Recorded in tandem with last year’s surgically themed Delirium Cordia, this abrasive and comical offering from Mike Patton and his co-conspirators in Fantmas throws avant-speed metal, kids’ jump-rope songs, film-score snippets and Looney Tunes-era sound effects into a blender set to “frappé” — then churns the whole mess into a…

I grew up in a country that was uneasy from the day I was born,” says Dave King. “I have a lot of friends who were imprisoned for political activity.” As the token Irishman and founding member of the Los Angeles-based Flogging Molly, King endured a childhood that wasn’t exactly…

Whether or not one magic slug from a lone gunman actually caused seven wounds between JFK and former Texas governor John Connally is something for conspiracy theorists to argue about until Bigfoot rides a unicorn to the next Skull and Bones blood ritual. For Pennsylvanian thrash outfit Single Bullet Theory,…

Unless you speak fluent Japanese, you’ll only understand about 5 percent of what Guitar Wolf’s frontman is screaming about — a garbled spew of vitriol peppered with smatterings of thickly accented English: “Baby! Baby! Fire Joe! Fuck you! Go! Go! Time machine! 1-2-3! Rock ‘n’ roll! Yeah!” The rest of…

Blame Green Day for refashioning “punk” as a watered-down pop subspecies that tries to elevate the state of suburban tedium into some kind of political outrage — the kind where the only thing being suppressed is the view beyond the big, scary hedge in a well-manicured front yard. Look no…

Bar-stool laments from lovable losers have been the staple of hard-edged honky-tonk since long before George Jones drove his riding mower to the liquor store half-cocked. But in the sure hands of a seasoned troubadour like Rex Hobart, the well-trod themes of cheating, drinking and insanity sound fresh — especially…

In the world of superheroes, Havok is a short-tempered X-Factor mutant with the ability to fire waves of explosive energy from his fingertips. In Denver’s own underground death-core realm, the band Havok does something similar with guitars and amps, grinding through sheets of metal and double-kick tempos like a buzz…

If Ian Dury fronted a Sex Pistols cover band with a fake American accent, a group like Wanker might sound oddly familiar. Instead, its members sound like aged, insolent, faux-Anglican punkers from a parallel universe — say, a London-based New York Dolls tribute act that calls itself the Jerk Offs…

Still mucking about with guitar-based animal sounds, Lone Rhino preservationist Adrian Belew casts a wide net over the other endangered species in the playful safari of his mind. But on this brief jungle outing, the guitar force that added so much punch to Talking Heads’ Remain in Light measures the…

As integral to SoCal’s rock heritage as the Beach Boys or the Doors was the incestuous Hollywood punk class of 1977: the Screamers, the Weirdos, the Zeros and especially the Germs, whose legendary valedictorian, Darby Crash, ushered in the end of a brief but historical West Coast scene after overdosing…

There aren’t many bands who have actually toured in an eighteen-wheeler — let alone committed their artistic vision to something called “balls-out trucker punk.” But for the good buddies in Steerjockey, amphetamines and hundred-mile coffee fuel a sound that won’t back off the hammer, leading a rumbling convoy of Zeke,…

Five years ago, the unexpected, runaway popularity of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack propelled Ralph Stanley into the American mainstream, his contribution earning him a Grammy and enough royalties to finally tool around in a shiny black Jaguar. On the downside, the deeply religious 78-year-old bluegrass legend still…

After seventy minutes of uncommonly fluid electro-soothe, STS9 doesn’t exactly alter the course of down-tempo music. But here’s the good news: Atlanta’s vibrational five-piece has forgone chasing the Grateful Phish ghost for more computerized pastures. With fresh ideas and a strictly enforced moratorium on dreaded solo noodling, the Tribe unveils…

From a doctor’s waiting room somewhere in Manhattan, Benjamin Curtis sounds upbeat for a guy who can’t get an Ambien prescription. The Secret Machines singer/guitarist isn’t having trouble sleeping. He just likes taking the neurological sedative because, he says, “It makes your brain think that you’re dreaming.” Given the heavy,…

While his legendary father was forged by the Mississippi Delta, favored one-chord grooves on open-tuned guitars and kept time by constantly stomping his foot, John Lee Hooker Jr. takes a less primitive approach to the blues. Detroit-bred and now residing in Citrus Heights, California, the 52-year-old son of the late…

Though contrived shock metal reached the end of its creative leash well before Marilyn Manson discovered corsets, godless doom and gloom rarely have a bad day at the cash register. Enter Otep Shamaya, a Los Angeles-based traffic-stopper who broke the ranks of Ozzfest three summers ago as leader of the…

New Jersey transplant Dave Lichtenberg, the bundle of nerves behind “I Want an Ugly Girl” and “Useless Shit,” has always performed under his alter ego with the spaz meter running full throttle. Still, extolling life at the bottom, where it’s just as lonely, Little Fyodor presents a live album that…

Dissonance trumps exotica when Quintron, New Orleans’s favorite ninth-ward inventor and one-man lounge act, further explores the sounds made possible through cheap, modified tube organs. And if that’s not enough, the “Amazing Spellcaster” also busts out his drum buddy — a hand-built device that transforms rhythmic light-exposure patterns into percussion…

Even though Jolie Holland pads her nest with jazz, folk and blues, she can’t be pigeonholed. Sometimes the 29-year-old singer-songwriter hunts for a new morning worm in the form of gospel, swing, lounge music or the occasional Civil War anthem. You might say she’s a weird bird. Then again, Holland…

In his youth, Kingston-bred reggae star Ripton Hilton threw away tons of money at the racetrack, betting time and again on a sorry nag named Eek-A-Mouse. But the one time he decided not to wager on the beloved hay-burner, it actually won — earning Hilton a permanent rodent-type nickname among…

A child prodigy who learned piano at age three and cut his teeth professionally at eleven, Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones in 1930) formed several jazz trios throughout the ’50s — back when the quiet and conservative tones of the cool era were evolving from bebop’s radical bombast. A…

When death pulls into most towns, sadness permeates everything and everybody it touches. In the Big Easy, however, grief is as unwelcome as a vice cop in a brothel. “In New Orleans, we celebrate death,” says Efrem Towns, the exuberant trumpet and flugelhorn player for the Dirty Dozen Brass Band…