Failure Fantastic Planet

Fantastic Planet was released on Aug. 13, 1996. The album earned a perfect 5-star score from Alternative Press who said the collection was able “to breathe life into the corpse of contemporary, guitar-driven rock” adding that the band was “willing to stretch the definition of both their instruments and their songs.” In the years that followed, the album’s stature has grown, becoming one of the era’s most influential and enduring rock records. " ‘Fantastic Planet’ is the almighty jam,” said Spin in an article announcing the band’s 2014 return, “a 17-track beast of guitar-antihero theatrics and studio-as-instrument bummer luxury.” Pitchfork dubbed the album “a sleeper classic” while Decibel penned a seven-page “Hall of Fame” feature on the album, saying “seriously, this is one of those albums that’s so perfect, the band almost had to implode after it’s release.”

Alt-rock band Failure are celebrating their first three records with a box set that collects their trio of 90s albums, as well as some unreleased tracks from those sessions. Failure 1992 to 1996 is a four-disc box set that contains these three albums, as well as a fourth LP featuring unreleased songs from their 90s incarnation, which ended in 1997. The band would go on to reform in 2014, and have released two albums since: 2015’s The Heart is a Monster and 2018’s In the Future Your Body Will Be the Furthest Thing from Your Mind. In a statement about the set, frontman Ken Andrews said “almost everything people have heard from these albums has been sourced from 16-bit digital files made in the nineties, which was state of the art at the time.

The founding force and career-long creative core of Failure consisted of multi-instrumentalists Ken Andrews and Greg Edwards, a '90s songwriting team practically unrivaled within the claustrophobic confines of post-grunge American rock. The two constantly switched guitar and bass duties in the studio while Andrews took lead vocal duties on the group's three recordings – Edwards has been credited in interviews with having come up with most of Failure's lyrics. When the group performed live, Edwards played bass while Andrews managed most guitar duties, but in the studio, they were interchangeable, with Edwards adding keyboard work and even some drumming.

Closing in on 40 eventful years of existence, Canada's progressive sci-fi metal innovators VOIVOD introduce their 15th (!) studio album “Synchro Anarchy”. Following 2018's highly praised and Juno Award winning “The Wake” album and 2020’s stellar “Lost Machine - Live” release, the brand new 9 tracks composing the kaleidoscopic sonic monster that is “Synchro Anarchy” reaffirm VOIVOD as one of the most fervently creative bands on the planet.