Review: The Hives – Lex Hives

Wow.  ….so long…I just…….it’s been………………………………so much time has passed since my last post.

OH WELL NOBODY CARES!

[EDIT: I know that this review is long over due (how about any new post in general!?), being as this album came out months ago, but bear with me.  I am getting back on track with the blog and I'm going to be hopefully slinging more reviews at you then a monkey does shit.  I am sorry if that has ever happened to you though...That would be gross.]

All that matters now is this new album I’ve been listening to!  Now, I know that I gave The Hives’ front man, Pelle Almqvist some guff in my last post for his comments regarding band reunions (ie; Refused) but let’s be clear, The Hives are and always have been an undeniable force of a rock ‘n’ roll band.  Not to mention, they are also from Sweden, so perhaps Pelle’s comments came from a patriotic place of good ol’ friendly jealous spite.   Either way, 5 years after their last album, the hit-or-miss Black And White Album, The Hives (or as I call ‘em “The other good Swedish band”) are back, recently releasing their 5th full-length album Lex Hives.  Though unlike their last LP, Lex Hives was completely self-produced by the band (no more bull-shit to take from Universal Records) and released on their own independant Disques Hives imprint.

If you are familiar with The Hives at all, you know that their frontman “Howlin” Pelle Almqvist is one of the seemingly cockiest rock singers on a stage these days, they are one of the tightest sounding garage/rock bands on record, and they can all wear the fuck out of some matching “Mod” suits.  All these fundamentals are extremely obvious upon listening to Lex Hives (yes, even the suits, because a 60′s Telecaster sounds so much better when you’re dressed in enough tweed that you could deliver a batch of newspapers between songs).

Lex Hives starts out simple, with the daunting punk-faced opening track “Come On” which literally demands the listener to, er…well…COME ON!!!  And if you choose to indeed “come on” after its abrupt end, we are then taken to the lead single off of the album, “Go Right Ahead” (another demanding title, jeeeez so bossy!?).  If you can get over the borrowed riff from E.L.O.’s “Don’t Bring Me Down” and focus more on the BAD-ass baritone saxophones then you will thoroughly enjoy it for the “feel-great” song that it truly is.  After the slippery-fast, piano-frosted “1000 Answers” comes a change of pace to the grooooviest song of the album, “I Want More”, the rantings of a very greedy person of power who just can’t get enough of anything from “shit that’s made in India” to “gold and myrrh”.  This is a serious quiet/loud power jam that is delightfully laced with some sweet ol’ 60′s-sounding guitar twangs that would sound right at home on an old Rolling Stones record.

“Wait a Minute” is another highlight on Lex Hives.  With group vocals that create a soothing bed throughout basically the entire song, and Almqvist’s insanely infectious vocal melody like sweet candy corn that you can’t stop eating, this song is one you will have stuck the fuck in your head til the day after tomorrow.  Oh yeah and the dual guitar solo break in the middle is some of the coolest “ping-pong” work I’ve heard since forever, rising to full perfection when Pelle’s vocals fill in the micro-voids.  After the blistering self-indulgent anthem that is “Patrolling Days” comes a more retro-Hives(?) sounding jam, “Take Back The Toys” that kind of brought me back to the days of Veni Vidi Vicious but with more background screams and swagger, including a real cool refreshing bass/drums groove in the middle 8.  ”Without The Money” is the slowest tune on the record, but oh so (bitter)sweet.  Almqvist just squeeeals his way this organ-ridden soul jam about the (dis)importance of money.

When the needle gets to the cathartic “My Time Is Coming”, and Almqvist starts some deep-voiced crooning over some light instruments, one starts to notice an eerie-as-hell vocal resemblance to a Mick Jagger drawl, not only on this track but retroactively throughout the record.  I mean, it’s not like he’s downright imitating him or anything, but I’ll be damned if Almqvist’s faux overly confident/flamboyant stage persona isn’t actually bleeding into his confidence as an actual singer and performer.  There is some serious wailing he does on this entire album and his range is just insane.  Probably the most inspired and raw I’ve ever heard him sound.  For the last two tracks we first have the finger-pointing “If I Had A Cent”, a punk-rock rant on propriety.  And just when you think they gone for good, the saxes are back!  The closing number “Midnight Shifter” is a good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll sounding song about positive outlook in shitty circumstances, a good way to close out the eclectic album that is Lex Hives.  

