These days, heavy guitars and macabre imagery seem as closely associated as chocolate and peanut butter. The horror-obsessed riff-slingers in Cannibal Corpse, Slayer and Genitorturers have transformed certain sections of the world’s record bins into pus-soaked morgues, thanks to their sordid tales of decapitation, dismemberment and disembowelments. The problem is…

R.E.M. Monster (Warner Bros.) Anyone who assumed, after perusing the ink already spilled over this, that Monster would sound like a less accessible version of Metal Machine Music can be forgiven for being somewhat underwhelmed by the reputed noisiness of the twelve ditties contained herein. “Star 69,” five numbers into…

Musician/publisher/writer/mother-to-be Lisa Crystal Carver is tired of Generation X and its dysfunctional rantings. In fact, this Denver immigrant would like nothing better than to see the twenty-something crowd exposed for what it really is–a pack of lazy whiners. ” are a bunch of spoiled people who are used to having…

Liz Phair Whip-Smart (Matador) Rock-critic types have treated the release of Whip-Smart with reverence suggestive of the second coming, which in some ways is appropriate–like Exile in Guyville, Phair’s slobbered-over debut, this sophomore offering doesn’t skimp on the orgasms. Unfortunately, I suspect that this songwriter’s focus on the various uses…

Let’s face it: Most rock-and-roll musicians aren’t exactly nuclear physicists. So on those rare occasions when a band of savvy rock musicians emerges, reporters usually pounce on them like a mob of doting grandmothers. For proof, look no further than the indie-rock prodigies in Pavement. The group’s members (currently Steve…

“When most people think of psychedelic, they think of the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix,” says Steve Perry, the singer-songwriter for Eugene, Oregon’s Cherry Poppin’ Daddies. “But to me, that’s not psychedelic at all. To me, that’s real run-of-the-mill. Psychedelic is much subtler. Like, I see Sammy Davis Jr. as being…

Singer/guitarist Junior Brown doesn’t like to be pigeonholed, musically or otherwise. “Whenever think they’ve got me pegged, I pull something out that’s a little different,” explains Austin’s latest musical discovery. “I like to keep it interesting.” “Interesting” hardly begins to describe Brown’s spicy, Texas-tinged country masterpieces. On a good night,…

Joe Escalante, bassist and founder of the Vandals, knows something about real punk rockers, in part because he and his bandmates (guitarist Warren Fitzgerald, vocalist Dave Quackenbush and drummer Josh Freese) have seen their share of poseurs. ” used to go to high school with Warren,” he says by way…

Things are not always what they seem–especially when it comes to Smackjacket’s John Bogovich. On the surface, this 26-year-old vocalist/ guitarist seems the epitome of Nineties hard-rock nihilism: His scalp is shaved, his ears sport large, primitive earrings that look as if they were ordered from the back pages of…

“Most rockabilly bands don’t really like us,” says Rex Moser, guitarist and lead warbler for the Denver-based punkabilly trio known as the Throttlemen. Given the threesome’s irreverent passion for grafting traditional rockabilly riffs onto accelerated punk-rock tempos, it’s not surprising that many local rockabilly disciples have a problem with them…

“It’s strange to think that a year from now I might be doing what the people that I think of as rock stars are doing.” So says Rob Schneider, the unassuming frontman for the Denver-based pop quartet called the Apples. But while it’s presently difficult to imagine Schneider and his…

Jeff Buckley, Thursday, July 14, at the Bug, is the son of Sixties contemporary-folk stalwart Tim Buckley, but you’d never know it by listening to his music. Although this Manhattan-based singer/songwriter (second from left) usually performs as a coffeehouse solo act, his angelic avant-rock compositions have more in common with…

“We fit in everywhere but nowhere,” says Eye Yamatsuka, the mad scientist behind the avant-garde pop vivisectionists known as the Boredoms. What the wiry young vocalist is trying to convey by this statement is anyone’s guess, but one thing is certain: Early arrivers at this year’s Lollapalooza festival are in…

The rock press can be both a boon and a bane for emerging rock bands that fall into the all-encompassing phylum now known as alternative music. No one knows this better than the foursome in San Diego’s Drive Like Jehu. Although this cataclysmic act has garnered more than its fair…

If Oklahoma City doesn’t go down in pop-rock history as the next (yawn) Seattle, Flaming Lips guitarist/vocalist Wayne Coyne won’t mind. He likes his hometown the way it is–boring. “We’ve sort of gone out of our way to say, `Look, there’s nothing going on here. Just do what you want…

Kokane Funk Upon a Rhyme (Ruthless/Relativity) I admit it: When I saw the cover of this album, I figured that the disc would bite. The reason was simple–there’s too much lame, redundant, boneheaded gangsta rap out there right now, and a recording by someone named Kokane (real name: Jerry Long)…

Jeb Bows, the seventeen-year-old guitarist in the Longmont-based band called Linus, doesn’t care for the term “Generation X”–and with good reason. Bows and his bandmates–vocalist Dan Parris, guitarist Andy Rothbard, bassist Jason Barlowe and drummer Mike M.–hardly fit the blank-eyed, TV-worshiping profile some observers use to describe the under-25 crowd…

Maggie Estep No More Mister Nice Girl (NuYo/Imago) Calling Ms. Estep a spoken-word artist is tantamount to describing Richard Nixon as a former congressman from California: It doesn’t exactly tell the whole story. Sure, Estep speaks a lot of words–as a former student at Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied…

Rock historian Lester Bangs once observed that “rock and roll is the most democratic and all-American of art forms.” What the late, great critic forgot to mention, however, is that it’s also the most fun a young punk-rock insurgent can have without a book of matches. For proof, look no…

Old Bull’s Needle vocalist Tim Franklin is a man with a mission: “If there’s one goal in my life as a musician,” he explains, “it’s to get halfway famous enough to meet from Counting Crows–and wring his fucking neck.” Given sentiments like these, it’s doubtful that Franklin and his bandmates…

Gil Scott-Heron Spirits (TVT) Gang Starr Hard to Earn (Chrysalis/ERG) You can bet that the members of Gang Starr have worn out a few Gil Scott-Heron albums in their day. Scott-Heron was rapping before hip hop became either fashionable or marketable, and the music that he put to his words…

No one can accuse Jello Biafra of being less than bipartisan. His archenemy, George Bush, was ousted from office, but the former Dead Kennedys frontman remains as outraged as ever at the White House’s current resident. “Even I had a little bit of hope this time around, although I couldn’t…