined in 1990, five years after the band’s inception. And just as the original members have all gone their various ways…
Déjà vu. As I trek to Best Buy this Sunday morning to pick up Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy, I can’t shake the feeling I’ve been down this path before. I imagine that music reviewers the world over are scratching their heads now that the album is finally released. How do you go about reviewing…
It would be an understatement of biblical proportions to write that November 4, 2008 went badly for the Republicans. The dust is still settling, but it is clear the Democrats picked up at least 6 Senate seats and 19 House seats. Obama won the Presidency handily, with a comfortable margin in the Electoral College and…
A review of Obama’s first memoir, Dreams from My Father It is rare indeed for the general public to be able to glimpse inside the soul of a politician. What makes him tick? we wonder, when we know that we will never get a clear answer. Politicians by nature lock away their skeletons and throw…
It is rare that a press release actually contains a useful band description. In this case, Earth Loop Recall themselves write: “Think The Holy Bible by Manic Street Preachers. Add The Process by Skinny Puppy, AEnima by Tool, Mezzanine by Massive Attack, Never Mind the Bullocks by the Sex Pistols, and In Utero by Nirvana.…
On their sophomore album, Prelude to Annihilation, Red Reflection comes across as the neo-classical progeny of Skinny Puppy side-project Doubting Thomas. Somber orchestrations are layered over tribal rhythms and the stray hip-hop beat; elegant piano passages are bruised by intermittent patches of electronic static. A spoken word intro, reminiscent of Boyd Rice, prepares the listener…
I’m not really sure what to make of this collaborate release, Last Train to Cocksville (2003). Not being familiar with Cock E.S.P. or Panicsville, I was initially expecting derivative Whitehouse-style misogynanthropy, to coin a new word. After all, with song titles like “Good Clean Cock” and “I Can’t Get Her Off My Cock,” one could…
If you’ve been sleeping on the whole terror EBM phenomenon, Interbreeding II: Industrial Mutation from Arkansas’s BLC Productions provides a neat little primer. Including unreleased material from mainstays Hocico, Dioxyde, and Tactical Sekt, this CD is hard enough to satisfy the underground, but with a danceable edge to keep any floor packed. BLC provides a…
Tipping used to be a way to show appreciation for a service performed well. Now the ubiquitous tip jar can be found throughout the fast-food industry, from coffee shops to Chinese takeout. Over time, the tipping expectation spread from a few well-defined industries — restaurant, pizza delivery and bartending — to include any number of…