Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

“And if you rise to the top again …don’t forget about all of us little people,” taken from the track Little People off of the album Asterisk 4, by QN5. This line pretty much describes my first impressions of this album, without a doubt achieving notoriety and rising to the top- ...

This Icelandic trio has produced their first mainstream effort here, predominantly hip hop based, it is industrial techno, blending into mainstream rap rock. With it comes the invariable comparisons to bands such as Rage Against the Machine, Beastie Boys, complete with dual vocalists to give it that nu metal edge. ...

This disc purports to be a concert recording of the JPMorgan Chase Latino Cultural Festival. A note, here: banks like to sponsor minority festivals of this type in exchange for naming rights in the hope that the next time there’s a riot their local branch won’t be the first thing ...

In the year 2000, "Queensryche" put out a Greatest Hits collection that was curiously timed. A few years earlier, it would have sold well, but by then the band had stopped being a mainstream commercial force.Indeed, the "Greatest Hits" package was the last thing they released under a 'major' ...

I have come to the conclusion that there is something seriously wrong with you if you have anything to do with Ipecac Records. That would include buying a disc with the Ipecac Records imprint, going to see a band that has ever recorded or currently records for Ipecac, listening to ...

Hailed as the "Next big thing" by...  themselves, basically, and such an immense self-imposed pressure is quickly inhaled by the sawed-off Seventies' styled foursome and forcefully exhaled in the form of heavyhitting Hard Rock weighted with dense riffs and Rock star excess.  If this is the natural evolution of Stoner ...