Ever since they split into The Mars Volta and Sparta, At the Drive-In’s sound has become victim to endless amounts of copycats and worshippers that don’t do the innovative emo/post punk/rockers any justice.  Somehow, Victor! Fix the Sun manage to flirt with the sound of bands past – the distorted intensity of At the Drive-In and the subtle emotion of American Football, without coming across as unoriginal fanboys.  On Person Place or Thing, the band manage to explore a large sonic landscape in six tracks, creating their own sound along …

I have to say, with a name like Cults, I expected this duo to be the latest hipster-approved noise rock band to gain attention in the indie community.  What I got was some of the finest pop that has made its way out in the last decade.  At only three tracks and under nine minutes in length, this is a huge sentiment for a seven inch that hardly carries any audible weight on it, and yet still is as enjoyable as a full-length LP from 99% of the other indie …

A few weeks ago, Hearwax posted an interview I conducted with <strong>Crime In Stereo</strong>’s <strong>Kristian Hallbert</strong>. Amongst other things, he talked about the great deal of time and effort that was invested into their latest, <em>I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone</em>, which didn’t really strike me as anything overly significant at the time. Bands will often say stuff like that, and generally, when someone boasts about the amount of time and effort they’ve put into something, it means they’re pleased with the results; I mean they’re not going …

If the abundance of ‘one hit wonders’ that have made their way onto radiowaves and mp3 playlists anywhere have taught us anything, it is that one great song can catapult a band into superstardom as quickly as they disappear into the massive black hole in Whogivesashit land. But instead of music videos and radios being the main medium of today’s music, we have the Internet, which filters through good and bad music at a monumental rate, leaving us with huge heaps of both to filter through even more. …

The organ accompanied by harsh spoken verse that Coffin Birth have chosen to introduce this album is on point enough to meet Edgar Allan Poe’s guidelines for short fiction, in which he claims that the opening paragraph movement should give the reader listener an idea of what they are to expect throughout the entire piece.
“Gather, ye children of darkness, It is time to take back what is yours, arise from damnation.”
If you come to grasp this in an analytical sense for the purpose of the album itself, it is quite …

Two years ago, I only knew Shehzaad Jiwani as a fellow music critic and writer that used to go to the same high school as me, making due at a local record shop in downtown Toronto. I wouldn’t have guessed that two years later his band, Arietta, would be making a big name for themselves in the local indie circuit in support of their phenomenal debut full-length Migration, a record that has catchier choruses than a Fall Out Boy record (without the guilt). I managed to catch Shehzaad …

All’s Quiet – Like Vultures
Fuck it. This album is FUN. After the ambient calm of “The Division,” “Directionary” hits the listener in the face with its southern-fried hardcore. Picture Maylene and the Sons of Disaster or He Is Legend and you’ve got this, and the rest of the album, pretty well mapped out.
Throw in some melodic bits and some breakdowns and you have a rather winning formula. I usually don’t like stuff like this, but this album’s a charmer. It’s a bit derivative, but …

If you’ve ever asked me what I’m looking forward to in the future of metal, you’ve probably heard a lot of fanboyish rants about Kelly Shaefer and Steve Flynn working on new Atheist material, you’ve probably heard about Periphery’s seemingly endless attempt to release their debut, and you’ve probably heard about Pathogenic.  I’m particularly excited for Pathogenic’s release because it’s probably my favorite re-interpretation of the groove metal niche founded by Meshuggah thats become so popular over the last year and a half or so, and it excels where others …

I love riffing. There’s nothing better in hardcore and metal than when a band can be heavy but still have serious groove; When you can listen to a song, and you can get into the groove of it and imagine exactly what kind of reaction it invokes in a live setting, especially when it’s one of high energy and not just people standing around with their arms crossed. Forfeit absolutely excels in this area.
The Lower Depths is fast, heavy, pissed off, and best of all, loaded with solid riffing. All …

Arsis – Starve For The Devil
What the hell happened? Deflorate adopts We Are The Nightmare’s second axeman and suddenly the core members of Arsis return – for this? Starve For The Devil is an album that painfully reveals itself by the third track; you get it, we get it, you want to play metal, cool. In a positive light, one could see how a more bare bones melodeath and thrash love affair could reveal gems in the foundation of Arsis’ sound – but Arsis excelled at revealing that anyway, allowing …

If you haven’t listened to Hacksaw to the Throat before, you might expect them to be a down tuned Myspace Deathcore band, who vehemently refer to themselves as Grindcore.  Fortunately, you’d be very far from correct in your assumption.  I feel like the band and their 2007 release, Wastelands, have been overlooked, due partly to their unfitting name, partly to the fact that it wasn’t supported live as much as other albums that came out that year, and partly to the fact that the band seemingly doesn’t have much of …

With Is Dead, one could say that Crime In Stereo stepped into quite unlikely territory. The peak they reached as a hardcore band, with The Troubled Stateside, didn’t seem to apply any longer, but not because Is Dead didn’t qualify as a worthy contender for the former – the two just can’t really be compared.
Experimentation is common in hardcore, like in any genre of music, but it assumes a dipping of one’s foot into different waters, musically; getting a feel for the contributions every minute musical life-form will make …

Did you know Broken Social Scene hasn’t released a proper album since their self-titled endeavor in 2005? Perhaps the release of both Kevin Drew’s and Brendan Canning’s individual releases helped facilitate the band’s extended leave of absence, but Kevin Drew assures fans in a recent interview conducted with Pitchforkmedia.com that the album’s work is well underway, and can expect a release on May 4th of this year, through Arts & Crafts.
What of course adds to the band’s allure and mystery is their revolving door policy towards the group. …

We all set about to discover ourselves. Upon inspection of our endless introspection, it is likely we all search. From the lowliest cells to the firing nodes in our brains, our entire being seeks a place where it can settle, comfortable and content. Everyone goes through phases. We experiment with drugs and alcohol, we adopt new principles, we shed light on innovative policies; we open ourselves up to new things. No one knows for sure, but one could wager a bet that most of us will never rest easily in …

After seven years of ass-kickage, These Arms Are Snakes are disbanding.  From their Myspace:
“It’s with a heavy heart we tell you that These Arms Are Snakes is no more. It’s been a great run and we’d like to send out a very hearty “Thank You” to everyone that we’ve worked with or anyone that we’ve toured with; anyone that lent us a floor, towed our van and/or trailer, lent a van, given us a listen, downloaded our records prior to their coming out, bought our shit, or asked us …