Whassup. Essential Listening for today, February 28th, is a UK hardcore band called The Break In; they're on Suprise Attack Records, and 'Coffin Dodger' is a massive song, as you'll hear soon after clicking over here. Rock the frig on. Surprise Attack's also re-releasing some old Shockwave and xDisciplex AD stuff later this year. [SPB]
So Jamey Jasta of Hatebreed has a little side gig called Icepick, who sound exactly like their name, and who have a new song up over here that features some lil' ol' rapper named Ice-T. Violent Epiphany(natch), the band's debut, will drop in April on Jasta's Stillborn Recs label, featuring guest appearances from members of Madball, Sheer Terror, Agnostic Front, Dropkick Murphys and 100 Demons.
Boston and area, pay attention: this year's New England Metal & Hardcore Festival has released an initial lineup, so if you're around the Palladium in Worchester, Mass. the weekend of April 28th-30th, check out some highlights of the action thus far: The Black Dahlia Murder, Cryptopsy, A Perfect Murder, Bloodlined Calligraphy, Ed Gein, Inked In Blood, Nodes Of Ranvier, Protest The Hero, From A Second Story Window and xLOOKINGFORWARDx. xLFx happen to be my favourite hardcore band of late.
My Republic is the name of Good Riddance's seventh album; it'll be out June 13th on Fat Wreck Chords.
Stretch Arm Strong will be heading out on tour opening for Sick Of It All later this year; here are the first few shows:
5/12 Colorado Springs, CO @ Black Sheep
5/13 Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad
5/14 Phoenix, AZ @ The Brickhouse
5/15 Las Vegas, NV @ Jillian's Neonopolis
5/17 Los Angeles, VA @ The Roxy
5/20 San Francisco, CA @ Slim's
5/23 Seattle, WA @ El Corazon
5/26 Salt Lake City, UT @ Club Sound
5/27 Englewood, CO @ Gothic Theatre
A new band called Between The Wars played their first show together in November down in Jersey; the outfit features Tim Shaw of one of my favourite hardcore bands, period, Ensign, on vocals, along with Bill Henderson(Thursday, The Procedure. The band's debut will be out soon on Think Fast! Records. I can't wait. In fact, I'm going to add them as Myspace friends immediately!! You can too by making with the clicky-clicky over here!
A slew of the many bands who've joined Abacus Recordings in the last year or so are heading out on the first-ever Abacus Recordings Tour; taking part are Sworn Enemy, Ion Dissonance, Bleeding Kansas, Caliban and Embrace The End. Check here for the shows.
Hey, how many Myspace friends you got? Maybe fifty? A hundred? A thousand if you're completely addicted and never leave your own page? Maybe your favourite hardcore band has like four or five hundred. Guess how many Fall Out Boy have? Eight hundred thousand. Got that from Rolling Stone.
Matisyahu's star is rapidly rising: the Hasidic reggae star guested on P.O.D.'s latest album and is being namechecked far and wide. Get the goods on the dude whose website is literally hasidicreggae.com(and whose breakthrough was Live at Stubb's, a live album recorded - ironically- at a Texas barbecue joint) over here.
If you're already missing Pedro the Lion, check out Halifax, Nova Scotia's Wintersleep; they've been at it for a year already, and they're getting their name out there. Check them out here in Ottawa Friday night(March 3rd), and listen to 'em over here.
From the Treasure Trove of Awesomeness known as sweetdisaster supporter Kayla comes this picture. I certainly hope it's real.
Busy weekend. That's why updates've been scarce. Any more questions? Didn't think so. Let's proceed, shall we?
Ottawa's own The Fully Down, upon finishing their current tour alongside LoveHateHero and Panic Division, will head out again with Bleed The Dream(a trek that will bring them back home again in March), after which - get this now - the boys will take to the road once again with the legendary Boysetsfire, back on an indie label after their failed major-label experiment. That is some serious resume cred for the Down.
