Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Title sums it up nicely — “American Steel,” or this discontented, pure bred, fast and easy Rock n’ Roll animal roaming wherever the fuck it wants.  Driven by three chords, a taste for blood, and kick in the balls, their sixth record probably sounds much like their first—face it, there’s ...

There are two ways to perceive a band like Blitzkrieg.  The first is that since they were among the NWOBHM pioneers that broke the scene back in 1980 and helped forge the sounds of the true Metal revolution that’s continued to be felt and employed by countless bands worldwide, they’re ...

See what happens when you indulge the kid?  They end up producing immoral, indefinable, indefensible sour-faced records with ten tracks of total moral discontent, covering up with shit, flies, fiend-movie clips, and foul language that foams in the face of Sunday school decency.  And even better, they’re from the heartland, ...

These guys have been garnering high praise from fans and critics the world over for being this innovative underground phenomenon bore of a DIY ethic and ol’ schooler mentality.  Playing with reckless abandon, CKY’s “Volume 1” turned a lot of heads, nearly twisting them off with their circuitous jaunts in ...

The cool thing about a band like this is they could suck worse than any far fetched, flat out, fucked up breed of bluegrass bourbon soaked serial shitheads, but they’ll be fun to write about.  Now I’m not out to start an argument as to how bad they suck or ...

If Monty Python existed today, and considering their over the edge degree of distasteful antics that set the comedy world on its collective ass, this might be the aural equivalent of their artful form of superior quality juvenility.  Here’s this thing called Devilcake, where if the title’s any indication… Nah, ...

If you’re not familiar with GBH, don’t feel bad; at least you’ve still got your health.  And if you are, hear them again for the first time… and the second, and so on.  No surprises, sucks ups, or signs of sell out, some twenty years after their very first “City ...

And here’s one straight out of the tales of the unexpected… Four legendary Metal veterans, six songs, two “projects” and seven years ago… IR8 vs. Sexoturica—no it’s not the latest wave in futuristic Japanimation desecration; instead, it’s hailed as “old school” Metal music of a roots-driven kind.   IR8 features the ...

The album title’s not so difficult to grasp for its take on the pre-big screen Claire Danes weekly adolescent drama series, “My So Called Life.”  Any relation here?  Not really unless the taste for conjuring gruesome, tongue-in-cheek, parodies among titles and lyrics are in their make up… which apparently they ...

Every so often there’ll be that rare find that sneaks up and bites you on the ass.  And here’s this band, Rancid Vat, been around twenty years… Twenty years!  Obviously living large in the underground, these guys.  And what a long strange trip it’s been… I’ll bet.   Originally an Oregonian ...

If you’re into Rock and you haven’t heard about The West Memphis Three… then crawl out from under the rock and wake up—The West Memphis Three could well have been you, me, our kids… as it turns, they’re somebody else’s kids; and they’re grown ups now.  Realistically, they went from ...

Who cares about the music, the video’s a trip!  The whole record’s molded around this ingenious contest for fans to vote for band member dates in advance of the album release and then capturing all the fun and excitement (unless maybe you’re the singer, sorry bud) on video and capitalizing ...

Ah, a nice look back through the land of enchantment when modern day folklore was still in its infancy; when emerald forests and misty skies colored the canvas of a child’s imagination; where heroes and villains and kings and knights and dragons littered the landscape of a countryside still at ...