Conventional histories of deathrock dry up around 1986. There’s good reason for that. The orthodox approach to the subject is to describe it as a specific moment in Southern California punk. As a style of music, however, deathrock has persisted into the present, with interest and activity waxing and waning as the years have gone by. (More…)
As the first wave of punk evolved into hardcore, no wave, postpunk, and a variety of other subgenres, a singular strand of the punk explosion developed in Southern California: deathrock. (More…)
Rock criticism’s great sensationalist Lester Bangs warned the world about the “Cybernetic Inevitable” that rock was fated to suffer. It was an evolutionary stage where flawless musical machines put human musicians out of work. (More…)
All of Killing Joke’s LPs have been meditations on the apocalypse. Throughout their thirty-three year career, and with every release, singer and frontman Jaz Coleman has prophesied the end of the world. Ominously titled MMXII (that’s “2012” for those of you who are Roman numeral-challenged) the original lineup of Killing Joke has delivered another sonic missive squarely in this fiery, millenarian tradition. (More…)
No London neighborhood is as synonymous with reggae as Brixton. Immortalized in countless songs (“Guns of Brixton“, “Electric Avenue“) for outsiders, the borough’s musical identity is inseparable from popular music of the late 1970s and early eighties. Residents of San Francisco will find it comparable to the Haight Ashbury area’s identification with 1960s bands like The Grateful Dead, and the Jefferson Airplane. (More…)
Poison Idea, like Black Flag and MDC, are one of the big guns of American hardcore. Founded in Portland, Oregon in 1980, proof of Poison Idea’s importance can be found in the fact that by 1986 they were calling themselves the Kings of Punk (the title of their 1986 LP) — and no one argued. (More…)
Burzum as a grafitti tag. What could be more inevitable? A one-man black metal project, led by an unrepentant neo-Nazi and murderer, implacably opposed to modern European (multi)culture – an irresistable signifier of transgression for those who feel drawn to write on walls. If you’re going to deface a wall, let it be with a symbol of uncompromising hate. (More…)
Punk had a midlife crisis during the summer of 1994. “Corporate whores” and “ass-kissing sellouts” were shouted at the Offspring during that show, the Sacramento Bee reported. “So you guys know us for our whole album and not just one song, right?” frontman Dexter Holland reportedly told the crowd. “We’d like to think so, but we’ll now patronize the ones who only know that one song, anyway.” (More…)
I thought my ears were playing tricks on me. The shuffling playlist at my local record store rarely extends beyond rap at one end and hip-hop at the other, the common denominator being diffuse aggression. But I knew this aria, from Alfredo Catalani’s opera La Wally, too well to mistake its delicate notes for long. Rushing to the cashier, I demanded to know what I we were hearing. (More…)
Woody Guthrie’s two greatest gifts were the deceptive simplicity of his songwriting and his unshakable devotion to sharing the power of music with everybody. The first chorus on New Multitudes, the latest collection of his songs, is remarkable for just how exquisitely it captures and frames both of them. (More…)
“I’m every woman,” sang Whitney Houston. Perhaps. Her vulnerabilities were easy to identify with. Being African American, and closeted, didn’t hurt. Had she overdosed? Was the legacy of slavery the final nail in her coffin? Everything is possible. The sheer number of potential causes was entirely in keeping. (More…)