Posts Tagged ‘New Album’

I got to have a lovely chat with Arkansas’ BRADLEY HATHAWAY – Join as we talk about his music, his poetry, speedos, and library soap dispensers.

This Friday I had the chance to talk with Scott Miller, the drummer for Vancouver’s Quartered, as they were touring through Cambridge, Ontario. We chat about the band’s new album, “Walks Like A Ghost” (dropping this August), and the band itself.

I had the privilege of having a chat with Tyler “Telle” Smith of hardcore group The Word Alive the other day. Have a listen below on our new Mixcloud player below!

“Welcome to the Brotherhood,” says a dark voice as it introduces the next full length album from Victoria group On Call Heroes. Brotherhood is the sophomore release from the up and coming quartet, soon to embark on a half-cross-country tour to Saskatchewan promoting the album, which is set to drop this Friday.

Compared to previous works, the new album stays along the same style of pop-punk music that OCH has long been known for in their local scene, but this time they’ve bumped it up with a lot of faster, more catchy and up-beat riffs and percussion, as well, the vocals lay sound on higher octaves.

The genuine and sometimes rated-R lyrics they throw down throughout the album make you actually want to listen to what lead vocals Bronson McMahon is talking about. And of course, you can find the humour of the band scattered along the way, with songs like “That Guy” shouting “It’s Pretty clear to me that he punches little kids”, “Tonight Is For The Boys Boys Boys” with “We’re watching your friend ride a tricycle naked”, and simply the titles of track one, “Int(b)ro”, and track eleven, “Brotherhood(Outbro)”.

On Call Heroes is a good example of a band trying their hardest, the old fashioned way, to make it big, but are having a ton of fun while doing it. And for a group thats not signed to a label, they do a damn good job at recording their own album; it’s nice not hearing songs about love, but instead, about being a bro.

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Did you hear? J-Sleazy and the gang are back with round two of Attack Attack!’s latest attempt to re-invent themselves as respected musicians. With a slew of member changes and constant criticisms of their talent and genre, the band has finally unleashed the second full-length album, self-titled, from Rise Records.

Think post-Sonnny From First To Last, Stick To Your Guns, and Cobra Starship.

A chilling piano intro begins the album on “Sexual Man Chocolate”, getting our hopes up for a somewhat decent metalcore album. And for the first three songs or so our expectations are pretty much exceeded — it is, so far, indeed a metal album with a hint of electronica; until the fourth track, “Shut Your Mouth”. It’s a good song, if you’re a fan of dancing and, perhaps, Jeffree Star. I understand that electronica takes a big part in Attack Attack! as a band, but “Shut Your Mouth” strays just a bit too much from the general genre that the band has landed on, and really sticks out as annoying filler. As my own preference, when listening to heavy music, I want to stay in heavy music until I’m ready to be done. I don’t want any dance, J-Sleazy, or anything of that sort. The overall idea behind this album’s genre is pretty confusing in general. You’ve got a good ‘ol heavy as hell fast-paced sound in songs like “Renob, Nevada” and “AC-130″, a girlish Cobra-esque “Shut Your Mouth”, and Boyz To Men in the final track, “Lonely”, with something that Brokencyde would put out in the last 60 seconds of the album.

Caleb, the groups third and current lead vocalist, brings a heavier scream to the table, whereas Carlile had the higher-pitched accent. And as far as I’m concerned, the band’s music hasn’t greatly changed or evolved.

Let’s hope any future music videos won’t earn them any more comments from critics.

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Breathe Electric, a pop-electronica band has a new EP coming out. The EP titled “Lovestruck”, hits stores June 15th, and will also be available for download. “Lovestruck” can be preordered here. You can also catch Breathe Electric on the Vans Warped Tour this summer.

I recently got the chance to have a quick chat with programmer and guitarist Lee Duck of Texas hardcore group Sky Eats Airplane.

So, who are you?
My name is Lee Duck and I play guitar for Sky Eats Airplane.