The Hives are one of those rare rock bands who always show up to perform to their fullest potential, whether live or on record.  They are like a well oiled machine that kick-starts perfectly every time without a sputter.  Once they get revving it’s a whole different story, but nevertheless, as clearly demonstrated by Lex Hives, the end result is always maximum energy, maximum passion, and maximum Hives.

Check out the music videos for both “Go Right Ahead” and “Wait A Minute” below:

The death of the Refused Party Programme was a hoax

So, it’s been a while since the last post…why not talk about Refused?

I have to admit that it’s pretty fun that in 2012 it’s no longer considered nostalgia to talk about Refused.  Hell, I just bought a ticket to see them play live in Toronto, so they must really be back right!?  Well, like most band reunions, doubts are in the air with Refused getting back together – questioning their motives, their ability to play etc.  Just this week, “Howlin’” Pelle Almqvist, frontman of fellow Swedish band The Hives, said in an interview with The Daily Star,

“when we see other bands at festivals who just look back to their good old days. What’s the point of that? Each record has to be better than your last, surely?”

This coming from the singer of a band whose latest single “Go Right Ahead”  is a direct rip off of an ELO song from 1979!  Now those were some good old days!

But after a handful of shaky fan-shot videos surfaced of performances at a couple warm-up shows in their homeland of Sweden, Refused played Coachella.  I had the pleasure of watching the entire performance live as it happened (streaming online of course, sweat-free and cost-free) and the verdict is in:

Their death was a hoax.

Refused in action! – (Source: Faith-Ann Young, Rolling Stone)

Refused is alive again!  It was like they had been frozen in an air-tight chamber since 1998, walking directly out of it and on to a stage after 14 years, and picked up their instruments to rock Coachella like it was their next basement show.  Don’t believe me?  Here is physical video evidence of their entrance playing “The Shape of Punk to Come”.  (Note how the stage is empty while Dennis sings a few bars, then you see David hop on the drum kit mere seconds before the song explodes!)

After spitting out a fiery redition of “The Refused Party Program” and the always tense “Liberation Frequency” both from 1998′s The Shape of Punk to Come, they went back to their previous album (Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent) for a couple hardcore favourites “Rather Be Dead” and “Coup D’etat.  The first half of the set was pretty streamlined, with little space in between songs except for some cool weird pre-recorded voice intros of some of the songs as well as ambient static and fuzz noise.  You could tell they put a little thought into what people were actually going to be hearing.  Anyways, around the middle of the set Dennis said some humbling words about how overwhelmed he was by the band’s following in North America and how good it felt to be back etc.  He also said that back in the 90′s their “plan” was to overthrow the capitalist system that the USA was forcing on the world but that he realized, “This land is your land, not ours.  You guys are the ones that can change things”.  And so the band continued to do what they do best with some more material from TSOPTC as well as a couple more older songs.  Then came one of my favourite Refused songs, “Worms of the Senses/Faculties of the Skull”, which we all know as the opening track on TSOPTC.  The breakdown at the end with a blaring siren was a pretty damn great climax of the set and really set in stone that Refused is back.  After a mere half an hour, Refused had already earned all the hype of their reunion, but back they came to play an encore of their most well-known song “New Noise”.  But that’s not all!  After the song’s last notes ended, Dennis’ repetitive howls of “THE NEW BEAT!!!” were particularly haunting as they were warped and looped through guitarist Jon Brannstrom’s effects pedals after Dennis had already hit the floor, staring upwards, completely still.  When the noise finally died down, the somber opening notes of “Tanhauser/Derive” began what was an epic closing performance.  This song is so pretty at times and yet so heavy when the final chorus explodes – a perfect way to tie up this awesome set.

