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daniel brockman
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Face it: metal bands are just brands, and to the headbanging hordes, you are only as good as your last breakdown — unless you can concoct a memorable musical identity to stand above the competition.
"The biggest devil is me," is how Houston famously summed up her life's dilemma
Whitney Houston, who passed away this weekend of still-to-be-determined causes at the too-young age of 48, made an art out of depicting heroic triumph over adversity in her music
Punk is dead, right?
It's time we faced it: the vanguards of rock have gotten really old.
Demolition man
When Thurston Moore takes the stage at Somerville Theatre on Tuesday, he will no doubt stroll through the wispy cloud-spires of last summer's Beck-produced solo effort, Demolished Thoughts (Matador).
Ghouls' night out
Can rock still be subversive?
Between heaven and hell
The Paradise Lost story began in 1993 with the discovery of the bodies of three West Memphis, Arkansas, children in a watery ditch, hogtied and mutilated. A confession led police to the arrest of three teenagers: Damon Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley.
There's nothing particularly apocalyptic about the releases thus far slated for 2012: perhaps this is the way that the music world melts down, with a whimper rather than a bang, right?
The music climate is as frigid as the business
The Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times" alludes to eras of upheaval and tumult. But what if that tumult happens too slowly to seem interesting?
Box-set match
Ah, box-set season, that time of year when you go to your nearest record store, looking for gifts for that special someone you know who would really appreciate a super-cool addition to their record collection.
Columbia/Legacy (2011)
Neil Diamond is a pretty upbeat guy — or at least as upbeat as can be expected from a man who made his claim to fame writing "Solitary Man."
Positive gains
Viewed from the outside, heavy metal has always appeared unnecessarily negative, obsessed with morbid imagery and anti-social attitudes.
Plus, the revenge of the double album
Music occupies time but not space, meaning that a musician's musical indulgences tend to stretch out in time to make up for the fact that, once emitted, the signals disappear in the aether like wisps of nothing disappearing into more nothing.
Metal god
When you talk to a living legend like Rob Halford, it should come as no surprise that you are dealing with a pro; after all, the man not only invented almost all the tropes and conventions of modern heavy metal, but he's been doing it all — show after show, album after album, tour after tour — nonstop for almost 40 years.
Economy hardware
In general, people who care about music make too big a deal about the notion of talent.
Kemado (2011)
The genre now vilified as "hipster metal" can trace its roots back to the stoner-rock movement of the '90s, when a shameful acquiescence to grunge and pre-nümetal meant that vintage gear, downtuned sludge, and tuneless neanderthalisms were taken as preferable to the pentatonic shred-age and adenoidal shrieks of classic metal.
Under cover of night
Beneath pop's facade lurks a dark undergrowth, always present and forever providing its own counterpoint — a bleakness that makes your feet move even as it subsumes you in gloom .
Dark haus
When I met Xavier Gath in an alleyway on a dark rainy night in Cambridge a few Fridays ago, I didn't know what to expect.
Prosthetic (2011)
Although composed of fun-loving party mavens from Ohio, Skeletonwitch on record have always left a trail of scorched earth that lacks in levity what it plentifully makes up for in sheer ass-kicking force.
That cheer brigade
Struggling young bands toil to discover something novel, to uncover a musical concept that no one has encountered before, only to find, if they succeed, that this initial toiling is just step one — and that step two involves finding a way to progress so that your novel band doesn't become a novelty.
That was it
Let's face it: popular music is a lie. But it's the lie we crave: that the Beatles taught us how to love, that the Pistols taught us to be fierce, and that the Strokes — with their debut long-player released 10 years ago this week — delivered us from a nu-metal and boy-band purgatory into a sleek and sexy modern age.
[in memoriam] Whitney Houston, 1963-2012- [Q&A] One of GHOST's nameless ghouls pontificates on Satan, macho insecurity and passing as their own roadies
- [Q&A] Scratch Acid's David Yow on pulling a MacGuyver, making reunion bank and losing his virginity
- Loutallica: The case for what will surely be the most derided album of the year
- Eric Stevenson, RIP: Boston metal legend, all-around awesome guy
- [Q&A] EMA talks hip hop, substitute teaching, and hitting rock bottom
- [Q&A] Gang Gang Dance's Brian DeGraw on being a hippie in the big city, avoiding downer vibes and going toward the light as much as possible
- [Q&A] Urge Overkill's Nash and Eddie on grunge, medallions, irony, and making one's dark heroin album
- [Q&A] Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis on playing loud, being hated, and not having fun
- [Q&A] King Buzzo of Melvins rants about the end of the music biz, the radness of writing endless awesome riffs and how dead Kurt Cobain still is
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