Last weekend a few of my friends and I all stuffed ourselves into a car and made a short but sweet weekend trip to sunny St. George, Utah. Aside from “the hell of it,” the reason for our journey entailed a performance by Regal Beast at GoGo 37 and an interview for SLUG’s podcast, Soundwaves From the Underground, with the venue’s owner, Ryan Groskreutz. … read more
Mountaineers in the Mist: The North Face Masters Final Destination
The North Face Masters free ride competition series returned to Snowbird from April 12-14 with over 100 competitors, both men and women, pre-registered for their chance to ‘huck mad pow,’ take home a decent paycheck and obtain the coveted Katana sword trophy. Usually, the first destination on the tour, the Snowbird event was pushed to the final stop due to lack of early season precipitation. … read more
Perfume Genius with Parenthetical Girls @ KIlby Court 04.14
Mike Hadreas doesn’t do drugs, or at least not anymore. This is what the front man of Perfume Genius connoted as he told me the story about how a destitute man carrying a baby randomly solicited him for drugs a few blocks away upon his arrival. He looks as if he wants to laugh and grimace simultaneously at this, but opts to smoke the cigarette clenched in his right paw instead. This is his first time playing in Utah. … read more
Hanni El Khatib @ Urban Lounge 04.13
Khatib has been met with almost immediate success in his newfound full-time music career and I’m not going to argue why. The guy knows how to write songs and he and his band mates can perform them even better. … read more
Napalm Flesh Local Artist Spotlight: Odium Totus
This week’s Napalm Flesh features a local artist spotlight with Dyingnysus of Odium Totus—read the interview and check out their show with Gravecode Nebula and Blood Purge on Saturday April 21 at the Dawg Pound. As usual we have your weekly event rundown and album reviews of the new Municipal Waste (interview coming soon) and Prong. … read more
RJD2, New Body Electric, Burnell Washburn @ The Depot 04.14
RJD2 started doing his thing: grabbing records from his collection and throwing them onto the tables while he scratched and pressed and flicked at his setup like a porn star at an orgy. … read more
Kevin Avery Book Signing @ The King’s English 04.13
Kevin Avery spent four years compiling notes, conducting interviews and organizing the biography and some choice writings of his childhood literary hero, Paul Nelson, one of folk music’s most important critics of the 20th Century. … read more
Poetry Written in Gasoline: Refused @ The Glass House 04.12
Refused are fucking dead. The self-proclaimed “socialist fag-loving pc scumbags” quietly imploded on October 27, 1998, announcing their demise on the very day their final album, The Shape of Punk to Come, was released. That was 14 years ago, and if the adult me told the younger me that we would be seeing one of the most influential unsung hardcore bands of all time live, I would have replied simply, “You demand the impossible.” … read more
The Opiates – Hollywood Cuts: The Remixes Review
There’s always something to be said of a great remix and what it can do to transform a song—from reverent ballad to tits-out club stomper—and how it can revitalize or even reinvent a release. One of my favorite albums of last year was easily Hollywood Under the Knife, released under dance diva extraordinaire Billie Ray Martin’s great Opiates moniker. I was excited by the notion of a new full-length remix album, but didn’t expect to be so blown away by it. … read more
Add a Dash of Local Art: Erica Herbert
SLUG Magazine and Whole Foods Trolley Square have teamed up to feature a local artist’s work in the café area at the Trolley Square Whole Foods every month. Our April 2012 artist is Erica Herbert.
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2011 Local Album Releases
One of the biggest secrets about the Utah music scene as a whole is the amount of music that comes out every year. You wouldn’t expect anything less from a scene with over 600 bands at any given time. Here is a complete list (or as complete a list as we could compile) of every Utah-based album that was released in 2011. … read more
The Cave Singers, Dave Wilson @ Kilby 04.21
“You guys are badass!” Shouted one over-excited spectator as The Cave Singers took the stage. Lead vocalist Pete Quirk was quick to respond, “We are badass! We steal, and we loiter, but we’re a good catch, nonetheless!” Guitarist Derek Fudesco and drummer Marty Lund chuckled and hooted in agreement as they took their posts—Fudesco on a ripped up barstool, and Lund behind his percussion set, which included a pair of bongos. … read more