Some bands of note opening Taste of Chaos shows: rising screamo purveyors Chasing Victory will handle opening duties in Atlanta on the 28th, while a great Edmonton band called Ten Second Epic will open the festivities in their hometown at the Shaw Events Centre April 5th. Here in Ottawa, Darker Red, featuring the incomparable Native on vocals, will warm the stage for the likes of Thrice and As I Lay Dying. Nice gig if you can get it.
It's fitting that I do this update from CHRI, where yours truly is running the Saturday-night hiphop/urban show(thug thug what what!), because we got some Pigeon John news: hot off his tour with One Block Radius and Louis Logic, PJ has announced a spring run with Blackalicious. The tour starts March 3rd out in California and goes nationwide for two solid months, and John will be selling his new single on wax by about mid-point, which leads to our next bit: the man's new album - his fourth in less than four years! - is entitled Summertime Pool Party, dropping in late spring or summer. Word.
My beautiful girlfriend Sara has come to my aid here at ye olde radio station with CHICKEN for me to chow on. What a gal!
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.
Early morning - like, really early morning - is always the best time for honesty.
Behold - a dear friend of mine's exegesis of the entire Emo Scene, as recorded on MSN Messenger:
"Allison says:
it hurts
Allison says:
it hurts
Allison says:
the bad haircuts are the WORST"
That, friends, is comedic gold, and more so 'cause it's true.
Get normal hair, emo kids.
The Dillinger Escape Plan are currently cooling their heels, working on the followup to 2004's Miss Machine, and waiting around for guitarist Ben Weinman to recover from surgery to repair an injury he sustained in a car accident about a year ago. He spent months not on tour with Dillinger, with another guy who used to be in Fenix TX replacing him - still don't get that - and now spends six hours a day on a 'constant passive motion machine' rehabilitating. Whatever that is. [MTV]
Another New Jersey band, hardcore veterans E-Town Concrete, are calling it quits after eleven years; the band's last show will go down at the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, NJ.
A Life Once Lost are headlining an east-coast/midwest tour kicking off in April. Cephalic Carnage, Through the Eyes of the Dead and Scarlet will open up. That's pretty loud, that there lineup.
Louder Now is the hotly-anticipated new album from Taking Back Sunday; due out March 25 on Warner Brothers, the album now has some touring going for it, as TBS are headlining a cross-country road trip. No word on openers, but here're the dates:
3/31 - Boulder, CO @ Boulder Theatre
4/1 - Salt Lake City, UT @ In the Venue
4/3 - Seattle, WA @ The Showbox
4/4 - Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater
4/5 - San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
4/6 - Los Angeles, CA @ The House of Blues
4/8 - Las Vegas, NV @ The House of Blues
4/9 - San Diego, CA @ The House of Blues
4/10 - Phoenix, AZ @ Marquee Theater
4/12 - Dallas, TX @ The University of Texas
4/14 - St Louis, MO @ Pop's
4/16 - Chicago, IL @ The House of Blues
4/17 - Detroit, MI @ Clutch Cargo's
4/18 - Cleveland, OH @ The House of Blues
4/20 - Greensboro, NC @ Greene Street
4/21 - Norfolk, VA @ The Norva
4/22 - Baltimore, MD @ UMBC RAC Arena
4/23 - Philadelphia, PA @ The Trocadero Theatre
4/25 - New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
5/5 - Boston, MA @ Avalon
5/6 - Rochester, NY @ Gordon Field House
5/7 - East Rutherford, NJ @ Meadowlands Sports Complex (Bamboozle Festival)
By far the busiest man in music, Mike Patton, recruited AOR songstress extraordinaire Norah Jones to appear on one of the thirty-eight new projects he has coming down the pipe; Jones apparently curses up a storm - quite contrary to her image as the wholesome piano-caressing jazz crooner. Innnneresting.
This summer's Sounds of the Underground tour could possibly have a variation on the usual mishmash of American/Canadian bands that all kinda sound the same: Polish death metal beasts Behemoth are in talks with the organizers to be part of the tour. "I hope this summer will be a breaking point for us," frontman Nergal told MTV. "Having a festival like that for five weeks, it would be a great experience for us to do it. I really hope it happens." In related news, my boy Nick D.C. is in Poland currently, on a work-placement program. Whassup, boy??
