Every year, Denver delivers up worthy new bands in various genres, or non-genres, and this past year has been especially rich in that regard. In a future list, perhaps we can include artists like Born Dumb, Herse, Jimmy V, Julien, Bag, Total Goth, Silver Face, eHpH, Never Kenezzard and PterrorFractyl,…
Deerhoof has been unleashing frenetic, eccentric rock music upon the world since 1994. That the San Francisco-based band’s sound is impossible to pigeonhole has long been a part of its appeal. It has never aimed to embrace a single genre or genre at all beyond loosely categorized “rock.” “We’ve never…
Yoni Wolf and David Cohn have helped to shape and influence the sound of underground hip-hop as we know it. Under their respective creative monikers of Why? and Serengeti, the two artists have collaborated with several other artists on numerous projects. Yoni & Geti is their current joint effort with…
With the release of its debut full-length album Remain in 2015 on Dais Records, Them Are Us Too became an underground sensation for its darkly lush melodies and soaring vocals that recalled the likes of Cocteau Twins and Switchblade Symphony. The band formed in 2013, when Kennedy Ashlyn and Cash…
Korn’s new album — its twelfth full-length in a 23-year career — is recorded and mixed and set for release later in 2016. While no details are available ahead of the release it’s certain that the record will be informed by the band’s diverse musical roots and the thoughtful sensibilities…
In spring 2015, the career of Denver-based hard rock band Space in Time nearly came to a screeching halt. Long-time singer Mike Atencio had stepped down and the rest of Space in Time didn’t know if they could continue without him. Yet all along, one of the band’s early fans…
Domenic “Nicky” Palermo of Nothing has certainly paid his dues. Earlier in life he had been a rough-and-tumble punker who spent two years in jail for stabbing a guy during a fight. Once he got out of jail he spent some time discovering the meaning of his life and returned…
Portland, Oregon-based experimental rock band RLLRBLL makes an appearance this Sunday, June 12, at Down Space in the Dona Laurita Photography and Fine Art gallery. Starting in 1994, the group, which completely resists any pat classifications, came together after Mae Starr, Monte Trent Allen and Gilles left Bozeman, Montana and…
Codename: Carter emerged from a recording project that guitarist and vocalist Steve Gray undertook in 2008. Though more known as a guitarist, Gray discovered sounds that inspired him on keyboard, and he shared demos with old friend and longtime musical collaborator, drummer Michael Behrenhausen. The two filled out the demo…
When Titus Andronicus released its conceptually ambitious triple album The Most Lamentable Tragedy on July 28, 2015, it became a landmark of modern punk. It also marked singer Patrick Stickles’ thirtieth birthday and came out the day of the end of a five-night run of sold-out shows at New York…
New York City-based White Hills are sharing several dates with Vancouver-based Black Mountain. Though from opposite coasts of the continent, both bands are considered exemplars of modern psychedelic rock while never setting out to fit into a genre, much less be torchbearers for a movement. Perhaps it’s something of a…
The annual Underground Music Showcase (aka The UMS) takes place July 28-31, 2016. Featuring a wide variety of musical artists, The UMS dominates Broadway between Sixth and Alameda avenues and offers shows from hundreds of bands. The majority of the festival’s featured acts are based in Denver, but the UMS’s…
It’s appropriate that Beach Slang is from Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, because that’s how it conducts itself with the people that come to the band’s shows. Whether it’s before, during or after the show or down the line. Frontman James Alex is known for answering letters and messages…
In its seemingly never ending pursuit of keeping things fresh for itself and fans, veteran rock band the Melvins are releasing their latest record, Basses Loaded, on June 3 through Ipecac Recordings. The record will feature six separate bass players across twelve songs. This will include Steve McDonald of Redd…
Bleached recently released its latest record, Welcome the Worms, and with it, the band took an artistic leap forward. The band worked with veteran producer Joe Chiccarelli, who has produced or recorded with Frank Zappa, Oingo Boingo, the White Stripes and Tori Amos, to name a few. But an album…
They Might Be Giants is one of the most well known bands from that pre-alternative rock era in the 1980s when there wasn’t an all-encompassing, vague umbrella term for music that wasn’t punk, wasn’t mainstream pop, not quite straight-ahead rock and yet accessible. The band’s self-titled 1986 debut album was…
Fifth Wall Productions is having its second run of The Soul of Wit 3: Sex, Religion and Politics this Saturday, March 5, at 7 p.m. at the Crossroads Theater in Five Points. The variety show, produced and helmed by Thomas Gerlick, aims to bring together the worlds of theater, music…
Eleanor Friedberger was once a member of experimental rock band Fiery Furnaces with her brother Matthew from 2000 until 2011, when it went on indefinite hiatus. In that band the Friedbergers seemed to try out any crazy, creative idea they pleased from record to record, establishing themselves as one of…
Throughout its long career, irreverent humor and compassion for the human condition is at the core of Freakwater’s alternative country music. On its latest record, Scheherazade, its first album of new material since 2005’s Thinking Of You, founding members Janet Beveridge Bean and Catherine Irwin explore modern myths and archetypes…
Rival Sons from Long Beach, California is the opening act on the current, and purportedly last, Black Sabbath tour including the date this Monday, February 15, at the Pepsi Center in Denver. Since 2009 the four-piece hard rock band has been honing its sound and making a name for itself,…
Afrika Bambaataa is one of the architects of hip-hop culture as we know it. He was there when DJ Kool Herc and Kool DJ Dee were throwing the parties that were the foundation stone of hip-hop in New York City in the 1970s. The term hip-hop was coined by Cowboy…
Arrested Development, which performs on Saturday, December 19, at Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox, was one of the earliest incarnations of alternative hip-hop, as it would come to be called by critics. That designation is, of course, problematic when part of the reason the group wasn’t immediately embraced by hip-hop culture was…
