Of Legends
Stranded
Season of Mist
Street: 03.29
Of Legends = Hatebreed + pre-calculus Meshuggah+ Winter Solstice
I can’t blame metal bands for wanting to emulate Meshuggah’s chug rhythms of doom, though it would be nice if one of them could try and make it interesting. Such is the case with this metal debut of Luis Duboc of The Secret Handshake fame. He brings us Stranded, a metalcore album that he has written and performed himself, aside from the beneficent addition of Travis Orbin’s impressive drumming. While Duboc is clearly a master of his instruments and offers us a sharp and technically solid production, his crossover into metal leaves me without the emotional thrashing required to make an impact. Aside from a few painfully short Dillinger Escape Plan-esque creative outbursts, the two-minute songs bleed together in an almost fundamental expression of what I imagine metal must sound like to an outsider. He has a solid scream, but his choice to go monotone only flattens his voice against the sound of the drop-tuned guitars like a corpse catapulted at a fortress wall, and his lyrical outrages against assimilation and worship of a false god feel … well, false.  By album’s end, I’d forgotten most of what I’d heard, and my only desire was to check out Orbin’s other projects. –Megan Kennedy

One Win Choice
Conveyor
Jump Start
Street: 03.01
One Win Choice = Kid Dynamite + Against Me! + Comeback Kid
Even if they plucked their name directly from a Little League coach’s motivational manual, Conveyor is every bit a mature sophomore release. Cutting their teeth on multiple tours over the past few years, this Jersey quintet has developed a “tighter-than-a-duck’s-rear” musicality and a caustic sense of potent melody that saturates the album. Opening track “Movement,” with its massively infectious chant-back, sets the precedent and they’re at their most tunefully fervent on songs like “Places” and “Act Your Age.” Now, most hardcore bands shouldn’t make full-lengths (never say in 10 songs what can be said in five!) and for the Ritalin chompers, their occasional forays into slower, more thematically shifting numbers (“Ocean, Luzerne, Monroe”) might choke the momentum a bit, but as a whole, the album excels as a triumphant slab of sing-along basement hardcore with a head and a voice. –Dylan Chadwick

Orchestre Poly-Rythmo
Cotonou Club
Strut
Street: 03.28
Orchestre Poly-Rythmo = Fela kuti + James Brown + Tony Allen
Orchestre Poly Rythmo has been a buried treasure in Benin since the late 60s. It wasn't until 2004 that their afrobeat-jazz-soul-psych-voodoo-funk spread to the West with the help of two labels, Soundway and Analog Africa, who each released a collection of archives. With newfound fame, the 10-piece band reformed with five original members and recorded their first album in 20 years. Recorded in Paris, Cotonou Club finds the group with new material and revisiting some of their classics, like “Gbeti Madjro.” The album opens with the punchy horn section and snappy guitar-driven “Ne Te Faches Pas,” while “Pardo” is drenched in vicious blasts of organ. “Von Vo Nono” is lined with layers of voodoo-psych. The real gem, “Lion Is Burning,” is tucked away at the end and features self-proclaimed fans Paul Thomas and Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand. –Courtney Blair

The Orion Experience              
NYC Girl EP   
Sweet!           
Street: 04.15
The Orion Experience = David Cassidy Cover Band
I know one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover—or in this case, an EP, by its dreadfully conceived cover, because sometimes, the content or here, the music inside, is better than the packaging it came in.  Fortunately, this is the case with the New York City-based quintet The Orion Experience.  Having said that, however, the light and, at times, cloyingly sweet music here is best taken in smaller doses, which is why this EP is just about the right length.  Led by the 70s disco-tinged title track, the band’s sound is breezy and they don’t seem to take themselves too seriously, and this laidback approach makes them appear to be a cover band rather than an actual group. NYC Girl’s five tracks are credited to the whole band: lead singer and frontman Orion Simprini, lead singer and keyboardist Linda Horwatt, lead guitarist Reef Roxx, bassist Chris Lucas and drummer Jon Weber, and they are clearly talented, but I would prefer to have Horwatt’s voice more prominent in the mix.  The unoriginal (in theme at least) “Vampire and Rollercoaster” are both catchy, if not a tad predictable, but the too short “Sweet Friend,” lead by Horwatt, simply ends too abruptly.  I’d bet they would do justice to a disco cover tune, but in a Glee-dominated pop world, this seems as uninspired as the band appears to be themselves. –Dean O Hillis