In the past few years there have been several bands popping up that have members who are actors. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with it but sometimes having an actor (who is more famous then the band itself) can greatly effect that band’s street cred. For example, The Honey Brothers debuts ‘Entourage’ front man Adrien Grenier as drummer and vocalist. At first thought I felt that Adrien was too pretty to be in a band and that it couldn’t be any good. Then after a few songs I was hooked. These guys are fun! Something that is definitely lacking in …read more

Back in 1994, G. Love and Special Sauce released its self-titled debut LP to very little critical fanfare. However, the album almost went gold on the merits of the song “Cold Beverage”, which wound up in heavy rotation on MTV. The band has since gone on to record six more albums together and is currently signed to Jack Johnson’s Brushfire Records. However, it is the belief of this blogger that the band’s first album represents its best creative effort and is largely overlooked as a seminal album of its time.
There is a fleeting rawness to this album; the kind of …read more

If there has been one constant in the musical path of Wilco it’s been constant change. Since the band’s formation in 1994, only singer Jeff Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt remain from the original line-up. The band has not changed players since 2006’s Sky Blue Sky, with guitarist Nels Cline, multi-instrumentalists Pat Sansone and Mikael Jorgensen, and drummer Glenn Kotche rounding out the current roster.

With that said, Wilco (The Album) does contain many of the same sonic qualities that fans have come to recognize as constants throughout the bands experimental trajectory. The album starts with peals of feedback sustain …read more

 
This year has been a great year for introduction of new, more underground musicians in the rock genre. I have two more in bands in addition to the few that I have already mentioned this year that I have been quite impressed with.
I love simplicity when it comes to rock. I like bands that focus on the music they love instead of how much tail they plan on getting when they “make it big”. Some bands may become huge in the mainstream, but in the long run they are forgettable. A lot of mainstream acts don’t have the …read more

Sometime last year I mentioned on Metal Martyr that Modern Rock Is Dead. To me it was. There was just a lack of bands that wanted to make good rock music. Sure there were train-loads of bands like Hinder, Saving Able and such that seem to be more in the lines of putting together songs and living the life of the rock star. That’s a big problem in every genre of music to include metal, but there are enough “Underground” acts to follow that you can filter out the wanna-be’s and poser fairly easily in metal. I’ve felt this …read more

There’s a good reason why The Answer was chosen to open for hard rock veterans, AC/DC. Why? Because they kick ass. They may not have a new or even a modern sound to them but they know how to rock.
The first time I heard the answer was on their Never Too Late EP. When I slipped it in and pressed play, my initial reaction was; “Great, another AC/DC clone band.”, but they were far from it. I had only heard a few seconds before making that statement to myself, but as I continued to listen it just had a …read more

When you write for a rock and metal blog you get offers for reviews from various places. Sometimes it’s a PR group and sometimes it’s a label. Some of the bands are big and some are small. The bigger names and labels you kind of have an idea of what you’re going to get. With smaller labels and indie bands you never really know what to expect. Sometimes it’s really good and sometimes it’s so bad that you wish you never heard it. Thankfully this time it’s one of those pleasantly surprising bands.

I’ve sworn off buying Guns N’ Roses Chinese Democracy and I’m kind of glad I did. A friend let me borrow a copy and I really don’t know what to day to make this sound like a great record. I’m not a Gn’R fanboy so I will never say that I love this album.
You know those jig-saw puzzles have so many pieces and every one of them looks the same? It’s kind of like that in a weird way. It sounds like the entire record was pieced together like a giant, strange puzzle. I wouldn’t call it Guns …read more

Converse 100th Anniversary The Doors Edition All Stars. So far I’ve showed you the Converse 100th Anniversary All Stars for Black Sabbath and The Grateful Dead. This one is long overdue, but I now bring you The Doors edition of the 100th Anniversary Chuck Taylors.
Although I’m not a huge Doors fan, these are by far my favorites of the bunch. This edition of the All Stars kind of has a Viet Nam war era jungle boot look to it. With an olive drab color and black sole, the colors contrast really well. The laces are a bit more heavy …read more

My Rock Dose Top 10 Rock Albums Of 2008 covers mainly established rock acts and not this new wave of modern rock as we know it. I’ll go through each none and tell you why I chose it. Take in to consideration that I only went through bands that I’ve heard this year and not every rock album that has come out. If you expect Nickelback or Hinder to be on this list then you came to the wrong place. So what does this list mean? Nothing really, it’s just MY favorite picks of 2008, so don’t cry if …read more