Old School Revisited

An old school pic of a 1996 Warzone / Right Direction show: pure MAYHEM. Bring back the energy of the old school days!

No Good News - Self Titled EP

No Good News is an amazing band which plays pop punk with horns and you should go listen to them right now! The feeling reminds me of good old Less Than Jake somehow, but this is New York (?) pop with enough distortion and snotty bubblegum punk for it to be cool and not just plain pop.

The lyrics are all about broken relationships, indecision, bad choices etc (typical pop punk agenda!) Just awesome pop punk with a totally nostalgic feeling, perfect for those lonely spring (or any other time of the year, for that matter) nights when you come home feeling lost! Thumbs up for the perfect horns, the awesome guitar tone and the spot-on backing vox. This easily gets [9/10] with no second thought!

I'll keep my feet right on the ground / you mean nothing to me now

Check it all out here.

Freddy Madball's Hip Hop Career

The saga continues... Freddy Madball seems to be going further with his career as a rapper, picking up where his 2009 1st solo hip hop album, Catholic Guilt left off. Is "thug" hip hop the future of the NYHC we used to know?

The Movielife - This Time Next Year Re-release

BACK in the early 00s/late 90s, there was a golden era when the term 'emo-core' was understood as a new style of hardcore that was a bit more melodic and well... emotional, but it was definately still HARDCORE, or at least punk. The genre had nothing to do with what emo came to be through the years (whiney kids focused mostly on style, playing modern corporate rock music).

Which brings us to the Movielife and the re-release of their now classic 2nd album "This Time Next Year" by Mightier Than The Sword Records. Originally released in 2000 by Revelation Records, "This Time Next Year" had dropped on the hardcore scene like a bomb, bringing melody and freshness in a scene that was oversaturated with the mostly chugga chugga metal mentality of 90s hardcore.

Some 11 years later, the album still sounds fresh and I am very glad to see it circulating back in the scene which needs positive, melodic bands like the Movielife. Their short career in hardcore surely left its mark on the kids and now it is time to re-live their history all over again!

Some extra info for you all: the re-issue is limited to 562 copies of 180 gram vinyl, so all you collectors can go crazy as of now. The Movielife have reunited for some 2011 shows while you can check out the Mightier Than The Sword webstore here: http://store.mtsrecords.com/products/7850.

Street of Possession - 'The Wolfman' EP (self-released) Review

Just how much ambient instrumental beatdown death metal have you heard lately? Probably not much... Nevertheless, this crazy 'prog meets mosh' band from Lyon, France is here to create a new niche and satisfy your insatiable need for new, crazy, and heavy as fuck music.

The thing with Street of Possession's amazing new EP The Wolfman is that it is actually has no vocals and consists only of heavy downtuned guitars, sick groovy rhythm patterns and beatiful ambient layers to accompany all the unsurmantouble heaviness. A one-man project on this one, SOP also work on stuff with death metal vocals on other recordings, but here Jeremie (guitars, bass, drum prog, samples) ventures on his own to create a masterpiece of avant garde post-deathcore. This is really like nothing else I've heard before, as this kid takes the ball from bands like White Chapel, Misery Index, For Today etc and keeps running, stripping it all down to the bare essentials.

SOP manages to combine the heaviness with some hair raising type of melodies, thus balancing between the extreme and the almost catchy, even mainstream sound if you like. The record is also based on something like a concept theme, about the cruel transformation of a man into a wolf. Sounds kind of crazy (or maybe typical if you're a metal fan), but as I am into all that anarcho primitive, back to wilderness feral type thinking, I can surely dig! Our feral edge is always calling, waiting to make a beast out of us again... Another interesting fact is that  since there are no lyrics, each song leaves you on your own to start making a plot in your head based only on the song title and the complexity of the music.

Awesome work from this French beatdown eccentric! I easily give it a [9.5/10]. I am just curious to see how the next stuff (with vocals) will sound like...