SOUND BITES

Since their slow rise to prominence about five years back, people seemed to be wondering when The Black Keys' luck would run out. Their career may be far from over, but last year's disappointing Turn Blue certainly seemed to slow their momentum. A bold reconstruction of their core sound that failed to achieve the heights it aspired to, that album was too drastic a sidestep for many fans of their bombastic blues rock to handle. So much of Turn Blue 's experiments were overblown, diminishing the heart of the songs and rendering the record more a notch for producer Danger Mouse's bedpost than a Black Keys album proper. That The Arcs' debut record (once pegged as Dan Auerbach's second solo record, though it turned out having a much more collaborative lean than 2009's Keep It Hid ) goes even further out speaks to a mutual desire between Auerbach and Danger Mouse to push boundaries rather than the forced experimentation I perceived Turn Blue to be. Even with...

  As one of the leaders of a new wave of Sabbath-inspired "stoner metal" bands about ten years ago, The Sword quickly positioned themselves as one of the most intriguing bands of the bunch. As their career progressed, they started playing around with their sound, going so far as to make their third record a sci-fi concept album. With their previous record, 2012's  Apocryphon , they regressed a bit, resulting in an uneven record that felt by times like a last ditch effort to find proper inspiration within the genre they were pigeonholed into. With the benefit of distance (three years to be exact), The Sword approaches fifth album  High Country  from the vantage point of a band separated from their past, making the record they want to rather than the one they feel they need to. As a result, while similarities to their previous work do exist,  High Country  ends up taking their sound toward lighter territory. Think less Black Sabbath and more Thin Lizzy and yo...

When Opus Eponymous was released five years ago, Ghost was instantly hailed as a breath of fresh air for metal, striking a weird balance between Sabbath and Megadeth (with lyrics that read like black metal) that had no business working as well as it did. The metal community took notice, and Ghost quickly found themselves touring with Mastodon and Opeth (speaking of "metal" bands without boundaries), and signed to a major label offshoot for their second record. Infestissumam was a good record, but felt more like a continuation than a progression, even coming off a little flat by times. Meliora , meanwhile, finds the group hitting a scary stride. Opening track Spirit is a hard prog anthem that isn't overstuffed or undercooked. "Throw yourself into the vessel of possibilities" is its first line, as helpful a first line as this album could have gotten. Most possibilities are explored over the album's eight songs (and two short interludes); if you want cr...

For a little while in the latter part of the last decade, Gallows were arguably the world's most dangerous band. From 2006 to 2011, with a pair of incendiary records and a string of volatile live performances, they cemented somewhat of a legacy in their native England. Much of this volatility could be attributed to Frank Carter, whose aggressive and destructive performances felt equal parts effortlessly fascinating and genuinely terrifying. So, when he left the band in 2011 and set out to take his music in a different direction, no one could have predicted it would culminate in Pure Love. Their first (and only) album, Anthems , found Carter going for more of a straightforward rock sound, with touches of positivism on the lyric sheet. It wasn't a bad record (in fact, I thought it was one of 2013's best ); still, when the group was dissolved even I had to admit that he never really, truly looked like he fit in with the sound. It was kind of like Kevin Smith doing a PG-13 ro...

Siding with a brand may put money in your pocket, but how does it benefit fans?

Back in January, I continued my ongoing tradition of choosing 25 artists and predicting the likelihood of new albums by said artists during the calendar year. Typically, I'll recap my progress at the midway point, but this year I considered not bothering with the update at all. Well, then I got bored and had a look at the post from January (which you can read in full here if a recap isn't your bag), and here we are. Obviously, I can't grade myself on albums I predicted would not be released this year, except in the case of the ones that did see light of day despite a prediction that they wouldn't (of which Deftones are the only one so far that's threatening to do so, and we'll talk about them further down the page). So, let's revisit my predictions using the same categories I used in January. Ready?

Wherein the authour reflects on a quarter century of hoarding shiny discs that turned out to be pretty much worthless, and ponders what a future without them might be like.