Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Rhino Records had the last word on 70’s compilations in 1998 when they unloaded their shag rug adorned classic multi-disc Have A Nice Decade on the box set market.   Not to be outdone (even by themselves!), the brainy record company has now given the same treatment to the decade of ...

Some record labels have identities. You don't pick up something on Real World, for example, and expect it to be kill-your-parents death metal, or purchase something on Death Row for that impressionable six-year old niece thinking that it's gonna be in the vein of Jim Brickman. So, too, with Epitaph. ...

Women are a mystery to most men. I've been kicking around now for a half-century and I understand a little more than a did ten years ago. One of the things I understand is that sometimes it's better just to say to hell with it and not bother.I accordingly have ...

The last thing the members of Boxcar Racer would probably want to be compared to is Blink 182. However, since all music for “Boxcar Racer” was written by Thomas Delonge and Travis Barker, the similarities to Blink could not be ignored.Often referred to by the media as a ‘side project,’ ...

Amy Grant's career trajectory over the past 20 years has been extremely interesting. She originally became something of a household name as a best-selling contemporary Christian artist, even crossing over into the marketplace, if not the radio, to what is erroneously called a "mainstream" audience. She took the plunge into ...

You just never know. Ash, virtually unknown on this side of the pond, was about ready to get written off in 1999, with the release of NU-CLEAR SOUNDS, leaving the band members washed-up at age 22. Last year, however, they came roaring, and I do mean roaring, back with FREE ...

With their second full length album release, Arizona based brothers Bret and Bart Helm enter the arena with a continuing theme of Gothic flavored music and heavy duty lyrics described as " . . . snapshots of characters confronting the images and experiences that fuel their passage from child to ...

Cleveland, Ohio is known for breaking new ground in music, and Biastfear is a perfect example of this with their nu metal flavor. With the release of their second album, "All Angels Scream", Biastfear may create yet another new Cleveland sound. Self described as “A combination of heaviness and harmonies, ...

The last thing the members of Boxcar Racer would probably want to be compared to is Blink 182. However, since all music for “Boxcar Racer” was written by Thomas Delonge and Travis Barker, the similarities to Blink could not be ignored.Often referred to by the media as a ‘side project,’ ...

Took me about ten minutes, maybe another track or two to convince myself that sticking to the press release and calling them a cross between Danzig and Manowar is just too preposterous… can you imagine?  But the more you listen… They’re a precursory Punk and classic era Metal hybrid, the ...

It is a summer of much needed relaxation and time spent reflecting while sipping lemonade on a porch during a warm, summer evening.  It is soothing for the soul to be in the company of crickets, children playing softball in the streets with the sun slowly setting for a few ...

Billed as the “Perfect Punk Rock soundtrack for skating the Concrete Waves…” and damned if I’ll doubt that.  In fact if I knew of music like this when I first fancied myself a “wave riding” aficionado, I’d probably damn well still be riding… but I was fortunate enough to inherit ...

These days whenever there’s a rumbling in the underground world of one Glenn Danzig there are merited any number of reactions: suspense, surprise, cynicism…  And while Glenn’s successfully righted his approach down the left hand path, having stumbled and fallen into unforeseen pits of misdirection—let’s face it, we can accept ...

Now this is what I like.  They don’t waste a moment, cutting in right away with the vocals for the delightfully smooth “Burgundy,” before throwing down a little three chord action for “The Corporate Enthusiast” and its grind/groove ambition that’s comparable to a Joey/Dee Dee tradeoff, either of which is ...

With mainstream rock furiously kicking out nu metal bands, Deadsy certainly has a unique flavor all their own. While their music bears a strong resemblance to Orgy, Deadsy has certainly taken it to a different level.  Produced by Jay Baumgardner and Josh Abraham (Orgy), their music is a colorful landscape ...

Djate is originally from the West Indies; he relocated to the U.S. And now is based out of Boulder, Colorado, of all places. His debut CD, CHILDREN OF INNOCENCE, was a regional hit; his follow-up, a pleasant enough 5 song EP titled WANNA BE LOVE, presents more of the same ...

I had a sinking feeling when I started looking through the CD booklet of RISE AND  SHINE that this bad boy was going to be a turkey. Maybe it was going over the pages and pages of Ed Hale's liner notes and came across the line "I was looking for ...

It had to happen. Backstreet Boys and N'Sync are selling gadzillions of records, so there had to be a New Country version to bring all the kids on the farm back home, something for those adolescent girls to moon over until they get old enough to try to get backstage ...

Finnish Goth-Rockers, Entwine, do what comes naturally on their follow up to the impressive “Gone” release of a year ago… wither away and die in a sea of sadness.  Not exactly, though considering their origins, not the unlikeliest of scenarios, but in fact Entwine, ambitious and six strong, sets forth ...

Think of the wistful last year of college; it’s tinged with hope for the future, the sadness of missed opportunities and feelings of the uncertainty of the unknown ahead.  Now compile all these emotions onto a CD.  College crybaby music?  Perhaps.  And the fact that the album is collection of ...

It’s always exciting to see a young local band mature into a group you’re proud to call your hometown’s very own. Inkbox, the follow-up to Jepetto’s 12:33 debut album, provides that exact sense of excitement for me. As a Maryland resident, I have witnessed the Annapolis-based group’s continuous positive progression ...

...so I'm multitasking, talking on the phone, answering e-mail, and listening to VOID, a new CD by a band named Lightyear, when I open an e-mail from a friend of mine who is in her mid-30s and really into hard rock, and she's bemoaning the fact that she just bought ...

Drummer Jake Fowler started MAD AT GRAVITY almost exactly one year ago with bass player Ben Froehlich and guitarist/keyboard player Anthony "Bosco" Boscarini. Guitarist James Lee Barlow left "Pigface" to join next and was soon followed by vocalist/lyricist J. Lynn Johnston. With the lineup complete, the band entered the studio ...

It comes blasting out of the speakers, a few electronic bleeps and then BAM! You sit back for 46 minutes and change, letting the music wash over you, 12 hook-laden tracks worth of blue-eyed soul, with nary a wasted note, and frontman Adam Levine's vocals sounding like a combination of ...

While the soundtrack to O BROTHER WHERE OUT THOU continues to deservedly sell millions and millions of copies to a public which hungers and thirsts for authentic music that hasn't been run through ProTools and PitchBender, it is forgotten and/or not known that Rounder Records has been quietly and steadily ...