A CERTAIN RATIO are back with a new album, ACR Loco. Revitalized by their most successful tour in over two decades, the band returned to the studio to record their first album in 12 years – due for release September 25 on Mute.
With a strum of his guitar and an arsenal of quotable lines, Lookman Adekunle Salami brings the spirit of 1970s singer/songwriter folk into his post-modern acoustic blues. Performing as L.A. Salami, he invites influences like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Elliott Smith, and Joni Mitchell to his debut, Dancing with Bad Grammar. A collection of 14 ditties (and one bonus track), Dancing is a mostly low-key affair, with Salami's everyman storytelling strewn over plaintive guitar that simmers like smoke wafting through a bohemian cafe. Beside his iconic influences, listeners will also catch hints of Conor Oberst's wounded delicacy, KT Tunstall's sweetness and soul, Alex Turner's mischievous wit, and Courtney Barnett's droll observations…
Hologram is the first release from New York Post-Punk legends A Place To Bury Strangers on their own newly formed label, Dedstrange. Hologram is the follow up to their highly regarded fifth album, Pinned, and is a sonic return to A Place To Bury Strangers’ rawest, most unhinged sound. With songs addressing the decay of connections, friendships lost, and the trials and tribulations of these troubled times, Hologram serves as an abstract mirror to the moment we live in. Written and recorded during the on-going global pandemic and in the midst of the decline of civilization, Hologram is a sonic vaccine to the horrors of modern life.
Follow-up volumes appeared in 1993 and 1996, extending the time period to 1979 and with additional songs from the 1972-76 period, available on cassette or CD (ALL 25 volumes were issued in both formats). Each volume has twelve songs. Despite the greater capacity of compact discs, the running time of each of the volumes is no longer than the limit of vinyl records in the 1970s, from 38 to 45 minutes long.
"Shame," "Snowblind," and "Metro" are covers of a Wu-Tang Clan, Black Sabbath, and Berlin song respectively. "Shame" actually features some members of the Wu-Tang Clan and contains typical System insanity with Serj rapping and a few extremely catchy riffs. In "Snowblind," SOAD makes a decent Black Sabbath song into a fantastic song by speeding up the tempo of the verses and slowing down the bridge, bringing a beauty to it that was never previously there. Then changing speeds again back to the heavy chorus. "Metro" is another classic System-twanged cover with another catchy slow verse that gives way to a hectic chorus then right back to the melodic verse. All three covers display all the things System of a Down fans have come to love about the band…
Following their highly acclaimed studio album "Into The Great Unknown", H.E.A.T. went on an extensive tour to showcase their incredible live performance skills…
Even amidst the already seedy underbelly of the late-'80s L.A. glam metal scene, L.A. Guns were the undisputed bottom-feeders. A ragged collection of outcasts from various other bands (guitarist Tracii Guns was the original "guns" in Guns n' Roses, drummer Steven Riley had recently vacated the stool with shock-kings W.A.S.P., and British vocalist Phil Lewis had done time with London glamsters Girl), they elevated the unrepentant sleaziness and undeniable tackiness of their environment to a new VD-encrusted low. The union of such an unsavory cast of characters could only result in a wildly over-the-top rock & roll album, and while it may not have been as successful as their latest efforts, this eponymous debut rocked with a bile and fury not seen since Mötley Crüe's Shout at the Devil. Sh*t-kicking anthems like "No Mercy," "Sex Action," "One More Reason," and the marvelous "Bitch Is Back" slap the listener silly while still making room for slightly more commercial but equally hot offerings such as "Electric Gypsy" and "Down in the City".