An addendum to our last post - here are some shows upcoming in Ottawa, courtesy of punkottawa.com(check the banner, right up there):
- Choke with No Other Way at Maverick's, Feb. 21st
- The Fully Down w/Tub Ring, LoveHateHero and
The Panic Division at Babylon, Feb. 24th
- Sylvie and From Fiction at Zaphod's, March 1st
- Wintersleep and Contrived(both from Halifax) at Zaphod's,
March 3rd
- Shotgun Rules and more at SAW, March 4th
- Rosesdead, Cancer Bats, The Gorgeous,
Mikoto(ex-Taken) at SAW, March 6th
- Cadence Weapon(Edmonton rapper/producer) and
Chameleonic at Zaphod's(CHUO benefit), March 12th
- MxPx, Congress Centre, March 18th
- Constantines, New Capital Music Hall, March 18th
- Paint It Black and more at Cafe Dekcuf, March 25th
- Comeback Kid, This Is Hell at Babylon, March 30th
- Poison the Well, Horse the Band and Criteria at
Babylon, April 7th
- Saves the Day, Moneen and Circa Survive at the
New Capital Music Hall, May 1st
Whew. That's a lotta shows.
So the weather here in eastern Ontario's lousy today; check this out for a quickie summary. Hope wherever you are is tropical and gorgeous.
Time for a bit o' news.
P.O.D.'s video for 'Goodbye For Now' hit number one on MTV's Total Request Live yesterday, the band's fourth number-one vid. The album it's off of, Testify, grows on me more with each listen.
We interviewed vocalist Ian Stanger of The Fullblast recently; watch for that as well as a talk with Floodgate Records president/former Prayer Chain frontman Tim Taber and - hopefully - a piece on ex-One-21 drummer Vince Radcliffe.
And CD reviews.
And news.
Duh.
Happy trails, kids.
The famed Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro will be a bit of a hotspot this weekend as the Rolling Stones are prepping to play a free show expected to draw over a million people. Anyone see their show here in Ottawa last summer? Apparently the stage in Rio is much the same - immense - and security is so high that a special walkway's been built six storeys above Atlantic Avenue from the band's hotel to the stage - not to mention the ten thousand cops being station everywhere. What is this, some alternate universe?
For some reason - namely, ignoring the internet - this escaped us: With Honor vocalist Todd Mackey has left the band, but WH have no intention of giving up the good fight: "Despite the recent departure of our singer, we will still be appearing on all upcoming tours and shows, including the East Coast run with Strike Anywhere and a European tour this summer with Ignite." The band will be breaking in new vocalist Kevin White ASAP. This appears not to be some acrimonious thing, so don't even start trash-talking on the messageboards, kiddies. [saveyourscene]
Longtime west-coast emcee DiRT, founder of the Shadow of the Locust crew and fondly remembered for his guest shots on P.O.D.'s Brown album in 1996, has apparently retired; visitors to his website last week were greeted with a black background and a departing quote. Personal struggles(including a bad accident a couple of years back) led to his decision, and he'll be fondly remembered.
Mass Reality crew member Reconcile(he also appeared on the Sunrise/Sunset Vol. 1 album from Underground Rise) has taped an episode of Wheel of Fortune that'll air on March 30th. We hope he won huge money. [sphereofhiphop]
Hey, everybody, check this out: it's former sweetdisaster web chief Dave and his daughter Judith sleeping!
Time to get interactive here at the D: everyone click on this here link, and click individually on each horse. And let the awesomeness ensue! Thanks to my brother Dan for the link.
Ever jonesed to hear He Is Legend covering an old Third Eye Blind track? Well, here you go: HIL's metallic cover of 'Wounded' can be found with a bit of searching. Enjoy. [IVM]
If you miss Five Iron Frenzy as much as we do here at sweetdisaster, you wanna be all over this: some b-sides have been posted online over here. Plus the first song up in the player is 'The Cross of St. Andrew', one of Five Iron's finest.