Seeing this Coachella set has gotten me more excited to see one of my favourite bands (as a teenager and still today) when they come to Toronto on July 22nd.  I hope all of you Refused fans going to the show are as excited as I am.  The Shape of Punk to Come is a definite classic album to me and never gets even a touch old on my ears.  It’s weird like that.  It’s meaningful, it’s not only something of nostalgia that I grew up on, but even to this very day it inspires me.  It inspires me in the car ride to work at a shitty job, it inspires me to dance, it inspires me to think for myself, it inspires me to start my own punk band again some day.  So any doubt that has been laid on Refused (or any band that is legitamitely back together with original members) doesn’t really effect someone like me, who actually enjoys the music that they make and wants to see it live for reasons other than nostalgia.

Before I go, just wanted to share this amazing footage I found while browsing YouTube.  It is a show that Refused played in Dundalk, Ireland, May 23rd, 1998, the final year before their breakup.  It is their complete set (in 3 parts), not the greatest A/V quality but an amazing capture of the band blowing the fucking roof off a tiny Irish pub.  The funniest thing about the video is that for the duration of the entire set, you can see two drunkards off to the side sitting at a table, one asleep, one struggling to stay awake….WHILE REFUSED IS PLAYING!!!!???  What a wasted opportunity.  Those fuckers.

Review: Ease The Medic

Ease The Medic are a four-piece band from Columbus, Ohio who have been around since 2006 and have travelled their home country once or twice, playing with some pretty big acts (are Lynyrd Skynrd, Biffy Clyro and 3 Doors Down big enough for you!?).  Although those bands are no indication of Ease The Medic’s musical style, it does tell you that these guys are pretty much willing to take on the world with their layered post-pop-punk anthems.

Their self-titled second full-length Ease The Medic is an excellent campaign for such ambitions – it definitely sounds big.  At first, Ease The Medic hits you like a wave that takes a while to dry off, but upon being pelted by this album’s anthemic post-punk wall of sound, it begins to permeate you like a flash-flood down the streets of an unsuspecting city.

Opening with some of the spaciest sounding guitar drones I’ve heard in a while, you get distracted by their beauty before being picked up and slammed back down to the ground in the giant soundstorm that is album-opener “Antarctic Stare”.  When the deliberate line “Winter’s ice fills your lungs / don’t choke…” chimes in, Ease The Medic have already found their groove and just take off from there.  The only time this song lets up is immediately before a thunderous break-down led by a quite bad-ass riff, that possesses you to rock out for the remainder.

While “Antarctic Stare” sets the precedent of what to expect from this layered band, “Meh” and “Eleven” are more throwbacks to pop-punk and emo that we all submerged ourselves in at some point in our lives.  “Meh” starts out hopping with classic pop-punk vox and an especially bouncy drum and bass combo, switching things up mid-way in an almost seamless change of time-signatures (and volume) for a pretty little excursion before launching into the last chorus.  The shifts from standard 4/4 to variations of 3/4 timing are rather abundant on this record after enough listens, a very slick trick that Ease The Medic execute with little to no awkwardness, making for interesting variations of what could have been much simpler sounding measures of music.  “Eleven” is by-far the shortest (and simplest) track on the album (2:30) but a really memorable one.  The catchy main riff is super indie (and 90′s) sounding, leading into a simplistic, but relatable song about being dumped with the help of text messaging.  Then comes “For Mother Russia”, probably the most painful song of the set (to the heart, not the ears!).  Employing less foot-stomping, and more of a “kicking-a-stone-with-your-head-down rhythm”, this song gets most of the bloodletting out of the way, ending with an aggressive, driving jam at the end.  You don’t have to listen too closely either for a siren-mimicking guitar riff that indicates the medic may not be in for an easy night.

