The Belfast, Ireland trio, And So I Watch You From Afar, returns with their technicolor warpaint-smudged and candy-coated Slayer riffs punching gaping holes into rainbow-bleeding amplifiers. … read more
Review: Anchoress – Set Sail
I’m calling it—this is the album of the summer, if not the year. Furious and cocky hardcore punk with more swagger in 22 minutes than most bands have in a full LP, I haven’t taken this album out of my stereo since I started listening to it. … read more
Review: Anvil – Hope is Hell
It’s been six years since the documentary was made about Canada’s Anvil rising out of obscurity to, well, just about a higher level of obscurity. The fact that Anvil had some good records in the ‘80s—right about the time metal wasn’t so cool anymore—but never rose to outright fame is the story of a lot of metal bands. … read more
Review: Amon Amarth – Deceiver of the Gods
As one of my friends so cleanly sums it up: “It’s an Amon Amarth record.” … read more
Review: Andy Kaufman – Andy and His Grandmother
If this half-hour-long collection of random conversations that Dada song-and-dance comic Andy Kaufman recorded between ’77 and ’79 is the best anyone could do to drum up renewed interest in whether he faked his own death, then I guess no one really cares anymore. … read more
Review: Anoraak – Chronotropic
The three-piece band possesses the stereotypical French nu-disco sound that seems to be rising in popularity these days. This album makes a valiant effort to encapsulate those final moments of summer but I didn’t really fall for it, in spite of the electroshock therapy I felt Anoraak was subliminally conducting. … read more
Review: Antithought – Life’s Too Long
The simplistic, three-chord fist picking reflects the content of the lyrics. Fuckin’ faster than the S Line—I timed my showers with the album and probably saved quite a bit of water. Life’s Too Long is steeped in the D.C. street punk style with hairs of late ’90s punk and I look forward to their next release. … read more
Review: Angel Olsen – Burn Your Fire For No Witnesses
She’s still hanging her voice on vintage Americana hooks—“I feel so lonesome I could cry,” she sings on “Hi-five”—though this is her first release with a backing band, which envelops her fiery warble in warm, complementary tunes. … read more
Review: ANNE – Pulling Chain
While the invisible line that often divides musical subgenres sometimes requires a stretch of the imagination, Portland-based ANNE (aka David Lindell) has completely jumped the shoegazer one it inherited for a decidedly electronic gothy one, on this, their “proper” debut. … read more
Review: Apocalyptica – Wagner Reloaded – Live in Leipzig
Whether wallowing in themes cut and pasted from Beethoven, maudlin lullabies (with sampled baby prattle) or the most domesticated of Phrygian exoticism, the album consistently eschews any of the rapturous chromatism Wagner used to drown and annihilate the bourgeois ego. … read more
Review: Anal Blasphemy/Forbidden Eye – The Perverse Worship of Satanic Sins Split
I’m not quite sure what the fascination is with metal bands starting their band names with that oh-so familiar, feces-producing body part—maybe just the fact that it’s dirty and sounds gross. … read more
Review: Annihilator – Feast
“Feast” is an appropriate title for this special edition release, and SLUG HQ was lucky enough to get a fancy copy of it. The digibook two CD and DVD package has the goods of the full-length, Feast, which follows in what Annihilator has been doing for the last decade. … read more
