SOUND BITES

For many rock bands, following up a breakthrough success can be the source of great stress, and can also yield the most satisfying artistic results. In fact, a good percentage of my favourite albums of all time were made by bands in just that position. Couple these feelings with my longtime adoration of Arctic Monkeys, and the album that followed their breakthrough became one of my highest anticipated albums ever. Granted, they have always been popular overseas, and so already kind of made that post-success statement with Favourite Worst Nightmare in 2007; still, homeland success paled in comparison to the international star-making turn that was 2013's AM . Now, to be clear, Arctic Monkeys have always been fond of changing things up from one record to the next, never content to let their sound truly stagnate; after following up their fast and loose debut with the darker and meaner Favourite Worst Nightmare , they ended up going on a spirit walk in the desert with Josh Homme an...

When they arrived on the scene fifteen years ago, Shinedown found themselves already on the wrong side of history; a couple of years removed from the nu-metal and post-grunge heyday of bands like Staind and (welp) Nickelback, the band's debut album was considered standard rock radio fare upon its release and, a couple of moderately successful singles notwithstanding, Leave a Whisper didn't necessarily bode well for long-term relevance or viability of continued success. The thing is, they stuck around long enough (and, more importantly, fed radio enough hits) to buck the odds that were stacked against them; by the time their third album (2008's The Sound of Madness , considered by most fans as their best) ran its promotional course, they'd amassed a handful of formidable singles and built up a devoted fan base. Still, it proved to be a difficult status to maintain, and the band's following pair of albums (2012's Amaryllis and 2015's Threat to Survival ) sa...

As the world awaits that long, long gestating fifth Tool album, Maynard James Keenan has been waiting too, and filling the time with a myriad of occupations; as a prominent wine maker and mastermind behind Puscifer amongst other interests, Keenan's had plenty to keep him busy when not working on that damned Tool record. Now, even as we've been promised that the wait for that is nearly over, perhaps the most welcome distraction comes in the form of new material from A Perfect Circle, one of Keenan's first so-called side projects. Sometimes lost in the shuffle is the fact that APC have also garnered a pretty devoted fan base and have been away for far too long; Eat the Elephant is their first album of original material in fifteen years and, not counting a couple of one off songs along the way, the first time we heard from them in any real capacity since 2004. Over the course of so much time there is bound to be change, and it comes in the overall tone of Eat the Elephant...