After such a painful song, “Gimme, Gimme, Gimme Shelter” is a nice pallet cleanser to start side B.  It starts out with what I would call a “groove”, of which its full “grooviness” isn’t felt until the second time around.  One of the several interesting bass lines on Ease The Medic is found on “Gimme Shelter” right before going into the chorus.  Bass lines like that really show you how much it can add to the feel of a song in addition to just providing low end (See also, the noodling found on “Antarctic Stare” for another great example of this).  By the time the chorus hits, this track is a powerful sing-along anthem that just begs for some space (“We all need shelter!”)  “Indian Style” is both a technical and moody affair (evoking earliesh Moneen), using lots of stop-start beats and textured guitar parts to create an obscured path leading to an incredibly large and layered breakdown/jam that sounds like it could easily be the soundtrack to an “end of the world” scene in a movie.  Using tons of alien-sounding guitars, strings and even horns to create a swelling howl of an ending, “Indian Style” is a very unique track that is hard to put out of your mind.

“Engine Break” is an eclectic song that is almost a summary of everything that makes Ease The Medic who they are musically.  It starts out with an upbeat and aggresive verse with textured guitars that kind of reminded me of an old Gob song (I don’t always reference Canadian bands, I swear), followed by a badass riff, 3/4 time shift leading into a great sing-along chorus that ends with an incredibly executed Weezer*-esque delivery of a two-part harmony crooning “You’re in luck!”

Ease The Medic obviously know what they are doing (or definitely sound like it) on their sophomore self-titled LP.  This record is both aggressive and atmospheric.  It captures emotions and mood without treading lightly.  It’s impulsive, but also really smart.  After really taking it all in (and it’s a lot to take in) you can’t help but be excited about what these guys do next.

*Non-Canadian band reference. There you go.

Ease The Medic is out on We Want Action Records.  Purchase it from them on 12″ LP or digitally.

Download “Antarctic Stare” for a taste.

Back to the Future…OF THE LEFT!!!

One of my favourite bands of Welsh origin (and also in general) Future of the Left, have come to slight rumble in the recent year, releasing demos of new songs, a 6-song EP called Polymers Are Forever and now, it appers they are ready to reach explosion that will most likely be the debris that is their next (and 3rd) full-length record, which is titled The Plot Against Common Sense and is let loose on us May 28.  Well the countdown has started because the guys (and girl) have made a new hectic music video for the jaunty romp “Sheena Is A T-shirt Salesman”, giving us our first actual taste of The Plot Against Common Sense (other than “Polymers Are Forever” of course).  Feel completely free to bang your head the sixth time that you watch this clip.

Review: B.A. Johnston – Hi Dudes!

Hamilton’s musical king of Canadian references, 80′s nostalgia and social commentary resurfaces from his Mother’s basement with his 8th(?) full-length album Hi Dudes! (the first from Mammoth Cave Recording Co.) and proves that no matter how much time passes, it’s still okay to have strong feelings about the Goonies, arcades and fast food coupons.

I had my first encounter with B.A. Johnston when my band, The Racoon Wedding opened for him at a Kitchener show in the winter of 2007. I remember him taking the stage and then all I remember is laughing. Laughing and smiling until my face hurt. He would be singing a silly song about robots while fake-playing a Casio one minute, strumming an out-of-tune melancholic acoustic number with childish lyrics the next, before completely taking over the room shouting a party anthem karaoke style, standing atop the bar while his Discman played a backing track through the P.A. system. And after seeing him perform just a few nights ago, I can say that this Hamilton man-boy has still got the the goods.

Nostalgia is a pretty obvious influence on Hi Dudes! as made very clear by its borrowed cover art from a pivotal scene in “Weird Science”. But while it might seem nostalgic just for the sake of being so, Hi Dudes! is also full of the trademark B.A. heart and earnestness that makes you actually connect to that nostalgia, even if you aren’t into RPG’s. Album opener “Raised By The Wooden Spoon” is a perfect example of this device, using references to ColecoVision and Tab cola to paint a picture of a simpler time when “Mom could beat us as she cleaned the TV room”. It doesn’t hurt that the backing music sounds like it could be the 8-bit soundtrack from a level of Megaman, but it all comes together to form a great, catchy – dare I say anthem – and a real stand-out track on Hi Dudes!

