The Deftones sound can be described as heavy. It's a heaviness, however, which is attributable to the bruising weight of emotion and atmosphere in the music, as much as to the effect of guitars and drums. The influence of The Cure and The Smiths is obvious: there is a real and pressing darkness to their music, absent in goth metal peers, such as Korn and Marilyn Manson.
On first impression, it’s hard to make head or tail of Deftones' Saturday Night Wrist, simply because they throw in a truckload of experimentation. Once the album’s unpicked, however, it’s a different beast altogether.
Limerick thrashmeisters Giveamanakick's third album Welcome To The Cusp is the product of ten days of cabin fever in Donegal. No wonder it sounds wet 'n' wild.
Metallica precede massive August all-dayer in the RDS (elsewhere on bill: Linkin Park, Mudvayne, The Deftones) with the June release of eighth LP St. Anger
Grunge is back, apparently. And the hotbed for the revival is the English city of Leeds, where Dinosaur Pile-Up are among the newcomer acts leading the charge.
Irish journalist, novelist and musician JOE AMBROSE has JUST published The Violent World Of Mosh Pit Culture (book), an explosive first-hand account of life inside the mosh pit. STEPHEN ROBINSON spoke to him about the sex, brutality and freedom to be discovered within the ‘pits.
Early speed metal incarnations, arguably the most technically demanding of all walks of rock, have done good things for this proggier-than-thou Boston quartet.
In the 10 years they’ve been together, A have gone through their collective, if delayed, puberty. Ignoring the fact that we’re still waiting for Jason Perry’s unique voice to break, they’ve gotten over their monkey obsession, stopped wearing schoolboy-type shorts, and have only just successfully avoided singing about how yukky it is to kiss girls.
Not only are Metallica and Linkin Park making it a double-header in the RDS (and not only are more support acts en route) but this is the start of a beautiful friendship... with our newest festival, Reading Ireland
Heavy metal never corrodes, it just warps. Death metal, rap metal, black metal, industrial metal, glam-metal, nu-metal – there are 666 ways to polish a turd.
According to Buzz Records in Chicago, the sound that’s created by Irish band Half Film is “music for the solitary life”. Maybe it’s appropriate, then, that we’ve interviewed them without even talking, never mind meeting face to face.