You just released your latest EP, “The Sound of Symmetry”; why did you decide to only sell it online and on tour, but not in stores?
Well, it’s because we’re planning on having a full-length later on this year, with a few of the same songs on that’ll just be re-done. So, this little EP is just the beginning of what’s to come, and we wanted to get on the road this year, so we would have been out of commission for a good five months before our full-length would be out. So we decided to not have it in stores so we could play on it on tour. We’re really excited, too, for a polished, finished product to be out there when the full-length comes out.

How come you decided to do a softer, simpler song on the EP as opposed to a heavier song?
Really, for that little EP, we just wanted to show every side to the band; we’re not just a heavy band, we really like orchestrating everything. We want to show people that we are dynamic and we have some room to grow–we’re not just a breakdown band.

This was your first release working with the two new members, how was that?
It was definitely a relief. We’ve never really been in a place where everyone’s put in their own effort, we’ve always been in a place where it’s just me and our guitarist, Zack, stressing the hell out doing all the work while everyone else was just watching TV. It was really comforting this time around when I got to focus on what I like doing, the electronica, Brian, our new singer actually wrote the lyrics and melodies and stuff, which is something we’ve never had before with a singer, and our drummer is contributing his part. It’s just a really comforting place; we’ve got a band full of really talented musicians who are glad to be where they are, and it’s a good thing.

You worked with Taylor Larson in Bethesda, Maryland; how was he? Did he bring anything new or useful to the table?
Let me think.. yah! He had a lot of really good vocal ideas and he’s also really good at capturing Travis’ — our drummer’s — best moments. He’s actually a really good long-time friend of Travis’, so they were done with drums in, like, a day and a half, for all three songs. So that was pretty cool. He was really good at what he did, and he had a real nice and casual setting for us to but heads for the first time doing a release with a new band.

Tell me a little about each of the three songs, “The Contour”, “Sound Of Symmetry”, and “Motion Sickness”.
Well, I don’t know about lyric-wise, but let me think… “The Contour” is one of our favourites off the record, it’s more of a dancy-type song, but it does have its heavy moments. I’m more of the electronica side of things so I don’t really know about any cool meanings behind the songs, but I think the “Sound Of Symmetry” is about spying on a girl or something.. that’s all I really know.

Talking a  little bit about the full-length, is it going as heavy and as technical as the EP, or are you going to tone it down a bit?
There isn’t any plans for it, we kind of do what we want, honestly. We don’t really think of it as a thing, like, “Oh, this should be heavier..”; whatever happens, happens. So, it might be a lot heavier, it might be the same sort of style, it’s totally up in the air, which is something pretty cool about this band, it always changes shape; we’re never going to stay exactly the same for every album. Pretty much whatever we’re feeling at the time.

Over the years, how do you think SEA has evolved as a band?
A lot, that’s for sure. We have gone through something that was kind of revolutionary, but very elementary in our musical ability, to more of a rock-style band. And we went from two members to five members, so you can definitely imagine there was a huge amount of differences that happened after a period of just a few years. All of that was striving for better musicianship and people who are really good at their instruments and love what they do, so it was definitely a win-win situation.

Where do you see the future of Sky Eats Airplane heading?
We’ve been on a hiatus for about a year now, working with the new singer. We’ve just been waiting at home, writing new stuff, so we don’t know what the future is to become of us. We’re really excited because we really like the new record we just did, but we’re just hoping to get out there, do better tours, get our name out there, and see where it takes us.

Recently we got a chance to have a chat with Jon Middleton of Victoria band Jon and Roy about the band’s  upcoming release, ‘Homes’. Below is a track-by-track interview about the ideas and inspirations behind each song. You can check out the review of their new album here.

1. Any Day Now
Any Day Now is a song inspired by an artist named from Zimbabwe named Thomas Mapfumo. I’ve listened to his music over the last couple of years and it’s definitely one of the main things from my music catalog of listening, and so that style that he does basically carried over and that’s what that song basically comes from.

2. Get Myself a Gun
(After chuckling a bit) Well, that song is basically, having frustration and trying to overcome that by elevating yourself to, like, a higher plane–not to sound overly, whatever–but yeah, it’s about overcoming anger, or whatever you have just by elevating yourself; and in hopes that it puts you in a better day.

