“Quasar” sounds extremely alive, intense and rocking, it’s surprisingly fresh and powerful, almost anthematic, have the nerve and rawness, positive energy of the 90’s and “Panopticon” follows pounding as well.
Although Billy Corgan argued that albums are a dead medium and experimented the “one-song-at-a-time” releasing recipe instead the classic format of 12–15 songs in one package with the previous tracks of the concept album “Teargarden by Kaleidyscope”, after releasing the first 10 songs as free downloads at the band’s official site, Corgan changed his mind and released the tracks compiled eight of them in two box sets.
Produced by Billy Corgan and Bjorn Thorsrud, “Oceania”, ninth studio album of the band is also part of the band’s ongoing 44-song concept album, “Teargarden by Kaleidyscope”, adding 13 new songs to the project. Corgan admitted that they switched back to the album format because – “I just saw we weren’t getting the penetration in to everybody that I would have hoped.”
Well, we’re living pretty strange times and nothing is what it seems, nothing is what it used to be and music became only secondary sub-product, accessory of the so-called “music” business which eat itself up and sell exclusively fakes packed and labeled originals.
In this conditions and state of fact, kind of difficult to predict which audience is targeted by The Smashing Pumpkins because “Oceania” is a pretty classy album for old fashioned listeners. Read more The Smashing Pumpkins – Oceania (2012)
Reviews
Neneh Cherry and The Thing – The Cherry Thing (2012)
Do you remember “7 Seconds”? It was a hit single back in 1996 and received a Grammy nomination, won the Best Song title at the MTV Europe Music Awards. The album was entitled “Man”, “7 Seconds” featuring Youssou N’Dour, the track “Woman” is Neneh Cherry take on James Brown’s 1966 track “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World”, “Trouble Man” a cover of a Marvin Gaye track, while another track, “Together Now”, featured Tricky.
In 2006, Cherry announced the formation of a new band, cirKus, releasing two albums “Laylow” in 2006, respectively “Medicine” in 2009.
Mats Gustafsson (saxophones), Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (double bass), and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums), knowned as The Thing, are one of the most incisive experimental/free Jazz bands of the contemporary Jazz scene.
This four artist together delivering the eight tracks of “The Cherry Thing”. Album will be released in June 2012. Read more Neneh Cherry and The Thing – The Cherry Thing (2012)
I See Stars – Digital Renegade (2012)
Merging the so-called Post-Hardcore with electronic layers and build-ups with influences from Trance and House seems to be the most fashionable recipe lately for a new generation of headbangers growing up on bands such as Linkin Park. I’m not a huge fan of this new trends, but definitively there are a few excellent bands. And I See Stars are definitively much better then 8 out of 10 of these bands.
“Digital Renegade” (stylized as [digital_renegade]) is the third studio album by the band formed in 2006, in Warren, Michigan. Their debut album entitled “3-D”, released in 2009 and featured a guest appearance from Bizzy Bone of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, has peaked at #176 on the Billboard 200. It was followed by “The End of the World Party” released in 2011.
“Digital Renegade” was released on March 13, 2012 and this time the boys take their music on a much aggressive, abrasive way, the grinding Metal rooted elements are overwhelming the electronic-melodic moments. Read more I See Stars – Digital Renegade (2012)
Reserve de Marche – The Last Twenty Years (2012)
7 tracks – 50 minutes, the debut album by this three-piece instrumental rock band from Moscow, Russia, is an excellent and colorful mixture of (Rock) genres and styles from classic, Progressive Rock to Post-Rock, Match Rock, Sludge and Shoegaze. Atmospheric, dark passages and heavy riffs, intense moments are combined and the merge of the different elements make the… difference.
If you’re looking for a groovy, still emotional, dark, but contorted and sometimes intense and heavy, modern, instrumental Rock album, “The Last Twenty Years” worth your attention. “Name your price” means you can downloaded even for free, or you can order the CD from Mals Records. Read more Reserve de Marche – The Last Twenty Years (2012)
The Offspring – Days Go By (2012)
Years go by… Actually four years since the release of “Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace” in 2008 and Dexter Holland and his band mates are back now with their ninth studio album due for release on June 26, 2012. 12 tracks, Punk Rock throughout, just like “Smash”, 1994 and selling 12 million copies worldwide was yesterday. But this is not “Americana”, “Days Go By” have a much darker vibe and approach, sounds more like “Ignition” (eventually “Conspiracy of One”), this is pretty heavy in a very rocking (Metal) sense.
Still, we’ve got lighter, funnier – sarcastic? – moments like “OC Guns” or the summer taste-like, possible hit single, teenage anthem “Cruising California (Bumpin’ In My Trunk)” which might be the favorite tracks for those who are looking exclusively for the follow up of “Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)” and “Why Don’t You Get a Job”. Life is easy! 😆 Read more The Offspring – Days Go By (2012)
Ihsahn – Eremita (2012)
Ihsahn – Vegard Sverre Tveitan, born in 1975, in the town of Notodden, Norway, began playing piano at seven and guitar at ten and began recording songs shortly thereafter. He began his career at age thirteen as a member of what would become fledgling black metal crew Emperor. As a band, Emperor would both define and refine metal, pushing the boundaries of what was considered possible within the most arcane of art forms and taking some of the most adventurous and extreme music of all time to a huge global audience. With albums like seminal “In The Nightside Eclipse” – recorded when Ihsahn was only seventeen, and “Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk”, Emperor obliterated all-comers and became one of the most revered metal bands in history. After the release of their final masterpiece, “Prometheus: The Discipline Of Fire & Demise” in 2001, Ihsahn announced that the band were to part ways to enable himself and his colleagues to pursue new creative avenues.
