Hardcore Tours Galore in 2005
Like having your ears wrestled by big muscley men in tight shirts and foreign accents?? Do you?? Well check these out over the next few months...»
Articles
DiSvsMatt has written the following articles:
Mastodon at Sheffield Corporation, Tue 15 Feb
Following the melody-mangling maggot-corp of Slipknot and the big-bucks angst-rap of Linkin Park, Mastodon are the next truly huge metal behemoths creeping over the horizon, replete with equally shaggy barnets & facial hair, and backed by an album so monstrously inventive it’s a surprise half these songs don’t have their own patent!»
Weapons of Mass Belief - Black Line Ninja
Punk rock with hugely contagious hooks and a deathly socio-political sting, the hunt for Weapons of Mass Belief ends here.»
The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower - Love in The Fascist Brothel
Smacking you back down where The Blood Brothers and The Locust last left you this is music de-structured, dismantled and rebuilt with the crazed hands of a drunken art genius and the stuttered flair of a psychiatric ward jazz band.»
Malkovich - A Criminal Record
Considering I’d pinned my hopes on this being the hardcore album of last year this is very disappointing indeed!»
Various - Heartattack
Proving that punk rock needn’t drown itself in stagnant, one-dimensional carbon copies, but that progression, originality and - dare I say it - a tinsy bit of style is the name of the game, this 10th anniversary compilation from Burning Heart is one mighty fine release!»
Saves the Day - Ups & Downs
Consisting of largely unheard tracks from their entire career, this is a varied bag that is infinitely more enjoyable than anything Saves The Day have released this side of the millennium.»
The Start - Initiation
Initiation is an album hinging on a sultry punk rock charge, their sunburst pop sensibilities tinged by a prickly realism, vocalist Aimee Echo tackling themes of dysfunctional relationships, determination, and personal conviction.»
Neurosis at London Kentish Town Forum, Sat 18 Dec
With a set that traverses the entire spectrum of their sound the whole experience is a melange of beauty and devastation, an emotive battlefield in which Neurosis are your guiding light.»
NOFX - The Greatest Songs Ever Written (By Us)
We could see it coming a mile off. NOFX, a band way past their peak and still propelled by the success of their mid-nineties classics releasing a retrospective ‘Best Of’ album.»
Planes Mistaken For Stars - Up In Them Guts
With a sound that's ravaged by unnecessary vocal layering and miasmic reverb Planes are impressing no-one but their most hardcore of fans.»
Narcosis, Pig Destroyer, Halo (US), Total Fucking Destruction at Edward's No. 8, Birmingham, Tue 16 Nov
No other tour this year has generated more excitement and post-show discussion in the underground scene than this debut UK jaunt from Relapse’s model grind-core starlets and, more importantly, Leeds’ finest speed-metal mentalists Narcosis. Why? I'll tell you why...»
The Ramones - Ramones Raw DVD
Rather than go that self-praising route their new DVD, ‘Ramones Raw’ instead acts as more of a fly-on-the-wall type affair using footage culled mainly from Marky Ramone’s personal videos filmed during their last eight touring years. Which, for someone who caught up with the band fairly late on in their career, is an illuminating and insightful keyhole into life as a Ramone through the eyes of a Ramone.»
Leftover Crack - F*ck World Trade
Anarchist punk at its most extreme, this is the true sound of the society's downfall.»
Slightly Stoopid - Everything You Need
Yes, it is a ridiculously silly name but when their music's this smooth and soulful, who really cares?»
Cult of Luna - Salvation
Chances are that this will probably grow on me over time, but compared to the excitement the likes of Jesu, Pelican and even Jeniferever have given me, ‘Salvation’ is a huge disappointment.»
Mastodon - Leviathan
This is something that’s living and breathing, that’s calculating and unpredictable; a lumbering beast with fire in its eyes and vehemence in its stride. It’s a sound that burns with a strangely majestic malevolence; an animalistic charge that bolts out of the speakers with a tremor-like force, and flinching wildly against the kind of off-kilter syncopation that their Swedish forefathers mastered years ago. The future of metal? You’d better believe it.»