3. Boon Helm
Well, Boon Helm is a long, rich story about this, well–the story comes from this guy we know, and he was a family member way, way back who had lots of run-ins with the law and it’s quite a neat tale about overcoming the hard sets of past time and turning in to a cannibal, in fact. So the point of the song is he had this purpose, this history, and one day we were in Ottawa and we read this story, a biography, of this guy on the Internet. I’m not sure where on the Internet, but you can always find these kinds of things on the Internet. So we were intrigued by this crazy person of the past. The song, it never really had a meaning, it’s just a very vague thing, and lyrics just kind of went with the theme of this guy. It just kind of worked; it made sense.

4. Cuban Bee
Haha, well, the title of the song Cuban Bee comes from the movie “Half Baked”. It’s a film that I’d watched a million times when I was younger. The song itself has nothing to do with it; the song about finding the positive in life, and trying to gear yourself towards that.

5. It’s Gonna Be Fine
That song was inspired by a guy, not sure if you’ve heard of him, named John Hurt, he’s on old folk blues musician. The song uses a lot of finger picking, and that riff is just to remind me about John Hurt. When I wrote it I was making wine at the time, and I was listening to John Hurt, it was real good.

6. Giddy Up
Giddy Up is a song that I wrote slowly; there’s a couple parts in there that I wrote at different times, but it’s kind of about lots of fear, and overcoming that. One thing in particular is, the fear of flying. And so we start to fly more and more–because, you know, when you’re a musician you tend to fly a lot more. And, it’s not like we’re flying to Thailand or anything… it’s more like flying to Winnipeg and close places. So yeah, it’s pretty much about having fear, and trying to get away from that.

7. Narwhal
Narwhal was this jam, like an instrumental piece, and we were just talking about it in the tour van one day, the narwhal, and it’s just one of those animals that doesn’t get enough respect. It’s a pretty crazy animal–it’s got like this huge tusk on its head. They don’t know why it even has it. It’s got these real mythical properties, and the Inuit people think it’s a very cool animal.

8. Oh, It Seemed
A song I wrote quite a while ago, about 3 or 4 years ago. Yeah, it’s basically about the same ‘getting over somebody’, getting broken up. Breaking up with somebody, and having it be a hard hard break up and then, just getting over it.

9. Brooker’s Song
Umm, Brooker’s Song is kind of, not exactly a poem, but just lyrics I wrote one day after having a bad encounter with somebody, and just kind of having this rant. That’s basically what it is, just rambling on. And the title of the song is just a friend of ours who’s helped us out greatly over the years, so we finally decided to pay him a little respect.

10. Gold
It’s inspired by like, oh like Neil Young. It’s about a lovely lady that I met and fell in love with. So, yeah.

11. Homemade Shirts
About a friend of time who went through a lot of good times with me. It’s about, kind of, being friends, and one person going one way, and one going the other.

12. Body Warm
It’s about… (long pause) I guess it’s about the idea that, at the end of the day, when things are troubled or things are good, or whatever’s going on, having friends or a closeness to somebody, whether it be emotional or physical, it’s what kind of gets us by. That’s one of the great things about being a human, and that’s what that song’s about.

13. 947
I wrote that a long time ago; 947 is actually the address of a friend’s house who lived in Victoria a while back. And I wrote that song after the passing of a person I knew, and I guess it’s just kind of about someone passing away and thinking about the time that it happened too.

14. Deerfoot
Deerfoot was a song I wrote on my MacBook. Travelling between Calgary and Edmonton, and we were on this thing called the Deerfoot deer hill, and, yeah, that song has nothing to do with deer feet all, but–often when I’m writing, actually, when I’m listening to something else I’ll hear something in that, in the song, that comes out as my own thing, and that’s what happened with that, is that, I forget what it was, but I heard something else in my head and I had my MacBook, with the beauty of Garage Band, kind of plugged in, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, like musical typing; you can just bang on your keyboard and make musical noises. And so I wrote that song on that trip between Calgary and Edmonton. And, actually, after that experience, we drove up to Edmonton and wound up getting a 24 hour stomach flu, and that night we had to perform, and I was on the verge of puking the entire time. So I’d run off stage, do my business, and then come back on and continue singing while trying not to vomit all over the audience.

