Formed in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the mid-’90s, Shadows Fall began as a melodic death-metal band with some roots in hardcore. But around the turn of the century, the outfit took decisive steps to escape a genre rut, and the result was 2002’s The Art of Balance, which served as a…
Despite having yet to play a single show, Wanker graced the cover of the December 23, 1987, issue of Westword, looking like a mash-up of the New York Dolls and Adam and the Ants. The group, which started as an idea for a cable-access comedy skit, proved to be too…
PAUL BANKS @ BLUEBIRD THEATER |11/27/12 When Paul Banks and his band walked on stage last night, with no preamble of any kind, the four musicians took up their positions, and as drifts of fog floated gently by, the guitar sparkle and low-end bass slides introduced one of Banks’s best…
Paul Banks is best known as the charismatic frontman of Interpol, an outfit at the center of the so-called “post-punk revival” of the early 2000s. Banks’s rich and resonant voice was the perfect match for the dark atmospheres and urgency of Interpol’s music. While on tour with the band, Banks…
DEATH GRIPS @ LARIMER LOUNGE | 11/23/12 Most bands that get hyped rarely live up to it. Death Grips was better than any hype could convey. Zach Hill and MC Ride put the amount of energy into this less than hour-long performance equaling what you’d have to sustain for a…
The Coup is a hip-hop group that makes no bones in its critique of the system, with song titles like the now infamous and powerful, “Five Million Ways to Kill a CEO,” from its classic 2001 album, Party Music — the artwork of which originally featured members Boots Riley and…
EARTH @ MARQUIS THEATER | 11/21/12 Near the end of Earth’s set, Dylan Carlson said, “This is the first song I ever wrote for Earth. It’s called ‘The Ouroboros is Broken.'” This probably came as a surprise to a lot of people because it is inarguably one of Earth’s classic…
At first listen, this album sounds like Jesse Briata, aka Lockbox, borrowed a lot from Aphex Twin and Dan Deacon. “Parmenter Acid,” for instance, is the kind of playfully spastic electro-pop song that wouldn’t be completely out of place on an earlier Deacon record. “Headbones,” meanwhile, is like a cousin…
As the frontman of Interpol, Paul Banks helped to usher in the most recent wave of post-punk. His emotive quaver and resonance have often been compared to that of Joy Divison frontman Ian Curtis. Musically, however, it’s clear that he’s also absorbed the electrifying, percussion-driven darkness of the Comsat Angels…
The guys in Death Grips are not interested in following in anyone’s footsteps, hip-hop or otherwise. Adopting what drummer/percussionist Zach Hill refers to as “future primitivism,” the outfit uses whatever is readily at hand, including camcorders and cell phones, to capture sounds, and mulches a lot of raw audio into…
When you think about musical projects forming in Boulder these days, rock and roll isn’t exactly what comes to mind, despite Rose Hill Drive’s hailing from that town. But West Water Outlaws (due on Wednesday, November 28, at the Larimer Lounge) can safely be filed in that category. The act…
Earth was one of the first bands to explore the inner spaces of drone and doom metal. In its earlier phase, Earth made creative use of distortion to create dense and crushing atmospheres. Since the band regrouped close to a decade ago, the focus has been more on a textured…
Dethklok may be a virtual band, but it has somehow put out the best-selling death metal record of all time. Everyone who’s familiar with Dethklok knows that it’s the live band cognate of the popular Adult Swim series Metalocalypse. In the show, the band is the world’s seventh biggest economy…
TITUS ANDRONICUS @ LARIMER LOUNGE | 11/19/12 This was one of those shows where you couldn’t tell which band people were there to see. Even when the faces changed up front, the energy level was equally as charged for both outfits. It’s rare to see and experience the the type…
Titus Andronicus, an outfit named after arguably the bloodiest of Shakespeare’s plays, trades in an exuberant, unvarnished melodic brand of rock that’s infused with plenty of the energy you’d expect from a punk band. At the same time, the act could never be confused for a conventional punk band, and…
JAPANDROIDS @ BLUEBIRD THEATER | 11/18/12 Brian King said that while he and David Prowse had had a blast at the Larimer Lounge this past June, they were going to do even better tonight he declared. As promised, the pair proceeded to do just that with every single one of…
WOVEN HAND @ ORIENTAL THEATER | 11/16/12 Shrouded in a moderate haze of fog colored by lights, Woven Hand took the stage as a trio, sounding a bit edgier than in times past. Delay and reverb on Chuck French’s bass formed whirlpools of low end around David Eugene Edwards, who…
Roniit is a project that got started around two years ago by namesake Roniit Alkayam, who went to high school in Evergreen and studied music business at the University of Colorado at Denver. Alkayam started writing her own music in conjunction with her boyfriend Eric Brown, who keeps time for…
For an album that sounds endearing from the start, the songs here are steeped in feisty dissatisfaction and heartache. Without harking back to a specific era of country music — a very welcome break from the current era, which tends to draw too much on the past — the Hollyfelds…
Avid viewers of Cartoon Network’s late-night Adult Swim programming probably know all about Metalocalypse. The show first aired in 2006 as a showcase for the absurdist antics of the band Dethklok, a death-metal band of mythic proportions whose revenues make it the seventh-largest economy on Earth. The music resides somewhere…
Founded in 1989 by Dylan Carlson, Earth took its name from the original moniker of Black Sabbath. And that’s entirely appropriate, seeing as how Earth is one of the pioneers of droning doom metal. Saint Vitus and Sleep were a direct influence on stoner rock, but Earth was a primary…
If melodramatic anime movies featuring star-crossed lovers had good soundtracks for a change, they would probably sound a lot like what Roniit Alkayam has been doing for the past couple of years. Performing as Roniit (due this Friday, November 16, at the hi-dive) with the assistance of Eric Brown on…
