Punk isn’t dead, but it is very self-conscious these days. Yet, if you are prepared to seek them out, there are plenty of bands doing it the right way: Write some songs. Get in the van. Play some shows Get in the van again. Record some songs. Live your life. Write more songs. Make the songs mean something. Make them honest. Make them count.
The Arteries are that band, the Swansea boys have built a great live reputation and have grown from the ground up, slow and steady, no fucking about. Little surprise then that from the discordant opening seconds of their new Restless EP to its very final moments, the five-piece feel focussed and bristling with the piss and vinegar we have come to expect from them.
Our man of letters, Mr Tom Doyle, takes a moment to review the new EP from The Arteries, and to explain just why it’s better than the shit punk you’re listening to right now.
South By Southwest is a wonderful place where Foo Fighters play on the patio of a bar and Kvelertak play five shows in three days and we see them all by dumb luck. While the big picture says SXSW is about bands for radio, the underground says it’s all about metal. That’s why the pizza shop on 6th St is called Hoek’s Death Metal Pizza and has a dozen metal bands playing in its backyard every day. There are also some excellent bands flying over to Austin from the UK. Here’s a rundown of the seven that we could find.
The Porcupine Tree mastermind is determined to make it as a solo artist, with emphasis on both the “solo” and the “artist”. With the first two headline gigs in London being held at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, this is a grandiose upgrade forSteven Wilson. Even his mother was in attendance – in the Royal Box. Class.
Six things we learnt when we saw Steven Wilson on the Southbank….
Opium Lord
From: Birmingham, UK
Lazy equation: (Electric Wizard - all the bloody incense) x dependable Midlands misery.
Thrash Hits verdict: You might remember last year we put on the album launch show for Future Ruins, the debut album from History of the Hawk who then…well, they went and split up. Which was a bit of a bummer. Still, Nathan Coyle, former frontman of HOTH, has wasted no time in getting on with the business of a new band: Opium Lord. And unlike the scratchy, punky snot of HOTH, Opium Lord are all about getting slow, dark, and menacing…
Click here to hear music by and read our full interview with Opium Lord.
“It’s too hard to say what the album’s about and that’s why it’s called Sempiternal, which means ever-lasting journey and that’s why our logo is called The Flower Of Life. That’s sacred geometry and it basically represents everything that goes on in the universe.”
In our exclusive new interview with Oli Sykes of Bring Me The Horizon, the bossman of Drop Dead talks us through some of the concepts behind their forthcoming new album, Semptiternal. Click here to read the interview in full.
So Fall Out Boy are back. We sent Tom Doyle to queued up in Camden behind hundreds of teenage girls and dozens of confused Eskimo Callboy fans (their show was originally set to be at The Underworld) to see Pete Wentz, Patrick Stump, Joe Trohman and Andy Hurley strut their stuff again.
Six things we learnt whilst screaming along to Fall Out Boy in Camden
The album begins with a bass so low in the register it’s equatable to “brown noise”, and ‘Bathroom Laughter”s frantic riff kicks in, drums crashing and guitars screeching under vocalist Matt Korvette’s anguished wails. Following up 2009′s sublime King Of Jeans seemed an impossible task, but the band have taken to the task like a duck to water by compromising absolutely nothing.‘Vain In Costume’ wraps the capillary-bursting aggression of My War-era Black Flag in a layer of glorious noise, following on from the snarling ‘Romanticize Me’, a number that could teach those considered at the forefront of raw punk rock, namely The Bronx and Fucked Up, a thing or two.
Ollie Connors basically loves Honeys, the new album from Pissed Jeans. You should too.
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