I’ll be up front about, and I think I can speak for hundreds of fans when I say that I really thought Sonny did a way better job than Matt ever will for From First to Last, but that’s not to say that their latest album, Throne To The Wolves, is bad, by any means. I just  get the sense that they’re trying to hard now.

FFTL started out rough and uncut with Dear Diary…, and then pretty much kept that notion going with Heroine. But then when Sonny left and Matt filled his spot, they seemed to transform in to a tidier band, with less screaming and less out-of-the-ordinary music, but instead played straight up alternative rock and roll. And now, after having plenty of time to think, with both acclaim and criticism, and a quick drummer change, they release this; a thumping, bumping collection of harsh libretto that intrigues me. It seems to me that they weren’t satisfied – or their fans weren’t — with the plain ‘ol music they produced with their self-titled release, so they decided to jack up their hard-core outfit. And I like it. It’s kind of typical, with scruffy screams for every second line of lyric, high-pitched whining, 30 second breakdowns, and bass-pedalling faster than one’s ear can handle, but that’s what continues the post-hardcore genre, and they fit the mold pretty damn good. Perhaps there’s something to be said about group chanting “Yah!”s and “OOh!”s? And, wait, what’s that? Did I just hear auto-tune? But, the question is, are they just changing for what their fans want, or are they still pumping out music they want to?

With all this to take in, it makes me start to wonder if they’re actually producing original music, or if they’re following the trend that every new 1 in 2 bands in the world is; trying to be too hardcore? In terms of comparison, Throne To The Wolves resembles Heroine the most to me, with the fairly equal combination of clean to harsh vocals and a lot of added electronic enhancers and fills, and for that I give them credit. That’s my kind of music. Truth be told, I kind of admire what Matt has brought to the band in the end.

As for a favourite song on the album, I don’t have one. All 11 tracks on the album pretty much give off the same, repetitive, monotonous feeling of making me want to mosh in my bedroom. Hell, there isn’t even a laid back, acoustic, soft track to sink in to; if anything, the electronic rhythms of “A Soft War” differentiate it from the rest of the album, but that’s just a carry-on, a filler. And that’s it.

I’m sure true From First to Last die-hards will love this new album, they’ll feed off it. You know, because IT IS FFTL. But there’s always haters; I don’t hate the album, but I’m not the biggest fan of it.

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Like sitting by the camp fire with a guitar, a drum, and anything else you can get your hands on, the calming harmony of opening track “Any Day Now” from Jon and Roy‘s third official album leaves you in awe-state and dying to hear what’s next.

Victoria locals John Middleton and Roy Vizer, and their band, are following up to their critically acclaimed second album, “Another Noon” (2008), with a 14 track gem, “Homes”, dropping this April 13th. The combination of melodic strokes and cheerful whistling all chiming to the tune of reggae chords, African drums, and wise lyrics puts a new meaning to this genre of folk music.

Recently coming off of having their single, “Another Noon”, featured on a commercial for Volkswagen, the group seems to be putting an even greater effort in to exploring their plethora of musical variations. Perhaps it’s the recent expansion of their band, with Dougal Maclean on Violin and friend Ryan Tonelli on bass, that has helped them with the continued success and achievements, playing some of Canada’s largest music festivals, and having their music featured in movies and TV shows. Perhaps it’s the quaint and cozy atmosphere of Vancouver Island, where they spent countless hours recording the new album, that has kept them so lively in their music.

My song of choice from Homes has got to be “Giddy Up“, which seems to highlight the entire album for me, as well, reminds me so much of their previous works.

Bottom line, this album is simply wonderful if you’re in to softer, more melodic folk music, and I can see it possibly being an album anyone would like, even if the folk genre isn’t their cup of tea. Jon and Roy also make for a good live performance, and you can catch them live if you’re in the Victoria area April 1st, as they’re playing their CD release party at the McPhereson playhouse.

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Check out Jon and Roy