“Sesame Street Fighter is the first “quiet song” on the album, a fantasy of sorts involving our favourite day-time puppets having a brawl. Then comes “Dirtbag Beach” another quiet yet jaunty number illustrating the small treasures of visiting your local crappy beach. After a couple of slightly more sentimental soft tunes, comes “The Best Day Ever”, a hilarious pop number celebrating McDonalds coupon day and how it directly affects the residents of Barrie, ON. “Dating Northbay Girls In The 1990s” is a rather touching little love song with some nice subtle production elements that are present on all of the quiet songs on the album. A sprinkle of percussion here, some bass to keep things moving and quite a bit of background vocals that add some nice atmosphere. All of which are especially apparent on “Truffle Shuffle”, the first single from Hi Dudes! with Laura Barrett lending some great harmonies in an ode to two of our favourite Goonies, Chunk and Sloth (wait…was Sloth actually considered a Goonie?).

“Eye of the Douchestorm”, another stand-out track on Hi Dudes! is a perfect lyrical illustration of a group of people that most of us have to deal with on a regular basis: douches. This pure dance/singalong track is sure to be chanted by almost everyone in bar except for, of course, the douches.  “I Love You Children’s Librarian” is both touching and touchy in its outpoor of love for someone who works exclusively around kids at the public library, while “Heating Bill Blues” introduces new ideas to keep warm when you can’t pay the oil bill.  One song that I particularly connected to was “Showcase Showdown”, a spot-on recollection of the magical moments that occur on The Price Is Right (my favourite childhood gameshow) right down to the unfortunately large lady who comes up to the wheel every once in a while and cannot help but do a faceplant after her ferocious spin.  After a journey through a video game reality – and pretty sad one at that – in the ballad “RPG”, Hi Dudes! winds down, as to whisper, “bye dudes…” with the sauntering and surreal little banjo tune, “Lawn Gnomes”.  And so wraps up 28 minutes and 40 some-odd seconds of that Golden B.A. Sound.  The Result: A fun, heartfelt, relatable and addictive record that you can listen to on repeat, memorize every word to and perhaps someday make the subject of your very own nostalgia.

So there you have it, with Hi Dudes!, Mr. B.A. Johnston has proved he is clearly not finished farmer-blowing unto the world (well…Hamilton, ON and the surrounding area) his keen observations and extremely infectious songs in both album form and a live setting.  In fact, he will be hitting the road for a Prairie/Western Canada tour right after a hometown Hi Dudes! release show on February 25th at This Ain’t Hollywood in Hamilton.

Hi Dudes! is out February 21, 2012 on Mammoth Cave Recording Co.

Click HERE for those tour dates!

And if you wanna hear a couple songs from Hi Dudes!, GO HERE, DUDES!

Review: Cloud Nothings – Attack On Memory

Dylan Baldi & friends attempt to make enough of a racket to drown out any self-loathing they may have on Cloud Nothings’ latest experimental pop-punk treasure, Attack on Memory, but the noise never drowns out the inner demons.

Some History: Cloud Nothings started out like a lot of bands: one dude, all alone in his basement, trying to record his great songs with minimal tools and maximum time. No more than 2 years ago, Ohio college student Dylan Baldi, after his homework was finished (or not), recorded a whole entire album of lo-fi punk/pop songs on his computer in his basement called Turning On. Then, before anyone could even successfully hum to the songs of Turning On, Cloud Nothings’ second album, Cloud Nothings was released a mere 3 months later. Cloud Nothings was a tight little collection of quick and catchy-as-shit lo-fi pop-punk tunes full of hooks and sentiment. But the newest incarnation of Cloud Nothings on the latest album Attack on Memory is hardly the humble basement project that was once Baldi’s personal hobby.

Baldi went ahead and rounded up 3 buddies to record Attack on Memory with help from the man responsible for producing Nirvana’s best album (ahem), In Utero…Mr. Steve Albini! The result? A full-on, loud, angsty, in the moment, progressive, punk band with just as many hooks and a little less sentiment.

