SOUND BITES

Over the course of a pair of EPs and full-length debut Furiosity in 2013, Monster Truck have quickly built a loyal fan base and racked up a handful of Cancon rock staples (see Seven Seas Blues , Righteous Smoke , Sweet Mountain River , Old Train , etc.). The safest route for the group to take, then, would be to deliver more of the same. At first glance, it appears as though they've done just that. Once again enlisting the production services of Eric Ratz and with a design layout very similar to that of  Furiosity  (both records have photo collages on one side of the insert and lyrics on the other), the only place  Sittin' Heavy  has a chance to differ is in the songs themselves. Wisely, the band is careful not to tinker too much with their core sound, as evidenced by lead single  Don't Tell Me How To Live ; it finds the thick grooves and powerful riffs Monster Truck have designated as the foundation of their sound very much intact here. Elsewhere, t...

Depending on who you ask, Victorious could be Wolfmother's third, fourth or fifth album. Keep Moving , originally slated to be the third album to bear the Wolfmother name, was instead released as an Andrew Stockdale solo record in 2013. Then, a year later, the rough version of a new Wolfmother record, New Crown , was posted to the band's Soundcloud page. The latter record eventually saw a limited physical release (as of this writing it's not available for purchase except in digital format), but good luck getting your hands on a CD of it unless you caught the short window when it was sold on their website. So, according to my CD shelf, Victorious is Wolfmother's third official major release, which would also make it the first properly released and promoted album from the group since 2009's Cosmic Egg . That's not to say that Keep Moving and New Crown don't exist, but that is to say that unless you've been paying very close attention this re...

It feels like The Cult have released more than ten studio albums, but upon discography research I found that Hidden City is indeed their tenth. The reason that seems low to me is partly due to the fact that they've been a band for 35 years, and partly due to the sheer amount of sonic ground they've covered up to this point in their career. Never shy when it comes to assimilating styles of the times into their sound, The Cult have dabbled in psychedelic pop/alt ( Dreamtime , Love ), muscular rock/metal ( Electric , Sonic Temple ), grungy hard rock ( The Cult ), and even nu-metal ( Beyond Good and Evil ) en route to great success and the sad, slow decline in popularity that followed. Nearly a decade ago, however, the band shifted their focus to no-frills, balls-to-the-wall rock n' roll with Born Into This . It wasn't the sound of a band aping popular culture, more so a band tearing it down to the foundation and starting anew. The supposed closing chapter of...