Rumour has it Thrice will be on the cover of the March/April issue of HM magazine, which will announce to one and all that Christianity is indeed a big part of their band. We did an interview last October with singer Dustin Kensrue that will be published in the future, depending on whether we can follow it up when Thrice are in Ottawa in April. Wish us luck. Either way, it'll be up in the spring.
Killer news from southern California - word from buzzgrinder.com is that Falling Cycle, who released one poorly-produced album on Facedown a few years back, are gonna reunite and play some shows. Can a new album be far behind? I hope it's not as rough as their last one, as this was one killer band wrecked by bad production(I see you, Sinai Beach's first album).
Demon Hunter, whose masterminds the Clark Brothers work have lucrative graphic-design day jobs that keep DH from being a full-time band, have decided to tour for one month in support of The Triptych. Starting June 13th, they'll tear up the US with help from Zao, August Burns Red and Becoming the Archetype. That is one heck of a lot of metal.
Been a while since we had a chance to talk about Copeland, so here you go. The band are releasing eleven Instant Live double-disc live albums, much the same as the stunt Pearl Jam pulled a few years ago. They're already available to order over here. I'm more interested in when the followup to In Motion will be in my hands.
Word is The Chariot will have a full-length out this June. I've been spinning 'Yanni Depp' on the radio for two months now. Ridiculously awesome song.
Speaking again of Zao, their new album The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here will be in stores June 13th on Ferret Records. It'll be rad.
Keep an eye out for the dates of the Warriors Part 2 tour, with P.O.D. headlining the second installment, with openers The Chariot, Maylene and the Sons of Disaster and Pillar. The first Warriors tour five years ago featured Living Sacrifice and Project 86, and I'm still smarting that I missed it entirely.
Yo, here's a metal preview for y'all: Society's Finest have a brand-new album coming out this summer called And I, The Drunkards(Hand of Hope Records). Check out some advance stuff over here.
Anyone remember Evanescence? Featuring former Living Sacrifice guitarist Rocky Gray on drums and a lot of drama? Yeah, they apparently have a new album coming later this year.
...as do Starflyer 59, who literally do an album a year, or more.
One of my recent favourites, metal act War of Ages, have officially moved up from Strikefirst Records to Facedown Recs. Album this year, blah blah blah. Who cares about words? This band shreds.
Hey, does anyone else think Kanye West's ego is getting a little out of control? Granted, the cat comes up with dope songs, but geez, give it a rest, Ye.
Contrary to the 582872724 bands that have broken up lately, Bedlight For Blueeyes have stated online that they are not splitting up. "All we can say is that there are some internal issues that need to be worked out," reads their little e-post. Their vocalist is pretty good. Musically, whatever. [absolutepunk]
I sold their seminal The Stings of Conscience album the other day, and I know I'll buy it back: Unearth have posted some live footage over here. Ever seen Unearth live? I have. They rip. I remember the last time was here in Ottawa the night the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Calgary Flames to win the Stanley Cup(we're talking hockey here, people), and guitarist Ken Susi gently rubbed it in our Canadian faces.
We must have missed the news, but Moneen's new album, due out April 11th, is called The Red Tree. Their drummer, Peter Krpan, never makes mistakes. Ever. We've watched. He's an automaton. Trust us. Oh, and the band'll be playing Bamboozle Fest down in Jersey May 7th.
During The Simpsons the other night, FOX aired a promo for that massive Prison Break show they've got cookin', and apparently Emery's 'Studying Politics' was used in the background. It's a pretty good song. The entire title of it reminds me of MxPx's Teenage Politics album from '95, because it had that awesome 'Study Humans' song. Sick.
...and on a related note, MxPx are here in Ottawa March 18th at the Congress Centre. We're not gonna mention who they're opening for because, quite frankly, it's disgraceful that it isn't the other dudes opening for them, but c'est la vie.
Park's new album is called Building A Better Pirate. And that's awesome. Great band.
