Alexander Jones

With an honest, commanding voice that encroaches into just about every crevice of her latest record, “Shitty Hits,” Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Katie Von Schleicher has staked her claim as one of the most exciting solo acts currently going. Songs like “The Image,” “Midsummer,” and “Life’s a Lie” are magnificent compositions that call to mind the expert […]

Lansdale, Pennsylvania’s LMI is tough to pin down stylistically, so please don’t take that big “PUNK” above this write-up too literally. LMI isn’t punk in the sense that they trade in three-chord anthems and bratty dispositions, but rather it has a youthful willingness to try just about anything under the heavy music sun. Its most […]

For a band on the precipice of entering its 20th year, Thrice still sounds as vital as ever. While the group of kids who wrote the blistering post-hardcore anthems found on 2002’s fantastic “The Illusion of Safety” and 2003’s major label follow-up, “The Artist in the Ambulance,” have done a lot of growing up over […]

Self-proclaimed “bardic metal” trio Tyranitar sources its songwriting material from the most “metal” subject there is: world history. Sure, it’s hard not to love metal’s undying affinity for stoned wizards and metaphysical Satanism, but those topics can also be relatively low-hanging fruit from a creative standpoint. With lo-fi black metal theatrics shot through with folk […]

While its disarmingly sweet name may call to mind the surf rock bands of yesteryear, Providence, Rhode Island’s Roz and The Rice Cakes is not a group to take lightly. Led by enigmatic singer and multi-instrumentalist Roz Raskin, the band’s latest single, this year’s “Do You,” smuggles a wonderfully Caribou-esqe rhythm through deceptively simple loops […]

Fully rejecting the nuance and up-tempo groove of more traditional hardcore, Florida beatdown upstarts Bodysnatcher sound like a 10 car pile-up in slow motion. It takes less than a minute into the band’s debut record, “Abandonment,” for front man Kyle Medina to break free from the seemingly infinite breakdown behind him and bark “YOU KNOW […]

Up-and-coming London, Ontario, degenerates Single Mothers sound like a punk band fronted by a perpetually drunk Allen Ginsberg. Its latest record, this year’s excellent “Our Pleasure,” is a cacophonous blend of nerve-shredding riffs blanketed by frontman Drew Thomson’s sneering tirades against popular society, “the scene,” domestic complacency, and pretty much anything else that stumbles downrange […]

With a deliberately lo-fi sound reminiscent of greats like Guided by Voices and PJ Harvey, Philly-based upstarts Pouty wear its influences proudly. The project’s mastermind, Rachel Gagliardi, cut her teeth in the fantastic band Slutever before distilling her inspirations down to a fine point for Pouty. The band’s latest release, “Saint Mary of the Moods,” […]

With thought-provoking album titles like “Love Songs for the Retarded” and songs bearing names as profound as “I Can’t Stop Farting,” New Hampshire’s The Queers are punk rock’s long-reigning court jesters. Once you move beyond the slapstick shock value of the group’s juvenile sloganeering, however, what’s left is some undeniable music. The aforementioned 1993 album […]

All things will inevitably come to an end. No musical subgenre is better versed in that concept than black metal, with all its apocalyptic doomsaying and end-times sloganeering. However, while universal entropy and our eventual destruction are foolish to denounce, that doesn’t mean we can’t mourn the great bands we’ll lose along the way, and […]

For a band with almost 30 years of activity under its belt, it’s nothing short of inspiring that New Orleans sludge metal pioneers EyeHateGod are still full of surprises. After a string of increasingly caustic records, from 1990’s “In the Name of Suffering” to 2000’s “Confederacy of Ruined Lives,” the band entered a lengthy dark […]