Matchbook Romance, Motion City Soundtrack - Split EP
Ah Jeez, yeah I hear you sighing about this: an acoustic split EP from Epitaph featuring two of their most prominent new Warped Tour-travelling EMO-types. Sounds bad doesn’t it? Sounds depressing. Sounds about as stomach-wrenchingly cringeworthy as music gets until you actually hear it. Because in actual fact this ain't that bad.»
Since By Man - A Love / Hate Relationship
Hurrah! Since By Man are back and this is every bit as vicious as their debut; a real hot pot of angst, sweat, noise and ankle-grinding danceability interspersed with some explorative Godspeed-esque passages. Marvellous.»
Joan of Arc - Joan of Arc, Dick Cheney, Mark Twain...
Marking another chapter in the befuddled make-believe world of Joan of Arc, this is a scintillating, ramshackle journey through the mind of ex-Cap’n Jazz member Tim Kinsella and the sound of a skewed take on reality as the multi-instrumentalist grapples with his feelings and warped sense of true meaning in a modern existence.»
Alexisonfire - Alexisonfire
'Painful'-sounding melodic belchs and really, really terrible screams equate horribly with yawnsome riffing and the kind of cringeworthy predictability that makes your skin crawl.»
Cathedral - The Serpent's Gold
While most DiS-readers’ familiarity with Coventry’s finest will be frontman and Rise Above honcho Lee Dorrian’s contribution to Dave Grohl’s Probot project Cathedral remain ingrained in the hearts of all doom / stoner-rock fans (Dave Grohl included) as one of the finest doom-laden acts of all time.»
Go Betty Go - Worst Enemy EP
Not to be confused with Hawaiian surf-ska sextet Go Jimmy Go, LA’s Go Betty Go are their all-girl Latino-punk equivalent, and what a glorious shin-kicking racket they make too!»
This Aint Vegas, Mavis, The Futureheads, Written From Negative - Twice The Town You'll Ever Be
Compiled by This Aint Vegas 6-stringer Richard Amundsen, 'Twice The Town...' is a lovingly assembled collection of tracks from the North East’s finest underground indie-rock treasures, and is precisely the kind of compilation that has me rueing the day I ever moved down to the smoky, non-cultural maze of concrete and suits that is London.»
Time In Malta - Alone With The Alone
An admirable effort here from San Francisco-based heavyweights Time In Malta, but as far as a place in the premier league of melodic hardcore goes these guys evidently have a lot more training to do.»
Morning 40 Federation - Morning 40 Federation
Despite valiantly attempting to embody all the sleaze, the grime and the troubled laisser-faire attitude bedecking the many cigar-puffing, wine-faced barflies slouched in their local Bourbon Street jazz bars New Orleans' Morning 40 Federation simply fail to match the energy of their live show on CD.»
Razor Crusade - Infinite Water
Infinite Water sees Razor Crusade traversing through an accessible hybrid of melodic hardcore, that is more than capable of bridging the gap between punk, metal, old-school and post-hardcore fans alike. Indeed if there’s any justice in this world it should see them go a very long way.»
Top of The Pops for Mortiis
Yep, it's been a while since a forest-dwelling Troll has shot to the top of the charts with a cheeky romantic lamentation but finally it looks like Norway's premier industrial darklord Mortiis is doing just that.»
Taking Back Sunday - Where You Want To Be
Like most things in life, time spent in the teen-rock market is far from plain-sailing. Despite the excellence of their debut, Taking Back Sunday appear to have little left to offer next to their poster-boy looks and perpetually high merch sales. Is this the beginning of the end for corporate emo? Let's hope so.»
Piebald - All Ears, All Eyes, All The Time
Anthemic indie-rocksters Piebald have made an influential hobby out of poignant angst-less emo for almost ten years now, slyly evading the mainstream through songs which always seemed to capture the rollercoaster feelings of growing up through poignantly lyricised choruses laced with enough character to woo the bespectacled, stripey jumpered fans of Dinosaur Jr and Superchunk.»