Within a matter of months after Kurt Cobain's suicide in April of 1994, fans started asking for the official release of all the demos, stray songs, alternate takes, and rarities in Nirvana's vaults. Due to various legal disputes between the surviving bandmembers and the Cobain estate, this long-awaited set of unreleased material did not appear until late 2004, when the three-disc, one-DVD box With the Lights Out finally appeared…
The Cross & the Crucible is the fifth studio album by the British neo-progressive band Pallas, released in 2001. The album was recorded in their own studio The Mill in Crathes, Aberdeenshire in the winter of 2000 to 2001. For the first time Pallas use guest musicians. The song The Cross And The Crucible is based on the Requiem by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The music of this album was, according to the reviewers, compared with Pallas' classic in the genre, The sentinel, especially in the pompous-sounding parts. The new logo of Pallas is also a return to The Sentinel. Patrick Woodroffe, creator of that album cover, designed it. The album tends to be a concept album about (the abuse of) science and faith.
Of all the pioneering country-rock bands of the late '60s, Poco may well have been the one that got the hybrid the most right, at least initially. The group's high-energy, joyous, and infectious songs had none of the artfulness of the Byrds' attempt at fusing rock and country, and none of the cache of hipness that weighed down both the Eagles and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Poco just played and had fun in an unassuming way, at least at the outset, because latter-era Poco is every bit as laden with California cool as the above named bands. This release from England's Beat Goes On Records combines Poco's first two albums in a two-disc set, and it is an inspired (and obvious) pairing, catching the band at its freshest peak in the studio.
Who would've thought that 35 years into their career, Status Quo would release their finest album long after the general public lost interest? Leaving Polygram, their major-label home for nearly all of their career, Quo (guitarists Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt, bassist John "Rhino" Edwards, keyboardist Andy Bown, and drummer Jeff Rich) signed with Eagle Records in the U.K. and proceeded to record a new platter. What came out was an amazing collection of pop songs by one of England's top rock & roll bands. Though they've left their trademark boogie behind, Quo proved on this album that they could still rock out and write great songs.
For the German music scene, the 21st May 1976 was a day which was to become poignant for the next four decades: The Blues Company from Osnabrück was performing for the first time - even at that time with Todor "Tosho" Todorovic as lead guitarist and singer. It was the birth of the most successful and long-standing German blues band that is still making its unmistakable musical mark far beyond Germany and Europe’s borders 40 years on, in spite of all the short-lived music trends. Only in recent years has the Blues Company gained a wealth of fans due to regular appearances in vast Russia, from St. Petersburg to Krasnoyarsk and in 2015 they also had additional tours in the Balkans and Israel.