RECOMMENDED

You’re not likely going to walk into a grocery store and hear Unwritten Law playing over the loudspeakers. While Green Day and similarly minded pop-cum-punk groups turned a corner, producing widely palatable works, this SoCal troupe kept to a more hard-rock territory, subverting some of its punkier inclinations over time. Hearing Unwritten Law’s first two discs—the 1994 “Blue Room” and its 1996 follow-up “Oz Factor”—it’s difficult to hear what made the band attractive enough to garner major label attention. Differentiating between a track like “Suzanne” with its plainly sung vocals, hints of harmony and rudimentary pop construction, and then-contemporary groups on Fat Wreck Chords or Epitaph is virtually impossible. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

With the voice of a raspy pop star, Eric Bachmann led the North Carolinian Archers of Loaf for the better part of the nineties alternative rock plague. Getting lumped into a handful of well-meaning noiseniks like Pavement didn’t elevate the ensemble to the same vaunted territory as that better-known group. Archers weren’t ever as wild or focused on distorting rock’s language, but early on, Bachmann and company wrenched out some surprising sounds from a traditional rock setup. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Few artists can claim as distinguished and influential a career as El-P. From his days in Company Flow to the founding of iconoclastic label Definitive Jux to the present day, the former El Producto has never been far from a mic, and his influence has never been far from the industry. El-P took the hard New York City sound and dragged it through the mud, crafting atmospheric cuts for his intellectual and exquisitely designed bars. It’s a style that established an entire sound, one that would later be represented by the Def Jux label. This combination of frightfully dark and grimy production with transcendent lyrical skills made El-P and his label-mates subterranean legends, skipping past the Vanilla Underground emoting of their aughts contemporaries at Rhymesayers and forging a brutal underground scene still plied today. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

The entirety of Negative Approach’s recorded legacy can be taken in over the course of a half hour or so, but hardcore’s meant to be fast and to the point. The band’s frontman John Brannon—who also did time at the helm of Laughing Hyenas and Easy Action—has somehow continued screaming over the last several decades as convincingly as when he was eighteen. How his vocal chords hold up is a mystery. NA’s all pretty standard fare at this point. But when the Detroit band first recorded its slew of anthems, there weren’t more than a handful of bands taking such an aggressive approach to punk and shooting it through with a message of individuality. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

“Everything Went Black” opens The Black Dahlia Murder’s 2007 album “Nocturnal.” The title can be attributed to the Detroit ensemble’s enjoyment of Euro-styled black metal. But just as likely, it’s a reference to a compendium of early Black Flag material, collected and packaged under the same name. Musically, the influence isn’t overtly reflected, but during the Black Dahlia’s career, enough heavy music’s been assimilated into its work that it’d be difficult to fathom the connection being an accident. Just on that 2007 album, everything from grind to death gets referenced—and sometimes during the same composition. Its title track sports unrelenting tempos and tag-teamed vocals now synonymous with the band. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Beginning his recorded career in 2000, the music Sage Francis raps over has always been an evolving mass of surprising influences. Even a decade back, though, there were hints at where he’d be in 2010 when his album “Li(f)e” was issued. The MC’s first few releases through his own Strange Famous imprint sported tinny production, warbling high-end and rumbling lows. Eventually he hooked up with Anticon for the “Climb Trees” disc, but there were still varying sonic qualities in play. But supported by the likes of Alias and Jel (two producers who deserve a wider audience all this time later), tracks like “Message Sent,” a rounded-off piano line and hand drums, it towers over the million-dollar beats being rolled out today. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Without Fishbone, Sublime and No Doubt would have wound up being drug-addled SoCal footnotes. Whatever eventually became the American conception of ska music didn’t begin with Angelo Moore and Norwood, but their group’s all-inclusive approach to songwriting influenced a generation of weird bands. It’d actually be reasonably easy to round up Fishbone’s Jamaican-related efforts onto a single disc–the six-minute “Party at Ground Zero” being an epic accomplishment made even more stunning by the fact that the song was issued as a part of the band’s first EP back in 1985. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Every good theatrical performer benefits from having a partner tuned in to his or her brand of noxious foolery. BBQ has been King Khan’s foil on and off since the mid-nineties, when the pair performed as the Spaceshits, a Canadian garage and punk ensemble. The group served as training ground for the two performers who would continue recording together sporadically in ever-evolving situations over the next decade and change. For Khan, the Shrines, a German R&B group replete with horn section and a dancing girl, next served as his sounding board, holding down a groove for the singer and guitarist to flip out, dance around half-clothed and engorge his public persona with an even greater sense of abandonment. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Driving east out of the Bay Area certainly starts out enjoyably. Passing through the various East Bay communities and into cowtown cities, a bucolic landscape unfolds only momentarily disrupted by Sacramento. Entering Tahoe National Forest, despite a few reminders of the Donner Party, it’s easy to understand the allure California holds over so many folks. Coming down out of those mountains, Nevada begins to unfurl, verdancy replaced with shifting brown hues. Then travelers enter Reno. The freeway, which eventually leads to an interstate stretching to Chicago and on to the East Coast, is a major route for drug trafficking. “Reno 911” isn’t a joke—it’s variations on reality. In Reno, getting stopped by cops and being detained for no reason isn’t beyond the realm of possibility. And they really like unloosing the K-9 unit. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

The party line regarding Pittsburgh’s The Cynics is that the band kept simple-minded garage rock alive during the mid to late eighties not just by reinterpreting its dulcet, scuzzball tones, but by running Get Hip Records. Matched up to the indie-inspired crop of relative newcomers to the genre over the last decade, it’s reasonably easy to discern a difference between those folks and Pennsylvania’s torch-bearers. Read the rest of this entry »