Alternative music, cult films, and pop culture explored through a Gen X lens — with reviews, interviews, and a deep-dive podcast.
Killing Joke ‘Pylon’ Review: Post-punk icons return to ward off the apocalypse with ass-kicking results. [rating=5] It seems counterintuitive that a band nearly 40 years in their career sound as angry and passionate as a one in their twenties, but that’s Killing Joke for you. They continually defy nature and expectations, refusing to mellow with age or tone down […]
Albums revisited: Echo and the Bunnymen’s Reverberations at 25-A tremor in the wires By: Peter Marks After scaling the dizzying heights of fame what’s a band to do? In the case of Echo and the Bunnymen that answer was to split up. At least that’s what their frontman intended to have happen, everyone else had […]
Smashing Pumpkins Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness Turns 25: a look back at the double-album that became a generational touchstone on its 25th anniversary. You can never accuse Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan of lack of ambition. Even for a band hot off the success of their multi-platinum selling 1993 album Siamese Dream, following it […]
Albums Revisited: The Cult’s ‘Love’ Turns 30: A look back at the breakthrough album that shaped the future of alternative rock on its 30th anniversary. By the mid 80’s, rock music had become a fractured beast: the sub-genres of glam metal, thrash, New Wave, Goth, college rock, etc, had created a confusing subculture of musical cliques. Macho hair […]
Confrontational ‘A Dance of Shadows’ Review: Italian synth act conjure 80’s neon-noir and horror soundscapes on début album. [rating=4] If I had to pick the most interesting musical genre of the past few years, Synthwave would definitely top the list. Growing up on a steady diet of horror films with slick synth soundtracks, I enjoy […]
Albums Revisited: Cigarettes, Shades and Skin: The Sister’s of Mercy’s Vision Thing at 25 By: Peter Marks The American album. That’s what they called it in the press when it hit the streets on October 22 1990. Bigger production values, grittier topics and naturally those riffs… oh the grief this band endured for using a […]
Billy Corgan Leaves Twitter, Starts Blog About Old Cars: Smashing Pumpkins frontman starts mysterious website, continues love affair with wrestling. While we await the next album from The Smashing Pumpkins, frontman Billy Corgan (or William Patrick Corgan, as is his preferred moniker these days) has fueled much head scratching with his curious and perhaps final […]
Danzig ‘Blackest of The Black’ Austin, TX Concert Review: Devilish Metal was alive and well at Stubbs’ Waller Creek Amphitheater. [rating=4] Even in a city as hipster-centric as Austin, a week bookended by two ACL Festival installments is pushing it. So thank God (I mean Satan) for Danzig’s Blackest of the Black Festival, which added a […]
Albums Revisited: ‘Lift’- Sex, Drugs and Love and Rockets. Peter Marks looks back at the post-punk trio’s final album. By Peter Marks The 1990s were not kind to Love and Rockets, though they went into them on top of the world thanks to “So Alive” their subsequent albums were routinely ignored by both the music […]
Monster Magnet ‘Cobras And Fire (The Mastermind Redux)’ Review: frontman Dave Wyndorf blasts off on a magic carpet ride with this wild and wooly re-imagining of band’s 2010 album Mastermind. [rating=4] When I spoke to Monster Magnet frontman Dave Wyndorf earlier this year regarding Milking the Stars, the band’s re-imagining of 2013 album Last Patrol, he mentioned he was […]