• The Dillinger Escape Plan – One Of Us Is The Killer

    May 23, 2013 - By 

    From opening track and mission statement ‘Prancer’ – resplendent with what are now Dillinger Escape Plan’s signature complex, syncopated guitar riffs, utterly frantic drumming and vocal intensity -their fifth full length album ‘One Of Us Is The Killer‘ rages to life with the chaotic measure of a broken photocopier. The second album to be released on their Party Smasher Inc label, One Of Us… is perhaps not quite the Dillinger of their seminal and still stunning breakthrough album Calculating Infinity – but is very much the Dillinger of today and tomorrow. Often referred to as ‘mathcore’, their music has been,…

  • Robyn G Shiels – Underneath The Night of Stars EP

    May 21, 2013 - By 

    Almost locally renown for “taking his time” between releases, Belfast-based singer-songwriter Robyn G Shiels is equally – ever increasingly – justified in biding his time as a consummate, altogether important artist. As the very best wine cannot possibly stem from a rushed harvest, similarly Shiels possesses an instinctive knack for seeing the brilliant fruits of his labour (experience, regret and alleviation) arrive in their destined condition at the most appropriate time. Little over a quarter of an hour in length, his new EP, Underneath The Night of Stars, is Shiels’ present-day distillation of this fact. Emerging quietly via a slowly…

  • The Dudley Corporation – Everyone Does Everything Wrong

    May 22, 2013 - By 

    It’s been five long years since the Dudleys caressed our lugholes with the slow-burning menace of Year Of The Husband. As supercharged opener ‘DLQ’ cranks this fourth LP into life, it’s apparent that much has changed in the Dubliners’ camp. Gone are the tension-building epics of old, replaced with thirteen sub-three minute nuggets of alt-rock gold. That’s not to say the trio have gone down the commercial route – anything but: the guitar sound is scathing, the vocals sneer and howl misanthropically and the rhythm section pummel and clatter more intensely than ever. Highlights of this newly-streamlined, energetic approach include…

  • Styles P – Float

    May 21, 2013 - By 

    The nineties resurgence sweeping New York hip-hop has primarily been forged by artists born right in the middle of the decade, but with boom-bap beats fashionable again it was only a matter of time before some older statesmen made a fresh run for relevance. Yonkers rapper Styles P has seemingly been around forever as both a solo artist and member of The LOX. But while Styles goes back far enough to have shared a label with Biggie, he’s always been playing catch up in a career full of missed opportunities and false starts. The LOX never really got going on…

  • Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Mosquito

    May 20, 2013 - By 

    Ten years on from their garlanded debut, and four years since their last album, much has changed for Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Singer Karen O has moved to LA from her native New York, and then come back. Guitarist Nick Zinner has taken time off to indulge his passion for photography. Drummer Brian Chase has, through the simple mechanism of growing both his hair and beard, transmogrified into Warren Ellis of the Bad Seeds. The question is, in the face of these various transitions, what has changed musically for everyone’s favourite NYC boho art-rockers? The answer – and apologies if this…

  • Frank Turner – Tape Deck Heart

    May 14, 2013 - By 

    It’s been ten years since Frank Turner first howled his lungs out on Million Dead’s debut. One band dissolution, a genre hop, multiple releases and an Olympic ceremony later the Winchester lad is still wailing, albeit with a greater sense of melody. Tape Deck Heart is Turner’s fifth solo album in seven years and it is around this point in an artist’s career that the cracks invariably begin to show – this album is no different. There is an increased feeling of lethargy with some of the music on display. A release schedule like Turner’s puts a strain on any artist’s musical ability and…

  • Altar of Plagues – Teethed Glory and Injury

    May 13, 2013 - By 

    After the breakthrough success of 2011’s Mammal, a release which bore witness to the peak of the band’s haunting collision of shoegaze and blackened malignance, Cork’s Altar of Plagues, fronted by WIFE man James Kelly, were guaranteed to be subject to scrutiny regardless of their next sonic step. Thankfully, they seem to have exhibited typical disregard for expectations and come out even stronger, and Teethed Glory and Injury as a result is their strongest, starkest statement yet. It is, at once, a widening of their trademark soundscape and a narrowing of focus – shredding, droning electronics and interference bid a…

  • Savages – Silence Yourself

    May 9, 2013 - By 

    Someone once said, “hype is a dangerous thing” (which it can be, depending upon who or what is being hyped and, perhaps more importantly, who or what is creating the hype). Just under a year since the release of their debut single ‘Flying To Berlin’, London all-female quartet Savages have been moth-to-bright-light attractive to a very contemporary type of hype – all thanks, that is, to the b-side from the debut single in question. A chromatically descending, shrieking slab of claustrophobic antipathy, ‘Husbands’ felt like a fully-formed masterstroke; a lost post-punk gem propelled by an energy and urgency that came…

  • Peals – Walking Field

    May 3, 2013 - By 

    Any time Baltimore crops up in conversation these days, thoughts are likely to turn to The Wire, but the gritty cop saga is far from its only artistic attraction. It’s not the biggest of American cities, but for many years Baltimore has harboured an indie rock underground whose tentacles have spread far and wide. First to make their mark were experimental pop troupe Animal Collective. Then Dan Deacon’s intense and playful compositions began to gain traction elsewhere. Beach House and Future Islands were next to transcend the city’s febrile scene, followed by indie-rock bands Wye Oak and Lower Dens and…

  • Desert Hearts – Enturbulation = No Challenge

    May 3, 2013 - By 

    “The opposite of harmonious, cooperative, respectful, calm, serene, disciplined”. A process of “agitating or disturbing”. As anyone who’s ever seen them can confirm, such words could serve as a neat description of Desert Hearts. They are, in fact, taken from the the Wiktionary definition of ‘Enturbulation’, a word coined by L. Ron Hubbard, used primarily by Scientologists and which, now, finds itself gracing the title of the new Desert Hearts album. One of the fundamental practices of Scientology is ‘auditing’, a procedure through which the individual revisits the traumas of the past as a means of elevating them to a…