Check it out: speaking of great bands, Comeback Kid and Misery Signals will be playing various Warped dates this summer on the Smartpunk. We predict absolute chaos at every CBK set.
So Thursday the 9th was sweetdisaster Big Cheese's 26th birthday(I'm referring to myself in the third person here, try to keep up), and it's been a nice couple celebratory days as they are every year - until I get a phone call from a fellow internet-nerd friend informing me that Pennsylvania's The Juliana Theory, long one of my favourite bands, have ended their schtick after nine great years, a slew of full-lengths, a couple EPs, a split or two, and a best-of, with their latest album Deadbeat Sweetheart perhaps rivaling 2000's Emotion Is Dead as the band's finest. A short, simple statement for the attention-deficit crowd(right here! me!) is followed by a rather lengthy explanation over on the band's website, featuring the following - and very telling - phrase: "Personally, as fans of music, if a band or artist that any of us loves puts out a record that we don't like, we still stay loyal to that artist and await the next record. Looking around now at the ADD society that we live in, things just are not that way any more." Happy birthday to me. This sucks more than when Reach the Sky broke up right around my 22nd birthday. Booooooo.
We got an email here at sweetdisaster HQ last week from Transparent Productions, apparently a concert promoter out in California; how we got on their mailing list we have no clue, but check this out: among a ton of shows, ranging from Third Day gigs to the upcoming second Tooth & Nail Tour(good tour, check that out if it comes to your area), there's this FishFest(you hear us) going on in late March in Irvine, CA, featuring the likes of Newsboys, Pillar, Hawk Nelson and...John Tesh? What the blazes? That guy?? Something's clearly amiss here. But there his name is, sandwiched in between Pillar and some woman named Natalie Grant. So weird.
Blood & Ink Records, forever prolifically signing bands, have brought in Albany, Georgia's With Blood Comes Cleansing and their "well-crafted metallic
sound and powerful vocal presence". Mmhmm. We'll see. They've toured with Imperial and are heading out soon with Becoming the Archetype, so there's your cred. Check 'em out for yourselves over here.
If you have MTV, tune in to Headbanger's Ball tonight at ten to catch the world premiere of the new Demon Hunter video for 'Undying'. Word up.
Switchfoot have a bunch of shows coming up with hot UK band Athlete, who apparently rocked Zaphod's here in Ottawa a couple months ago:
03.15.06 Bakersfield, CA Fox Theatre
03.16.06 Las Vegas, NV House of Blues
03.17.06 Tucson, AZ Rialto Theater
03.18.06 Albuquerque, NM Sunshine Theater
03.20.06 Tulsa, OK Donald W. Reynolds Center
03.21.06 Fort Worth, TX Ridglea Theatre
03.23.06 Austin, TX Stubbs Bar-B-Q
03.24.06 New Orleans, LA House of Blues
03.25.06 Nashville, TN War Memorial
03.26.06 Huntsville, AL Spragins Hall
03.28.06 Dahlonega, GA Memorial Hall
03.29.06 Orlando, FL House of Blues
03.30.06 Boca Raton, FL FAU Center Auditorium
03.31.06 Jacksonville, FL Florida Theatre
04.01.06 Myrtle Beach, SC House of Blues
04.02.06 Greensboro, NC War Memorial Auditorium
04.04.06 Baltimore, MD Sonar
04.07.06 Atlantic City, NJ The Borgata Music Box
04.08.06 Hartford, CT Webster Theatre
04.11.06 Burlington, VT Flynn Center (performing arts)
04.12.06 Clifton Park, NY Northern Lights
04.13.06 Rochester, NY Water Street Music Hall
04.15.06 Columbus, OH LIfestyle Communities Pavilion
04.19.06 East Lansing, MI MSU Concert Auditorium
04.21.06 Maryville, MO Bearcat Arena - NW MO ST
More news some other time soon.
The HTML errors a while back have been fixed, after much onerous searching of the tags internally. I'm sure those of you into computers will empathize.
Or not.
We've put up our take on the new No Innocent Victim album. It's up to the right there - right above Dana Jorgensen's debut album All Over Again, a nice little acoustic-pop offering. NYHC and acoustic pop. Is this a great mag or what??
