SOUND BITES

  Robb Flynn must be a tough guy to work with; while turnover in bands isn't all that uncommon, by the time original bassist Adam Duce left in 2013 Flynn was Machine Head's only remaining original member (accompanied by his second bassist, third lead guitarist and third drummer). Now, less than a decade later, only Duce's replacement remains from that lineup, as Of Kingdom and Crown  (aside: I'm not using the stylized Ø's for these titles because cøme øn nøw) sees recorded debuts of guitarist Waclaw Kieltyka and drummer Matt Alston. Only one bass player away from turning over his entire band twice, Flynn enters Machine Head's new phase with something to prove. The good news is, Machine Head's tenth album is a step up from their last couple albums, which were overlong and felt like bitter, dumbed down shells of past successes. Flynn's imagination is reignited, resulting in a concept record with two main opposing characters, complete with fleshed out back ...

  Months into the pandemic, Tom Meighan left Kasabian before admitting to committing spousal abuse; he didn't contribute anything but vocals to the band anyway, so good riddance. Still, his departure forced the hand of Sergio Pizzorno, the band's guitarist and sole songwriter. Faced with the possibility of having to disband Kasabian, Pizzorno instead chose to continue while also assuming Meighan's former role as vocalist. The first results of this decision are manifested in The Alchemist's Euphoria , Kasabian's seventh album and first in five years; the prolonged gap between albums and the change up front mark The Alchemist's Euphoria as an album ripe for branching out the group's sound, and that's exactly what Pizzorno does. There isn't much here that calls to mind past achievements, however; ALYGATYR , the lead single and the song Pizzorno described as the bridge between old and new Kasabian, feels less like a relative of past releases and more li...

  John Darnielle's inspiration knows no bounds. Holed up like the rest of us during the early stages of the pandemic, the Mountain Goats' principal member turned to vintage action movies as a form of escape; in turn, he was driven to write music based around these movies and their tropes. Having already done records based around such concepts as tarot cards, professional wrestling and Dungeons & Dragons , Bleed Out doesn't feel too out of step for Darnielle. Coming so quickly after previous releases, one would be forgiven for allowing Bleed Out to get lost in the shuffle; after all, it's The Mountain Goats' 21st album and already their fourth since 2020. That said, it does act as quite a stark departure from the quieter, more reflective albums they've produced of late; these are bloody songs of revenge and violence, and the music follows suit. While there are subdued moments to be heard, the majority of Bleed Out is upbeat and, in some cases, downright hea...

  Let's not bury the lead here; as popular as they've remained and as musically talented as they are, 2022 Muse are far removed from their creative peak. At this point in their career the stakes aren't exactly high, though; one could argue they've accomplished all they've set out to, becoming one of the world's most popular rock bands and leaving a string of hits in their wake. Muse don't owe anybody anything these days; having reached the pinnacle many album cycles ago, they've spent the better part of the last fifteen years or so coasting on goodwill from their best work ( The Origin of Symmetry and Absolution , for my and most other fans' money), freely experimenting with musical styles and consistently dealing in the bumper sticker sociopolitical values that have become Matt Bellamy's modem operandi. This means that, as static as the band's touchstones have remained, what they choose to augment their sound with has been the headline more...

  It's not easy being a "replacement band". Let me explain; from time to time, as an artist evolves outside of the box that the masses create for them and follows their muse in a direction that's deemed too far away from their assumed place on the musical spectrum, those fickle minded fans sometimes single out another artist and mentally replaces the former with the latter. In order for this to happen, the newer artist needs to be creating music that's somewhat close in tone or feeling to the music that made the former famous; there aren't a ton of examples of this, but the most notable is probably Muse. Playing sinewy rock that often juxtaposed quiet verses with loud, bombastic choruses at the same time Radiohead was off blowing up whatever box people would dare put them in, Muse became the replacement band for Radiohead for some based solely on the vibes people got from their first few albums. I could have easily brought up the concept of the replacement ban...

  On The Chats' excellent standalone single AC/DC CD in late 2020, Eamon Sandwith declared their fellow countrymen "the second greatest band in history (and we are first!)"; perhaps it's not surprising, then, that the Aussie punks' second LP takes a page from the AC/DC handbook and falls right in line with what the same basic ingredients they've been using since their inception in 2016. The only noticeable change is in the line-up; Josh Price is replaced by Josh Hardy on guitar, resulting in an overall tone that's a little tougher and riff-oriented. Otherwise, the band (rounded out by drummer Matt Boggis) are in typical form on Get Fucked ; recorded in six short days, the fourteen tracks here (there's a hidden track following Getting Better ) represent another batch of fun, loose numbers that barrel ahead at considerable speed and once again focus on the trappings of everyday life. You won't find any deep musings here, nor any convoluted prose. Ta...

