M. Drew's blog

Miseration's new album "Tragedy Has Spoken" makes me feel like the old cop in a Frankie Avalon movie who pulls over the young feller in his new red convertible GTO and gives him a stern but fatherly warning: "Whoa, where's the fire? Slow down, son, you'll get yourself hurt, and then you can't go to the beach party with your combustion engines and your rock music and your make-out parties." I think we may have gotten off on a tangent there, but you get the idea.

The Bunny the Bear is a post-hardcore band that some have said incorporates dance elements into their music to flesh out their sound. More than that, the band is equal parts musical and theatrical experiment, attempting to push both the envelope of the hardcore sound and the envelope of presentation. This is one of those situations where fans will stand by and argue that detractors simply don't understand the fusion and exploration that's going on, and that might be true; but it also makes the bold assumption that the fusion and exploration is worth getting.

SIVA Addiction pounds out heavy metal in that uniquely blue-collar American way that is totally untouched by other countries, influences or genres. There is a sliver of the genre that remains impossibly true to the original form of heavy metal; a logical, blown-out extension of rock and roll from the middle seventies that revels in all the pomp and dirt that the legacy of that era entails. That sliver thrived in the U.S.

An awful lot of noise. That’s the first gut reaction to “Bloodstreams,” the new full-length album from Australian do-it-all duo DZ Deathrays. For just two people, this is a full-bore effort, ripped from the core of punk’s heart and rock and roll’s soul.

Brendon Small’s “Galaktikon” is as much a story about finishing what you started as it is the divorce of the galaxy’s most popular superhero. Halfway invested prior to the recording of “Dethalbum II,” Small shelved this ad-hoc unfinished project until such a time as he could return to it and complete it. From that end, “Galaktikon” is anything but a typical vanity project, and shows not only Small’s dedication to his artistic exploration, but also his loyalty to Gene Hoglan and the musicians who helped him create it. He doesn’t want their work to be for nothing.

What seems like a lifetime ago in 2003, I remember doing a music news report for my college radio station detailing how Cattle Decapitation had announced that their upcoming album, to be released in 2004, was to be called "Humanure." Little did I know that nine years later, Cattle Decapitation would not only evolve into a real thing, but would still be making music for a prominent label.

Allegaeon took the internet reviewing world fairly by storm with their heady debut "Fragments of Form and Function" in 2010. Critics saw an aggressive but honest extreme metal band, tap-dancing on the boundary between noise and craft. 2012 sees the band follow up with "Formshifter," an album that takes cues both visual and musical from the latest incarnation of heavy metal stalwarts Fear Factory. While commonly seen as European, extreme metal is mostly a shared invention of countries on both sides of the Pond, with Allegaeon simply carrying the torch for those before.

On a rainy, bitter night, Overkill came to town and brought friends. The fans tolerated the chill and the dowsing with quiet fortitude, standing stoically in line awaiting their chance to pay tribute to the thrash legends and the crew they brought with them. This is the type of following and faith engendered by Overkill as they make headway in their fourth decade of writing and performing. Armed with their new album "The Electric Age," the Jersey veterans came to kick ass and chew bubblegum. You can venture a guess what they were all out of.

You remember that classic Chuck Jones cartoon "Hare Way to the Stars," where Marvin the Martian sprouts a bunch of 'instant martians' from tiny pills by dousing them with water, then hastily sends them chasing off on a fool's errand after Bugs Bunny, who has absconded with the 'Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator'? That's kind of what Iron Maiden's new live release "En Vivo!" is like. (Albeit without the slapstick.)