SOUND BITES

To say Slipknot has had a tumultuous career is a bit of an understatement; chided for the nu-metal leanings of their first two albums by some and bemoaned for the evolving songcraft on the two that followed by others (not to mention internal tensions that resulted in multiple hiatuses along the way), this band was in for a tough go of it coming into their fifth album (and first in six years) as it was. Throw in the tragic death of bassist Paul Gray in 2010 and the departure of former drummer Joey Jordison and it's a minor miracle that a fifth Slipknot album exists at all. And, in the face of such catastrophe and calamity, the immediate question going into .5: The Gray Chapter for many will be "should it exist?" It is worth noting up front that, upon a cursory listen to the album, both Gray's and Jordison's losses are deeply felt. The replacement players know what they're doing, but couldn't possibly stand a chance of playing the same spiritual roles as ...

There's something to be said for a band as creatively restless as the Melvins; they've forged a career that just recently passed the thirty year mark while never losing their quest for new sounds. And yet, for as many directions their muse has pulled them over the decades, they've somehow managed to also develop their own unique sonic signature. It's the sludgy, metallic riffage that opens the album on Bride of Crankenstein , a hazy stomper that leaves no doubt as to who's providing the soundtrack. However, there are a couple of new players here; this incarnation of the Melvins (there have been plenty) features Paul Leary and Jeff Pinkus of Butthole Surfers joining pre-existing Melvins King Buzzo and Dale Crover. What they bring, as if this band needed it, was extra weirdness; it courses throughout the album, in stabs of synth, odd production shifts and other assorted experiments. Leary also gets full credit on three songs, which certainly stand out from the other...

This one might be a tough sell. Whether or not you see the debut album from Korn as a pioneering release for hard music or the harbinger of hard music's ruination depends largely on your opinion of what came after. If you subscribe to the latter group, you likely lament that Korn begat Limp Bizkit begat Staind begat Puddle of Mudd, so on, so forth. Of course, it's a little silly to blame Korn for Puddle of Mudd, but they've made themselves easy targets with a string of albums over the past fifteen years or so that hover somewhere between "diminishing returns" and "gaudy embarrassments". But let's forget everything that came after for just a moment, and remember that there was a time twenty years ago when nothing like Korn existed. Their unique blend of bowel shaking tones, hip hop rhythms and explicit anguish officially ushered in the genre later labeled as "nu metal", for better or worse. Korn doesn't speak ...

If you've been following Danish art punkers Iceage from their inception, chances are your first listen to third album Plowing Into The Field Of Love will prompt some level of confusion. After all, this a band that built a reputation for their furious, hardcore influenced two minute slabs of noise that opts to open their new album with a five minute long ragged waltz, complete with piano. Plowing Into The Fields Of Love isn't shy about blowing up the band's sound; this was clear from the time shuffling single The Lord's Favorite dropped, and Iceage spend the full 48 minutes of the album fearlessly (gleefully, even) plucking influences and trying to fit them into their aesthetic. It's like they're roaming the produce section at the grocery store taking bites out of whatever's within reach. There's the drunken new wave clutter of How Many , the explosive nervous energy that runs through Glassy Eyed, Dormant And Veiled , and the countrified post punk of...

Longtime lovers of rock and alternative music in Canada have to be feeling a little weird these days. More and more major Canadian alt bands from the '90s that went gently into the night have resurfaced in recent years (see: Headstones, Big Wreck, the Grapes of Wrath, etc.), armed not just with reunion tours but also with new material. So when Moist announced their return amid The Tea Party's unveiling of their first new music in a decade, there simply wasn't enough thunder to go around, and I sadly approached Moist's fourth album with a little less excitement than I normally would have. One of the first things you'll notice about Glory Under Dangerous Skies is the abundance of guitars. This is surely at least partially due to production duties being handled by lead guitarist Mark Makoway; far be it for me to complain about guitars being present on a rock album, but they're a lot more prevalent here than on Moist's original trinity of albums. Indeed, the ...

Weezer's ninth album really wants to be the grand return to form it's being marketed as. It goes so far as to explicitly state its intentions as such in lead single Back To The Shack (which, if you want to take solace in something, is by far the worst song on the record), wherein primary songwriter Rivers Cuomo professes a desire to be "rockin' out like it's '94". Of course, there's an inherent natural problem with the approach; expressly attempting to recapture a decades-old feeling and chemistry can't help but come off as disingenuous regardless of how well it's executed. Everything Will Be Alright In The End does everything it can to get the goodwill of critics and fans back. Producer Ric Ocasek is back in the fold to help the band rekindle some of the rock fire that they burned with during their iconic first two albums and sporadically since. The band themselves still remember most of their old tricks, and use these callback triggers wi...

Anyone who kept paying attention to My Chemical Romance past their star-making turn in the mid-aughts could have seen Hesitant Alien coming. Eternally pigeonholed as an emo/punk band (you know, the broken hearts/slit wrists set), MCR evolved steadily into a grander, less insular version of itself. It kept things fresh for them but lost too many runny eyeliner clad fans along the way, and by the time they officially called it quits in 2013 the news was met with more shrugs than tears. The thing is, for the perceived drop in quality among the "emo kids", MCR actually got better as a band as they went along. Even their rougher early singles had immense pop sensibilities, and so it only made sense that these pop leanings would grow sharper and more defined. Bemoan the muddled high concept behind Danger Days all you want, but you can't deny that the band's final official album had some monstrously catchy tunes. Gerard Way's debut solo record doesn't necessarily ...