Few good things came out of the disastrous gloom spiral that was 2016. The year we gained Trump et al was also the year we lost David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Carrie Fisher, Prince, etc, etc. It was the year of the Ghost Ship fire and the year of Brock Turner’s slap-on-the-wrist sentence. 2016 was the MORE…
There is absolutely nothing like Get Hustle. The band’s Three One G EP, Dream Eagle, released 18 years ago today, will never sound dated because it is an alien landing party, it’s an interdimensional being. The freeform cabaret marching band blues of tracks like “Pharaoh’s Horses” come out of nowhere. They’re too wild to be MORE…
Who Are the Mystery Girls? A Novel in Serial Form Chapter 7 of 13, Juan Carlos and Yolanda By Adam Gnade Norma slept in the backseat on the drive from Golden Hill to Clairemont while Marigold stared out the passenger window at the black sky and the lights of the city and the cars passing MORE…
Released six years ago today, Doomsday Student’s A Walk Through Hysteria Park opens with what amounts to a car crash. Caught unaware, and with the volume up, it will give you a heart attack. But I guess that’s the goal. Doomsday Student traffics well in the sudden and the shrill, the combustible moments and the MORE…
Listening to Geronimo’s self-titled CD loud over a decent set of headphones can be life-changing, which is of course a word thrown around a lot, and a word that’s lost most of its meaning and helf, but climb into tracks like the 18-plus-minute “Firewater” or “Coyote” and you’re taken to places no other band will. MORE…
Who Are the Mystery Girls? A Short Novel in Serial Form Chapter 6 of 13, Damien and Debsey By Adam Gnade A map first of the backyard—in the northeast corner of the rectangular plot a group stood gathered around the keg, including, but not limited to, Arcangelo Ramirez, his tough sister Norma (famous for her MORE…
Over the course of its existence, the San Diego-based Cattle Decapitation has transformed from a stripped-down gore-grind side project of the arty hardcore/grindcore band The Locust to a full-fledged death metal band of their own, undergoing a few lineup changes in the process. Their association with The Locust formed much of the original basis for MORE…
I remember a certain feeling in the air at the time this record came out. In San Diego the year 2003 was an explosion of new bands forming, big tours booked, money handed out freely by labels and publishers, new media, friends writing books, visual art shows every weekend, club nights, new businesses hatched, new MORE…
Holy Molar messes with a weird dark magic on their side of this split with abrasive New York kings Ex Models. I don’t mean witchery or Harry Potter tricks. I’m talkin’ the strange, intangible “great” that all (most? many?) artists chase when putting together a new work. Not every pop song in the world is MORE…