First Impressions

The first thing I noticed about this album is the sound of the drums. They sound like they have been directly ripped from In Utero, rearranged, sped-up some, and laid back down to create a concrete solid base that holds down this fort of an album. The sound of the BOOMing snare drum and heavy chugging toms that were practically Albini’s signature on In Utero are present for the entire 34 minutes of Attack on Memory. The second thing that is pretty consistent throughout this whole album is Dylan Baldi’s voice. He’s got that cool raspy punk/grunge growl going on, mixed with moments of undeniable melodic soulfulness. One more thing, if you listen to how the guitars are mixed on this album, the two main guitar parts are almost always mixed to completely opposite channels, meaning one guitar is only in the right speaker and the other only in the left. This makes for cool discoveries if you like to play with the panning knob on your turntable or car stereo. You begin to see how well two totally seperate guitar parts come together to make such a rich sound.

The Songs

1. No Future/No Past - Opening with a pretty piano line that suddently shifts to downright erie once the guitars and vocals slowly creep in, this song basically becomes an incredibly unnerving slow build from Baldi singing like he’s stuck in the daze of a nightmare that he can’t wake up from, to the sobering realization that there was nothing, there will be nothing, there is only now. Musically, a tone is set for the album that this is going to be a bleak ride, but its fucking raw and real and it’s happening RIGHT NOW and that’s all that matters. Also the mood kind of reminded me of Nirvana’s “Something In The Way”.

2. Wasted Days – This song starts with a fast, shaky little guitar part that revs up until it’s rolling like a bullet train away from dreamland. I just love Baldi’s vocals when the verse hits, channeling some 90′s Billie Joe Armstrong attitude before going into a more chant like chorus of “I thought, I would, be more, than this!” And just when we thought we were out of the haze, the song stops dead save the chugging notes of a distorted base, moving into a 5-minute aggressive psych/noise jam until getting back on track to end at almost the 9-minute mark with a screaming rendition of the chorus. Another song facing the sobering reality of a life after mistakes have been made.

3. Fall In – A contrast to some of the heavier songs on the album, “Fall In” definitely falls on the other side of its wide spectrum of moods. Fast and upbeat but easily one of the most poppy songs on the album. The chorus is very easy to sing along with (“Fall in, fall in, fall, in”) with a nice lil harmony to boot! It also has a cool riff-y guitar solo that is a dead ringer for the outro of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”.

4. Stay Useless – This is the “Blink 182″ song of the album. Cool, surfy, laid back intro and verses that are just warm, poppy and dealing with inner feelings of self-pity. The chorus really hits hard and loud, repeating a lot, but never repeating enough.

5. Seperation – The one and only instrumental track on the album. Just a blistering song consisting of a few really aggressive and kind of technical parts. Classic rock guitars, some quirky dissonant wailing and wrapping up with a pounding outro that doesn’t let up one bit until the very last panting note. A great capture of a band escaping the outside world and just having good, live fun playing loud music.

6. No Sentiment – The heaviest song on the record. This song starts with a single note that drones out for the entire verses, while a simple, yet HUGE beat is pounded on the drums accompanied by an overdriven riff that is just as huge. The lyrics pretty much capture the overall feeling of the album, (“We started a war / Attack on Memory / No easy way out / Forget everything / No nostoalgia / No sentiment / We’re over it now / We were over it then”). While Baldi is most likely trying to forget some traumatic end of a relationship, these words also kind of fit with the entire theme of the album and the feeling that new territory is being treaded musically by Baldi and Cloud Nothings instead of continuing to make another album of straight up pop-punk. It’s kind of refreshing to just forget everything that has ever happened and just dwell on NOW.

7. Our Plans – An attempt to grasp onto some kind of emotions after the numbing effect of the previous song, turns into a sort of paranoid and pessimistic outlook on trying to connect with someone with Baldi insisting “No one knows our plans for us, we won’t last long”.

8. Cut You – A melancholic sounding tune with a super catchy chorus melody. But the lyrics are probably the saddest of the album, with the main character desperately wondering if this “other guy” hurts this partner as much as he himself did and if it’s “gonna work out”. Then he just flat-out admits that he misses her because he likes damage and needs something he can hurt. Whether the hurting was actually intentional or not, it’s still some painful stuff to think about.

