Who the hell let this little dandy have a mic, I wanna know now! Rhyming “brunch” with “cunts” and “months”, attempting a sweet melodic style with laid-back violin strings and sweet melodies while in fact singing about petty middle class worries such as angry girlfriend fathers and Barnes & Nobles creditcards and Jessica Simpson - ah who cares - people are starving, people are being shot and killed and bombed every which way, and in terrible ways!
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Cat Stevens’ “Teaser and the Firecat” is one of those jewels of a record that has foolishly escaped my attention despite my utter love and adoration for the man and his music. I suppose I’ve never approached his work with the appropriate degree of systematic effort to dig through his entire catalogue, being content to listen to the few classics he’s most known for (”Peace Train”, “Where Do the Children Play?”, “Moonshadow” etc).
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“Planet Punk” is the sixth Die Arzte album and came out in 1995. This album shows that German punk is highly underrated compared to punk from countries like England and the United States. The album kicks off with the speedy and catchy three chord song Super Drei. (more…)

Jason Newstead was always the bassist who did what the other told him to do during the 14 years which he spent in Metallica. One year after he left the band, Echobrain�s first album came out (self titled album). Newstead gathered two people around him in this project, Dylan Donkin (guitar and vocals) and Brian Gagrafena (drums).
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Poor distribution by Hades Almighty’s Psycho Bitch Records representation has prompted a re-release of their 2001 album “The Pulse of Decay”. And understandably so - the at times clinical, at other times almost melodic brand of extreme black and thrash metal explored on the Norwegian group’s fourth album is worthy of wider recognition. There aren’t many metal records being released these days which really get my blood pumping, but this is certainly one of them, despite the fact that Hades Almighty aren’t ones to favour gruellingly speedy riffs or superfast blast beats. For the most part, they play somewhere near mid-tempo, taking their time to carefully build up an industrially cold atmosphere, and with a good set of headphones the high quality of production really complements this mood.

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On the “Felangus Box/Coelacanth” double-album, obscure Indiana-based Airtight Garage (presumably named after popular/bizarre French comic artist Moebius’ series with same title) tune up their brand of jangling, folk-punk/lo-fi indie rock which they’ve been busy polishing for the better part of the last 11 years. They prove themselves to be something of an undiscovered gem on their 4th full-length, consigned to self-promotion on places like mylocalbands.com and iuma.com where garage groups are a dime a dozen, an unfortunate thing because these boys and girls really do deserve better. I suspect the problem is no more mysterious than the fact that records with home-made artwork and a DIY-approach to music are systematically ignored at the big magazines.

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While Norway is infamous on just about every continent for spawning bucketloads of evil black metal acts such as Mayhem, Darkthrone, Ulver and Dimmu Borgir, the Stavanger-area has until yet not seen much action in the way of home-grown metal groups making it onto the wider international arena. It may be a little optimistic to say that Deathfare will change all that, but the group certainly show potential in reaching wider acclaim beyond the local gig circuit.

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“The Seven Dreams of Leviathan” is a remarkably pleasant listening experience, considering the breadth of musical ground covered by Kevin Hume and his Black Spartacus project. From sea shanties to lo-fi electronic experimentation to television theme songs, Hume flits easily from style to style with all the grace of a disciplined indie artist.

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