A few black metal bands scheduled a show for Saturday, October 24, at Palo Verde Lounge in Tempe. Soon, members of the local music community started calling them Nazis. The bands on the bill all had the same types of nearly illegible, scribbled black metal logos — the kind that…
It never fails. I write something, someone doesn’t like it, and they feel the need to seek me out and tell me about it. It’s never really surprising, even if I don’t understand it. I can barely muster the energy to tell people I know personally how much I disagree…
This piece was originally intended to be part of our Heritage Hump Day Series. Here it is, the Throwback Thursday edition of Heritage Hump Day. This week as we celebrate the 75th birthday of a legendary musician who was taken from us too soon, let’s turn our gaze to a…
In making 2013’s Dormarion, Telekinesis frontman Michael Lerner says he was “bit by the synth bug.” Recording his band’s third album in Austin, with Spoon’s Jim Eno producing, Lerner for the first time got to experiment, just a tantalizing bit, with synthesizers. A drummer turned songwriter and guitarist, Lerner was…
Judging from the band’s album cover art alone — blobbish landscapes, overgrown hedges, phallic mounds of food — if nothing else, Battles understands texture. The New York threesome snubs genre with its mix of instrumental post-rock, intricate math rock, and complex, creamy rhythms. There is the raw propulsion of Holy…
After years of living on the edge, caught up in a world of rock ‘n’ roll hedonism, Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. eventually managed to break the cycle and get clean. Yet, it wasn’t before the band’s fabled aura of rock greatness was severely tarnish by a pair of lackluster…
Some rappers are known for being great lyricists, while some are known for their delivery, their stage presence, or their beats. No matter what they’re known for, the written word has always been a major part of hip hop, and sometimes it goes underappreciated for certain people. Here are 10…
Since early 1978, brothers Jeff and Steven McDonald have being working on a band, music, or some form of noise making either together or apart. At first they were The Tourists, then in 1980 they became Red Cross (but some nutty non-profit organization already had dibs on that name), and…
In the early to mid 1980s, heavy metal music began to broaden beyond the first era of bands like Maiden, Priest, and Dio. It evolved into darker, faster territories with thrash metal like Slayer, Exodus, Kreator and many others. A somewhat new phenomena began to root itself in an even…
Here are our picks for the best concerts in Metro Phoenix happening Monday through Thursday of this week. For more options, check out our comprehensive concert calendar. Turnpike Troubadours – Monday, October 5 – Marquee Theatre The world is rapidly waking up to Oklahoma’s Turnpike Troubadours, whose new self-titled LP…
The stage at Comerica Theatre went from pitch darkness to sudden illumination, revealing the presence of Don Henley and the members of his touring band singing “Seven Bridges Road” a cappella. Despite the many calls from the audience throughout the evening for Henley, who’s also the drummer and a vocalist…
Strange Wilds are coming through town on October 3 to support their new record, Subjective Concepts, and if their familiar, yet totally rockin’, sound is any indication, the show is going to be pretty special. We caught up with one member of the Olympia, Washington-based three-piece, lead singer and guitar…
Many truly influential musicians only get better with age — no surprise there. But the key word here is “influence.” It’s not necessarily their own evolving music that makes waves; on the contrary it’s a drive to change what the industry produces, to open ears to new ideas and innovative…
There’s simply no shortage of things to see and do in October. Discounting all of the hullabaloo of Halloween at the end of the month, there are fall festivals to attend, tankards of German ales to quaff at Oktoberfest gatherings, pleasant weather to enjoy (no…really), and all the thrills and…
It’s all too easy to take a shot at Rascal Flatts in 2015. What’s easily remembered is the frosted tips, v-neck T-shirts, dismal awards show performances, and saccharine, phoned-in singles of the mid-’00s, but what’s rarely mentioned is the Ohio-based group’s prototypical status in country pop, paving the way for…
Sam Smith told the audience at Gila River Arena last night that it was one of the best crowds he’s had in America during this, his first international tour. The crowd of screaming fans was certainly loud enough to merit consideration. For the entire concert, fans erupted with the first…
Spiritual Warfare – “My Day Off” Joel Marquard has led a wonderful career in the local music scene for as long as I can remember, whether it was fronting Gospel Claws, founding Dear In The Headlights, leading The Through And Through Gospel Review, manifesting Samuel L Cool J, or his…
When we first got word of the Arzona Hip Hop Festival last year, we gawked. Organizer JustUs Samuel’s vision for a massive showcase featuring almost 100 hip-hop performers from around the state of Arizona was, in a word, ambitious. But after a full day of music that took over Comerica…
Every Wednesday is Heritage Hump Day! That’s because every Wednesday from now to the end of the year or before someone really big stops us, Heritage Hump Records (a temporary subsidiary of Onus Records) and New Times will be bringing you a limited edition collector’s item of a much beloved…
Max Frost sounds like your prototypical modern pop star serving up a cool blend of driving dance beats, chunky grinds, silky rhythms, and rich vocals. That we’re even talking about Frost is simply the case of him being in the right place at the right time — or rather, one…
They’re subtle — and sometimes sung in Spanish — but the questions that are scattered across Calexico’s Edge of the Sun carry the thrust of the album’s themes. Where? What? Why? The questions are prominent on an album about progressing, searching, and moving. And they’re at the core of interactions,…
For years, I volunteered at a radio station, where my job was sorting the massive pile of albums mailed to us every week. We’d pick songs we liked, making sure they were scrubbed of non-FCC-approved words like “goddamn motherfucker,” then lump them under labels such as “rock” or “jazz” for…
