If hardcore’s most noble virtue is intensity, then Stripmines could be kings. The quartet’s five-song debut EP reaches just beyond 10 minutes, and each second is a punch in the teeth. Guitarist Jeff Young levies snarling riffs that dart in and around the song, providing undercurrents and burly noise. Such flotsam lends the band a […]
Bryan C. Reed
Bio: Bryan Reed lives in Raleigh, where he nerds out about punk rock and comic books. He's written about music for INDY Week since 2008.Twitter: http://twitter.com/BryanCReed
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Shards’ self-titled debut LP
Henry Rollins is the more iconic Black Flag frontman, and arguably the better one, too. But the party-time buoyancy Keith Morris brought to the Flagand to the Circle Jerks has been sorely overshadowed by too-serious Rollins acolytes. With its debut LP, Shards offers a remedy: The 11-cut LP brims with the genre’s definitive get-pissed-and-vent intensity, […]
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Troika’s hyper-local focus (Bryan Reed)
Above all, this year’s Troika Music Festival felt less like a festival that happened to take place in Durham and more like one created specifically for Durham. This isn’t to say that the festival wasn’t welcoming—its embrace of all comers was apparent in the often larger-than-usual crowds greeting the festival’s three-day pile-up of (mostly) local […]
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Troika Music Festival 2010 keeps it close enough to home to walk
Troika 2010 website schedule Our Troika guides Thursday Friday Saturday This season brings a flood of symbols and traditions. For the city of Durham and, to a lesser extent, for the Triangle music scene at large, the Troika Music Festival is one of the best. Much like the day of feasting that soon follows, Troika […]
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Corrosion of Conformity III returns
Corrosion of Conformity plays Kings Thursday, Oct. 14, at 9 p.m. Double Negative opens the $10 show. This is the age of second chances: The multiplex is filled with sequels and reboots, and TV is the domain of syndicated reruns and try-again series like Hawaii Five-O. And from Pixies and Pavement to Rage Against the […]
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Cattle Decapitation: Metal vocals are more than just screaming
Cattle Decapitation headlines the California Blood Tour at Volume 11 Tavern Wednesday, Oct. 13. Devourment, Knights of the Abyss and Burning the Masses open the 7 p.m. show. Tickets are $15. “It’s just like, ‘blaaaggghhh gaagggghh rrrrrrggggghh,’ ” a co-worker of mine recently intoned, mimicking a generalized heavy metal vocalist spewing into a microphone. He […]
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Embarrassing Fruits’ Frontier Justice
Embarrassing Fruits release Frontier Justice at Duke Coffeehouse Friday, Sept. 17. The free show begins at 9 p.m. Embarrassing Fruits debuted with a split release shared with Greensboro’s Blank Blank, tellingly titled Sumr Stupid Drunk Fun. The trio’s next outing, the First Time EP, was a breezy, nostalgic trip into early adulthood, charming and playful […]
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Interview: Kylesa
Kylesa plays Saturday, Sept. 11, at Berkeley Cafe with Weedeater, U.S. Christmas and In the Year of the Pig. See Related Events below. The fifth full-length from Georgia’s Kylesa, Spiral Shadow, won’t be out for another month, but it’s already undoubtedly the best portrait of the band yet. The metal fivesomeguitarist/ vocalist Phillip Cope, guitarist/ […]
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Grip Tapes Summer 2010 Sampler
Grip Tapes Summer 2010 Sampler is available for free at bandcamp. Adorned with a spectrum of popsicles, the cover of the Grip Tapes Summer 2010 Sampler hints at the label’s sonic spread. Each of the six bands represented here might be termed “indie rock,” but none of them quite fits next to another. This is […]
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Phil Cook & His Feat
Phil Cook & His Feat is available free at bandcamp. Some records are like photographs, preserving a moment so it can be recalled in the future. Most are more like studied portraits, though, using hours of writing, recording, rerecording, overdubbing, mixing and mastering to create an image that is posed and retouchedan ideal as much […]