  With the release of Viva Las Vengeance , Brendon Urie has now released almost as many albums as a solo artist as he did with his former band. That said, there's a palpable attempt at recapturing a full band feel for the seventh Panic! record; foregoing the convenience of digital recording, Viva Las Vengeance was recorded to analog tape in an attempt to hearken back to the classic glory days of glam rock.  That's a noble decision, one that sets this record up as a fun throwback to a more and more forgotten era of music, a nod to the massive riffs and thick grooves that defined a generation of music lovers. The truth is, while the sentiment is nice, the songwriting often doesn't quite live up to the lofty comparisons this album aims to evoke; take the star-reaching  Don't Let the Light Go Out , a rather flat ballad that tries to cover up its shortcomings with auditory callbacks to '70s power ballads and oppressive vocal overdubs. This approach is the default settin...

  If it's not the mid-to-late nineties, it's difficult for a ska/punk band to break through to mainstream success; and yet, that's what The Interrupters did in 2018. She's Kerosene and, to nearly the same extent, follow-up single Gave You Everything , propelled the three Bivona brothers and Aimee Interrupter from the niche scene they inhabited to international recognition. Of course, just as their star was rising the world came to a standstill, so it took a little longer than expected to figure out how they would go about the business of releasing an album with newfound expectations attached. As it turns out, The Interrupters' approach after four years away is to simply provide more of what brought them here in the first place; throughout their three previous albums, their sound was planted firmly in the Rancid wheelhouse (to no one's surprise, really; they're signed to Tim Armstrong's label, and he's had heavy involvement in all of their records, p...

  It's impossible to separate The Sadies' eleventh studio album from the tragedy that surrounds it, even if it's not informed in any way by it; though it was completed last summer, Colder Streams is released mere months after the shocking and untimely death of co-founder/vocalist/guitarist Dallas Good. His loss will be deeply felt by many, especially family and peers in the music community, for a long time to come; that said, the album that contains his presumed final contributions is a hell of a note to go out on, as it were. Coming five years after previous LP Northern Passages , Colder Streams further refines the psych-tinged, smoky roots rock the group have been perfecting since their inception close to a quarter century ago. Clocking in at a lean 32 minutes, this is a taut and filler-free distillation of what's made The Sadies one of Canada's most endeared rock bands. Assisted by the production of Arcade Fire's Richard Reed Parry, Colder Streams also fea...

  Snarky, sarcastic and fun, Cheekface have seen their profile steadily rise in a few short years since their debut; their third album, Too Much To Ask , plays like a frenetic and freaked out soundtrack to 2022, with Greg Katz's rapid fire lyrics holding a mirror to society's decline while the band bashes out funky power pop and grinning as the world burns. Katz's voice being so close to that of John McCrea's, it's an easy reach to compare them to Cake (and, when we're talking about '90s bands that are due to exert influence on the youngsters, you can really do much worse), although I associate them thematically more to bands like Parquet Courts and Sports Team. Katz and his talk-singing will be either your ticket into or out of Cheekface, and your enjoyment of the songs on Too Much To Ask will likely only take you so far depending on your interest in Katz's anxiety-ridden ruminations on social media, consumerism, dumpster diving, minimum wage, mental i...

  Jack White's second album of 2022 was billed as the gentler, more traditional sister album to Fear of the Dawn , the counterpart to a chaotic and far-ranging record that promised less wild mood swings and more emotional resonance. Fans of White's first pair of solo records (especially Blunderbuss ), as well as some of The White Stripes more tender tunes (especially those found on Get Behind Me Satan ), will be pleased to know that Entering Heaven Alive arrives more or less as advertised. What's odd about Jack White's solo discography, though, is the way that his fifth album sort of throws the trajectory off; starting off with more standard fare before gradually growing wilder, funkier and louder with each album, Entering Heaven Alive is rather easy to read as a step back. By stripping away the more outlandish experiments and presenting relatively traditional songs, there's a natural tendency to take an album like this as a creative step back or, worse, a watered...