SOUND BITES

Joshua Homme has never been one to shy away from risk. The very formation of Queens of the Stone Age from the ashes of highly influential stoner rock group Kyuss was a risk in that Kyuss had built a devoted fan base through the mid '90s that wasn't expecting tunes as sticky and effortlessly cool as Regular John and If Only . Over the course of the first three QOTSA records, Homme and many of his good friends collectively steered the group's sound in several directions, which gave the records the feel of really, really good mixtapes. This doesn't get more apparent than on QOTSA's star-making Songs for the Deaf , the desert trip thrill ride released fifteen years ago that remains one of the century's most influential rock records. After the massive success of Songs for the Deaf , Homme set to stretch into uncharted territory and subvert expectations with the sinister, volatile Lullabies to Paralyze . Undeterred by the bewilderment of some fans to that record...

It's a little bewildering to me that Brand New is still commonly referred to as an emo band; while the tag can't be disputed on their early material, by the time they'd signed with a major (just over a decade ago) they were forging their own, defiant path. With 2006's The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me , they created a dense and combustible soundtrack that held only faint echoes of their past; it's a darkened, haunted classic, and now sits solidly in my top five records of the century. Their fourth album (2009's Daisy ) was a victim of circumstance more than anything, bearing the unenviable burden of following up such a dizzying masterwork; its reliance on uglier, grittier tones combined with a less consistent batch of songs made it feel like a worse album than it was, and I feel like it's destined to go down in history as the band's most overlooked work. Why it has taken so long to figure out what comes next (and, if the cryptic messages are t...

As the project that reunites multi-faceted vocalist Mike Patton with his former Fantomas band mate Dave Lombardo, Dead Cross was already enticing before a note was played. Throw in Justin Pearson and Michael Crain of renowned hardcore punk group Retox, and the possibilities become endless. To no one's surprise, Patton is in fine form here, and those used to his more extreme tendencies (such as on Fantomas and Mr. Bungle records) will be pleased to hear that Patton is still just as effective and entrancing when he spitting, shrieking and snarling as he is when he's singing. His manic deliveries are especially welcome considering the relative restraint shown on his last two high-profile records (Faith No More's Sol Invictus and Tomahawk's Oddfellows ); any concerns that age has lessened Patton's abilities are put to rest early and often. Lombardo's drumming prowess is also no secret to anyone who's been paying attention, and his performance here is reli...

It's hard to go into Arcade Fire's fifth album without a mind toward all the noise surrounding it, whether pre- or post-release; a multi-faceted, relentless social marketing campaign (with emphasis on "marketing") leading up to the album's arrival gave way to lukewarm reactions to the music itself, which puts me in kind of a weird position giving this album another go nearly a week after its release. In a way, I've been pre-conditioned by the band to ignore its commercial trappings of the record because they've made such a huge, elaborate joke out of selling out; in another way, I've been set up to hate it by my peers, fellow fans and critics who were more than ready to eviscerate Arcade Fire's first major label release. So, with these factors as far out of mind as possible, I slapped the headphones on one more time to form as close to an informed personal opinion as I can glean from Everything Now . The thing is, as I listen I can't help b...

When last we heard from Manchester Orchestra, they had just partaken in an exercise of extremes; 2014 saw the release of the intentionally heavy Cope and its intentionally stripped down counterpart Hope . These albums seemed like the result of curiosity, in that it felt like the band wanted to see how far they could go in each direction while, in the end, perhaps the songs would have been better served by sticking to the space between. Although I didn't fault them for going hard, many fans felt the emotional center of the songs had been bludgeoned by Cope 's production (and, subsequently, all that remained in the arrangements on Hope ). That said, if there's one thing we can look forward to about a new Manchester Orchestra record, it's that it won't sound like the last one. True to form, A Black Mile to the Surface sees the group dull the edges they stabbed the songs with on Cope , opting for a cinematic sound that's surely a result of Andy Hull and Robert ...