Alexander Jones

Summer in Rochester is a beautiful, fleeting thing. It’s something we all pine for while we’re scraping ice off our windshields for six months straight, but once it finally arrives it feels like it’s gone in an instant. One of Rochester’s annual outdoor concert series, the ROC the Park Urban Music Festival, is stretching out […]

The rise of “fest culture” in the world of underground music is a particularly divisive topic. While music festivals allow tons of kids to watch all of their favorite bands in one convenient location, it can be hard for local scenes to compete with the massive bills these fests boast. With Harmony Festival, Rochester-based booking […]

Los Angeles, California’s Intronaut occupies a rare space in prog-metal. While the band openly indulges in the herbal supplements you’d expect a band with album titles like “Valley of Smoke” to condone, Intronaut’s time signature defying riffs suggest a more focused and musical approach than their bong-ripping compatriots. With a near-constant stream of genre-bending releases […]

On its soulful debut EP, “Not Now What We Were,” Kingston, Ontario’s Lost Cousins prove itself to be seasoned indie rock scholars. Crooning Local Natives-inspired vocals coast over sidewinding guitar leads and organ bursts that would feel right at home on a Foals record. While Lost Cousins wear its influences on its sleeve, the music […]

Florida has produced no shortage of seminal death metal bands since the genre’s early-90’s inception: Obituary, Morbid Angel, and Death, to name a few. While it never quite achieved the legendary status it deserved, one would be amiss to leave Solstice off of any list concerning Florida’s best metal outfits. Western New York connection aside […]

It’s fitting that Rochester’s upcoming International Noise Conference is billed as a “conference” rather than a “fest.” Typically speaking, the latter term evokes images of flower crowns, $9 Coronas, and a general air of forced positivity. Holding a conference is to engage in a meeting of the minds, and if the names of some of […]

PWR BTTM is having a bit of a moment right now. Liv Bruce and Ben Hopkins formed the band at Bard College back in 2013 as a three-piece, and gathered a devoted collegiate following for its glittered-out stage attire and freewheeling, ecstatic live shows. Since then, the high-flying garage-pop trio has become a duo, refining its high-flying […]

As if the lush soundscapes created by Must Be The Holy Ghost weren’t impressive enough on their own, here’s the kicker: there’s only one man behind them. Jared Draughon cut his teeth in the vibrant mid-2000’s North Carolina scene that birthed bands like He is Legend (who Must Be The Holy Ghost recently toured with) […]

Something that often gets lost in the naval-gazing of contemporary Black Metal is some good ol’ fashioned blasphemy. Thankfully, Finland’s Archgoat bring the gargled vocals, beautifully sloppy riffs, and upside-down crosses in spades. All of its devil-and-darkness posturing makes for some wonderfully unpretentious black metal. There’s a time and place for the spiked bracelet-ed masses […]