1090 Club
Natural Selection
SideCho Records
Street: 03.24
1090 Club = (Cursive + Minus the Bear + Murder By Death) / 2
A glance at these guys’ press release and a quick scour of other reviews seems to indicate this album is apparently hot shit (?) for three reasons: 1) It’s produced by Steve Fisk, the same guy involved with bands such as Nirvana and Soundgarden; 2) They have a unique setup (keys and violin replacing the bass); and 3) They're from Montana!!! While these may indeed be interesting facts about these guys, it does not make up for the general mood that emanates from this album. To be specific, the violinist is mediocre at best, the vocals are nothing special, and the album ends up being a snooze-fest halfway through the first listen. The high point of these guys might just be the percussion, which is still out-shined by similar artists such as Cursive and Minus the Bear. Next! –Ross Solomon
Adam Franklin
Spent Bullets
Second Motion Records
Street: 04.01
Adam Franklin = Swervedriver’s Love Songs
There was a point in the mid 90s when Swervedriver was simply amazing; when Adam Franklin remembers he was the lead singer. Spent Bullets is his second release since the band called it quits in 1998. In 2008, they got back together and did one more tour and it was about as enthusiastic as this album: one good song to open up with, then 40 minutes of love songs. And not even sappy love songs—just boring, heartless, and pointless love songs. Please stop releasing albums, Adam, you broke my heart and now you’re just putting out cigarettes in the open wound. –Cinnamon Brown
The Albert Square/Hard Girls
Split
Silver Sprocket
Street: 12.05
The Albert Square = Jawbreaker + Colossal + Weezer
Holy shit, a split featuring two relatively unknown bands that doesn’t suck! Both of these bands play indie/punk in the Asian Man Records style, which is to say they’re big Blake Schwarznebach fans, but both manage to take their similar influences and channel them into unique sounds. The Albert Square is a bit more polished and versatile, equally capable of creating dreamy, intricate tunes (“Sadie Siren,” “Twenty Days”) and the syncopated, gypsy-punk stylings of “Raygun.” Hard Girls is comprised of members of Shinobu and Pteradon, so they’re a lot more raw and poorly recorded (but in a good way) and perfectly emulate the mixture of introspection and aggression mastered by Jawbreaker. If you’ve got five bucks lying around, there are a lot worse ways to spend it. –Ricky Vigil
Altar of Plagues
White Tomb
Profound Lore Records
Street: 04.17
Altar of Plagues = old ISIS + Fen + Khanate + Cormac McCarthy
When compared to their recent and humble beginnings, Ireland’s Altar of Plagues are a completely different band now. They started out writing solid but forgettable material, followed up by their incredible Sol EP release, and now to this, their first full-length with the mighty Profound Lore. This consists of four lengthy, bleak, emotive tracks, which range from black metal to plodding funeral dirges to even a hint of post-rock. The journey it sets the listener out on invokes a bleak mood of an apocalypse that has already come and gone, crumbled buildings and dilapidated structures, vast landscapes of brown and gray. Each track brings on a hypnotic feeling due to long measures of tastefully used repetition. I am absolutely thrilled about the direction they’ve taken, and fully expect them to be on my short list of active bands that help make black metal stay important and interesting. Listen to this band with mind and heart. –Conor Dow
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