All In All

Attack on Memory is a great sounding album if you like loud kick-ass rock and roll as well as quick catchy 90′s-ish hooks. Yes, these are two totally different things, but Cloud Nothings do a good job of tying them together with an overall dark/hopeless kind of mood that lies even in the poppiest songs on this record. At only 8 songs you might think this is a throwaway album at first, but it’s actually a pretty cool journey with some weird surprises along the way.

For a taste check out “No Future/No Past”, “Stay Useless” and “No Sentiment” all via Pitchfork.com

or just check out this pretty weird video for “No Future/No Past” below:

Refused are fucking undead.

Like a zombie apocalypse that you can mosh to, REFUSED are coming back from the dead and playing together in the year of 2012. On Monday, January 9, 2012 REFUSED frontman Denis Lyxzen announced that band will play the Coachella music festival this April. Unbelievable. I am still blown away, almost a week after hearing the news. If you are not familiar with REFUSED than you are most likely not a fan of punk rock and roll music. But if you are, you can probably relate to my elation. REFUSED were a swedish band that put out a few punk/hardcore records and one reeeeeeeeeeealllllllly good record called The Shape of Punk to Come in 1997 shortly before calling it quits and breaking up. And when I heard The Shape of Punk to Come as a teenager, I was ten times more blown away as I am by the recent news of their reunion. Perhaps the most exciting part of this news is Denis Lyxzen’s statement about REFUSED’s reunion points to the exciting idea of a possible performance of The Shape of Punk to Come in its entirety,

“We never did “The shape of punk to come” justice back when it came out, too tangled up in petty internal bickering to really focus on the job. And suddenly there’s this possibility to do it like it was intended. We wanna do it over, do it right. For the people who’ve kept the music alive through the years, but also for our own sakes. We feel that you deserve it and we hope the feeling is mutual.”

Well, it definately IS fucking mutual. I have a feeling that when they created this masterpiece of an album back in ’97 when they were still relatively young and naive, they were not able to recreate that staggeringly massive and technical sound in a live setting. They just went on being the punk band that they knew how to be and then piddled out. It has been 14 years and these guys are older and wiser now. I feel like they are ready to do this album justice live. I have faith in this. I just hope somebody films the goddamn thing because unless I win a contest or something, I will unfornately not get to witness this spectacle. That is unless…..they come to Canada? We’ll see.

Stay tuned for a full (and very nostalgic) classic review of The Shape of Punk to Come from a white Canadian punk kid’s perspective.

“Rather be forgotten, than remembered for giving in” – REFUSED, “Summerholidays vs. Punkroutine”

The Shape of Blogs to Come

Hey peeps, congratulations and happybirthday this is the very first post from AUNTYNOISE!

You probably want to know what I have in store for this blogfront.  Well you have come to the right place, the very first entry.  Lord knows why but you’ve navigated yourself all the way back to the first entry and you deserve some explanations.

1) The name of the blog, AUNTYNOISE is an ironic statement AND a pun all in one.  Aunty sounds like Anti and noise is what I refer to the stuff around me that I hear, including mostly music.  I am not against music, nor am I an Aunty.  NOW you know…………………………..

2) The main thing you will get here on AUNTYNOISE are Music Reviews.  I will review new stuff and old stuff and nostalgic stuff that is personal to me.  I encourage you to comment if you agree or disagree with anything.  That would be rad.  I will also try not to make these reviews too pretentious sounding.  Listen, I love Pitchfork as much as the next cool guy for helping me discover some of the best new music out there, but I will tell you right now that I am only one person.  I am not a collective of hipsters “covering” music from every facet of the indie landscape.  I (like everyone) have my own musical preferences/biases and if something is not to my liking, my review will likely be short and very shitty.  No sugar-coating!

3) I will talk about my band The Racoon Wedding.  It’s a band from Brantford, ON that I’ve been in for a while.  We play shows now and then, which may provide some interesting banter.

4) I am no Doug Benson but I like myself some movies (and TV!) so I will occasionally talk about those moving picture things in the same vein as music.

5) Anything else will most likely be nerdy ramblings that have no real purpose other than getting any giddiness out of my system.  I get real fuckin giddy sometimes watch out.

Thank you for taking the tour.  Don’t forget to comment you silly willy nelson, you.

-Tye