A couple local notes, first, from here in lovely metropolitan Ottawa: the New Capital Music Hall is soon to open its doors, replacing the former Capital Music Hall downtown that was razed to make room for condos(I was recently by the old location and it was decidedly odd to see no building where one has always been) - and in the wake of indie shop Record Runner's recent demise, local underground lifers Dave Ward and Shawn Scallen are opening End Hits very soon at 407 Dalhousie St. Yes, it's a nod to Fugazi. Yes, it'll cater very much to the crowd that the Runner used to. Good luck, fellas!
Metallica are still at it: the band has picked Rick Rubin to produce their next album. Rubin, of course, has worked with everyone from Beastie Boys(in their prime) to Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond in recent years. [aversion]
Fall Out Boy are pretty dang busy of late; From Under Cork Tree is full-on assaulting the charts with pop-punky goodness, and now Island will release From Under Cork Tree: Black Clouds and Underdogs Tour Edition, which is the album and five new songs as well as new artwork. FOB will do the Saturday Night Live thing March 4th with host Natalie Portman before going out on the their little headlining tour with the likes of Hawthorne Heights(boring), All-American Rejects(no opinion) and From First to Last(Limp Bizkit's Wes Borland played bass for them a while ago!). [chartattack]
Essential Listening for today, February 21st, is a double-bill of California bands; I'd never heard either Istra or On Being Human until a few minutes ago, but these kids can belt it out. Nothing original, really, but who's reinventing the wheel here? Listen to Istra over here. On Being Human - over here. Rock the party.
It makes me pretty sure that they knew it was coming long ago: mere weeks after annoucing their breakup, Further Seems Forever have a best-of(read: contract fulfiller) called Hope This Finds You Well in stores March 21st. I may actually get it out of sheer loyalty. [punkhardcore]
A couple other miscellaneous release dates, or approximate guesses:
Thursday's A City By The Light Divided - May 2nd
Dashboard Confessional's as-yet-untitled next album - May 2nd
Showbread's Age of Reptiles - summer
As insistently juvenile as Blink-182 always were, ex-guitarist Tom Delonge sure is equally ambitious.
Did you know actor Kiefer Sutherland(24) started a record label? We didn't. It's called Ironworks Records, and the first release is a band called Rocco and their album I Trust You to Kill Me, soon to be available through iTunes. [Relevant]
America's number-one satellite-radio company, XM, posted a huge $270-million fourth-quarter loss last week, much bigger than analysts expected. I wonder what the problem is; seemed pretty foolproof to me.
So 2002: Finch are taking an 'indefinite hiatus' from music. "Through much though and deliberation," the statement says, "the five of us have decided to take an indefinite break from Finch. Amongst the many reasons for our decision, our individual priorities just lie in different places." Well, that's good enough for me. What It's Like To Burn was a decent album, I suppose. [AP]
We reported rumours of this a few months back - now we got tha factzzzzzzz....okay, enough: former From First to Last vocalist Phil Reardon has formed a new band with former Underoath screamer Dallas Taylor(who's also busy with Maylene and the Sons of Disaster) called The New Tragic. Check some stuff out over here. Ironically, another dude who used to be in FFTL has a band called, simply, The Tragic. Weeeeeeird.
Hey, Texas(particularly Austin): do yourselves a favour and attend the March 18th Alternative Press free show in connection with South by Southwest. Three stages at Emo's, all day, all free. Bands? Holy crap. Thursday, Poison the Well, The Chariot, Straylight Run, Paramore, Head Automatica and Minus the Bear...for starters. Wow. I wish I was in Austin, Texas.
Underoath will do a short headlining tour just ahead of Warped, with openers Poison the Well, Since By Man and As Cities Burn. Check their website for details.
As I Lay Dying will headline this summer's Sounds of the Undeground tour; last year's trek was headed by Lamb of God. Other bands ripping it up this year include The Chariot, Terror, In Flames, The Black Dahlia Murder. Also of note: organizers says that while more bands might be added before summertime, there won't be as many as last year, meaning longer sets. Good.
As well as "basically headlining" OzzFest's second stage this summer, Unearth guitarist Ken Susi said online recently that the band are doing their third album with producer Terry Date(big time there) from March to May out in Seattle. Susi's also plugging his little rock band Burn Your Wishes, which contains a bunch of other high-profile dudes.
Posted by mike at February 21, 2006 06:09 AM