(J Records, 2009)

by Paul Stephenson

Contrary to popular belief, Pearl Jam have never really been away. Certainly they’ve had periods where they haven’t been as visible as others, but a new album by these once ‘kings of grunge’ is as reliable as people telling you that The Stone Roses were a really important band, while you sit there and try not to bellow obscenities in their face.

Unless their sound has you wanting to run to grab the cotton wool and jam it in you ears (Eddie Vedder is cursed and blessed at the same time to have a voice that makes half the people drawn in by its lush richness, the other half contemplating killing sprees) Pearl Jam are a very easy band to be a fan of. Over the years they have proved themselves to be better than … Read More »

(Universal, 2009)

by Paul Stephenson

I hate film reviewers sometimes. So often you find one that you think is going to match your tastes and then they go and fuck it all up with one review, and you’re left as a reader adrift in a sea of useless, tasteless opinion. I most often realise this around the time that a new Quentin Tarantino film comes out.

According to virtually every film critic out there, the arrival of a new Tarantino film is no longer a cause for celebration. Instead it provides a chance to snipe at that once great-white-hope of Hollywood, to malign the waste of such prodigious talent that it could create the likes of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, the pity being that he now spends his time making the likes of Death Proof and this, his … Read More »

by Paul Stephenson

It’s fucking hard work being a Billy Corgan fan. Younger readers out there may only be able to identify him as that crackers bald fella who ruined Leeds and Reading a few years back, but for those of us who can remember hearing ‘Siamese Dreams’ for the first time and being bowled over with what Billy had done with the ‘grunge’ formula, it has been a disheartening decade and a half watching one of rock’s true titans slip into irrelevancy quicker with more inevitability than an old person falling over in a shower.

First there was the way he declared rock music to be ‘dead’ and released an album of electronic rock that was supposed to show his more experimental side, but then Radiohead did the same a few years later and proper showed him up by … Read More »

(Dynamite Entertainment)
by Noel Oxford

Time to face up to it, lads. Superheroes are shitheads. They just are. They’re cunts.

That – that right there – is the singular realisation that has sailed over the head of almost every hack who ever dreamed a dream of crafting the definitive grim-n-gritty ‘realistic’ take on the superhero genre. It doesn’t matter if you reimagine Superman but give him a frown, or if you make Batman a panty-sniffer who swears, you’re still writing about daft childrens’ characters who raid their wardrobe at random in order to go out and punch evil. There’s nothing in reality that even remotely resembles a superhero – and a good fucking thing too. They’re cunts.

Perhaps it’s not the premise that’s wrong though. Perhaps it’s just the viewpoint. Let’s not forget that ‘Rising Stars’ and ‘The Dark Knight … Read More »

Nottingham Rock City 05/12/2009
by Noel Oxford

Without wishing to sound rude, while none of us are ageing gracefully, the tolls of the rock ‘n’ roll existence seem to weigh heavier on some than on others. On Dave Wyndorf, apparently, they weigh quite heavily indeed. But then, it’s pretty easy to forget that he’s a man whose mid-50s are rapidly coming to meet him, especially when he opens his singing mouth.

The night began with a bourbon-infused set of instrumental roof-raisers from West Virginia’s cult heroes Karma to Burn. Arithmetic was never my field, so the final numerical tally of the support set’s integers went over my head, but ‘Nineteen’, ‘Twenty Eight’, ‘Thirty’ and ‘Twenty’ all definitely put in an appearance. So that’s 150, at least, by my crude calculations.

Chats with crowd members outside seemed to indicate that many people had come out … Read More »

(Profound Lore, 2009)

by Dan Cairns

First things first, I must stress this very clearly; I hate the majority of death metal. Which doesn’t make sense really. In principal it should be my favourite thing ever. I like horrible detuned guitars. I like blastbeats. I like lyrics where people get stabbed up good. Yet I hate it. Hate it hate it hate it. And I don’t know why.

So it was with a little bit of trepidation that I listened to Swarth by Portal. I’d heard that it was meant to be amazing and that but you know, pegging’s meant to be amazing too, and I certainly don’t want to fucking try that. Anyhoo, I gave it a listen… It is the musical equivalent of being sodomised by a fucking bulldozer. Seriously. ‘Swarth’ is flat-out stunning. I’ve listened to it four … Read More »

(Epitaph/Deathwish, 2009)

by Dan Cairns

(Editor’s note: You may be able to sense that Dan wrote this review for another site, but that for some reason it wasn’t used. So I thought we’d use it, because it made me giggle like a Twilight fan in Robert Patterson’s bedroom)

Hey, you know all the albums that the other writers are spaffing on about? Amorphis, Novembers Doom and Marduk and that? Well, fuck them, because the new Converge is out, and it’s just huffed and puffed an elephantine shit on them all from a great height.

Yar. It’s another album of the year jobbie, which is beginning to piss me off to be honest. I much prefer writing when I’ve got something utterly woeful to rip the piss out of. Fuck, maybe I should start listening to your demos again. I’d do it more … Read More »