He also played in Peccatum with his wife Ihriel (real name Heidi S. Tveitan) until 2006 and has appeared in Thou Shalt Suffer, Zyklon-B and Hardingrock, and now devotes himself to his solo project, Ihsahn. “Eremita” – the latin for hermit – is the anticipated fourth solo album, which was released on June 18 by Candlelight Records.
Recorded and produced at Telemark’s Ivory Shoulder Studios, with additional tracking completed at Notodden’s Juke Joint Studio and Seattle’s Envisage Audio, Eremita was mixed by Jens Bogren (Opeth) at Fascination Street Studios in rebro, Sweden. Alongside Ihsahn, the album features performances from drummer Tobias rnes Andersen (Leprous), saxophonist Jrgen Munkeby (Shining-Norway), guitarist Jeff Loomis (ex-Nevermore), and vocalists Devin Townsend, Einar Solberg (Leprous) and Heidi S. Tveitan (Starofash). The album’s packaging has been created by award-winning Spanish designer Ritxi Ostariz. Read more Ihsahn – Eremita (2012)
Lands of Past – Neverending Story (2012)
Lands Of Past is chemistry like love. Or magnetism. Dark vibes, gloomy depths and sensitive, smooth, whisper-like melodies and intense guitar riffs are merged together to guide us through Heaven and Hell, a journey of lights and shadows, hopes and fears, love and desperation, hate and forgiveness. This is our endless journey and our neverending story. This is our life, and this is love. Sadness and struggle.
After the self produced demo entitled “Call” released in 2005 and the debut album released through Thundering Records in 2008, “Call Of The Depths”, Lands Of Past are back with 10 brand new, dark, melancholic and disturbing tracks on their second full-lenght “Neverending Story”. Read more Lands of Past – Neverending Story (2012)
Manowar – The Lord Of Steel (2012)
The Kings Of Metal are back with the Lord of Steel. The Manowarriors will definitively celebrate once again the loudest and the longest Heavy Metal concert player band in the world. Both performances were included in the Guinness Book of World Records. In 1984 the band delivering the loudest performance, a record which they have since broken on 2 occasions and they also set the record for the longest Heavy Metal concert after playing for 5 hours and 1 minute in Bulgaria in 2008.
Formed in 1980, Manowar maintain a strong cult following and they are probably one of the most loved Heavy Metal band in the world. Back in the 80’s when I had my share of headbanging on their killer album “Sign of the Hammer”, probably I didn’t believed that this band will last over two decades and in 2012 they will release their 12th studio album. Read more Manowar – The Lord Of Steel (2012)
Linkin Park – Living Things (2012)
Yo! I’m gonna be deadly honest: never was a Linkin Park fan, even further, I kind of consider them the (more or less) Rock version of New Kids On The Block, or any other prefabricated boy band. Now, Rick Florino of Artistdirect called it the band’s “best record and a landmark for rock as a whole”, which, we have to admit, set our expectations probably excessively high. And once again, it’s not the case. Don’t have to be a musicologist to figure it out, Linkin Park are not Faith No More, NIN, Ministry, Nirvana or name any other genre founder and envelope pusher, edge cutter band, but a smartly managed and marketed and generally pretty over-produced band. Don’t misunderstand me, the famous Rick Rubin and vocalist Mike Shinoda on their third collaboration of co-producing a Linkin Park album were done – again – an excellent job, but the sharp production and the bombastic sound can not cover the mediocrity and shapelessness beneath the surface. And once again, Linkin Park collected a million different sounds and musical approaches and blended them into their own spiced “thing”, but that still do not actually make it their own. Linkin Park might be the perfect prototype of a fully functional machine without its own soul which each time borrowing one. Imagine Mona Lisa (La Gioconda or La Joconde) without her mouth – and mysterious smile. Read more Linkin Park – Living Things (2012)
John Zorn (Moonchild Trio) – Templars-In Sacred Blood (2012)
In 2006 John Zorn formed the hardcore voice/bass/drums trio of Mike Patton, Trevor Dunn, and Joey Baron which became known as the Moonchild Trio. The very same year the trio performed and released two albums of Zorn’s compositions: “Moonchild: Songs Without Words” – an album inspired in part by Aleister Crowley, Antonin Artaud and Edgard Varèse and “Astronome”. A third album with the trio, but also featuring Zorn, Ikue Mori, Jamie Saft and chorus, “Six Litanies for Heliogabalus”, was released in 2007. Their fourth release “The Crucible” appeared in 2008, and “Ipsissimus” – one of the best albums of 2010 and my personal favorite albums of all time – was released in 2010.
Now Joey Baron – Drums, Trevor Dunn – Bass, John Medeski – Organ and Mike Patton – Voice are back with the 6th CD in the Moonchild legacy. All songs was written by Zorn and they spend over one year in the making. Disturbing and tumultuous, sometimes extremely intense or silently subtle, the 8 songs of “Templars-In Sacred Blood” will take the listeners into another mystical journey. Read more John Zorn (Moonchild Trio) – Templars-In Sacred Blood (2012)