My beloved Ottawa Senators lost tonight to Buffalo. For now, til the next win, life is a shambles.
Less than two months til Never Trust A Hippy, NOFX's thirty-ninth album, will be in all of our hands - March 14th, to be precise. [absolutepunk]
I missed Mute Math on TV the other night when they played The Late Late Show. Anyone wanna email me at itacs@hotmail.com and tell me how it was?
Flipping through the newest issue of Outburn magazine(great 'zine, guys!) featuring cover boys(and girl) Bleeding Through, and they had the usual WIN SUCH-AND-SUCH SIGNED BY SO-AND-SO on the cover, and I almost ignored it before realizing it was an ESP guitar or something, autographed by...The Fully Down? As in the kids I interviewed for another magazine four years ago? As in guitarist George Hadjichristou, whose house I hung out in two weeks back? What the....AWESOME!!!!
sweetdisaster will likely not be at the Taste of Chaos show at Scotiabank Place April 14th, as general-admission tickets are gone, and with sweetdisaster's Big Cheese staring at his nearly-empty bank balance, it just don't look good. If you have a ticket you wanna unload, again, email me at itacs@hotmail.com. I will see Thursday before I die!
Essential Listening for today was actually recommended to me months ago by Webmaster Extraordinaire(and new father!) Brody: suburban Illinois-based The Felix Culpa, who label themselves post-hardcore and with good reason - their three-man mayhem always hints at going completely overboard, but it's kept under control. I like it. Maybe you will too after listening.
Pillar's new video for the single 'Frontline' can be viewed on their label's myspace page; the band are currently holed up working on their third or fourth album. I can't remember how many they've done. Good band though. [JFH]
Surprisingly to some, maybe, P.O.D.'s brand-new album Testify debuted at #9 on Billboard's Top 200. It's been widely reported that the band need a "solid hit", as their last self-titled album in 2003 was a disappointment on a commercial and artistic level. I really like what I've heard of the new one.
So I'd never heard of this band Scapegoat before discovering them stumbling around purevolume(me, that is...not the band stumbling around, though that's a funny visual), but listen to 'After Class With' over here and tell me the singing doesn't sound like a dead ringer for Anberlin's Stephen Christian. Tell me that! I dare you! Anyway, the musicality almost reminds me of He Is Legend, so that says something about the variety presented.
En Masse, from all over Florida, feature ex-members of twothirtyeight, Decahedron, Further Seems Forever and more; the band formed last June and will release a five-song EP on Pop Up Records this summer, produced by J. Robbins. Check out some demos over here.
The track listing for the upcoming dc Talk tribute album(more properly, the Jesus Freak tribute) is out:
01. "So Help Me God" - The Showdown(whaaat? Crazy metal!!)
02. "Colored People" - The Gotee Brothers
03. "Jesus Freak" - 4th Avenue Jones
04. "What If I Stumble?" - Sarah Kelly
05. "Day By Day" - House Of Heroes
06. "Between You And Me" - Relient K
07. "Like It, Love It, Need It" - Family Force 5
08. "In The Light" - StorySide:B
09. "What Have We Become" - Liquid w/Verbs
10. "Mind's Eye" - Fighting Instinct
I've never heard of a few of these artists, but the Showdown covering a dc Talk song? That is purely metal magic.
He's nothing if not prolific: rapper/experimentalist John Reuben is already working on his next album, due this summer or fall. His last, The Boy Vs. The Cynic came out last June. Daaang, he quick.
According to a pretty funny post on their website, Seattle rock kids Acceptance will have their new album out by the end of the summer. No word on whether the blatant Jimmy Eat World worship will continue with this disc, but as I've said before, when you're this catchy, who cares? [absolutepunk]
Rumours abound that Bleed the Dream and the masterful Stretch Arm Strong will be the support on Story of the Year's April headlining tour. I hope it comes to Ottawa, but with the demise of the Capital Music Hall(replaced by the smaller New Capital), that's doubtful.