Christmas morning arrives. You stumble excitedly down the stairs in your jammies, and your leaping heart cracks three of your ribs, puncturing your lungs as you see that long, rectangular package under the tree. You ignore the blinding pain and lunge for the box, figuring you can get in a few songs before drowning in your own blood. But as you tear open the wrapping paper, the realization that you’ve been swindled in God’s name sets in. This looks like Guitar Hero, but it’s not Guitar Hero. It’s Guitar Praise.

Your final gurgling moments are spent clawing at your mother’s face, spewing a sputtering mess of blood and words that sounds like “blurrrgh… cheap… gurruuurgmother… fuuurrglefucker!” You fall. You will never get to play the one thing that may have saved your rotten, sinning soul. Full Article »

I have a problem. It’s an ugly habit that is destroying my life. When everyone else hates an album I love, a syndrome kicks in- its severity proportionate my peers’ collective hatred for said album- and I find myself compulsively determined to convince everyone that they’re wrong, that they just need to give it a truly objective chance.

Forgive me, but I am unable to stop loving The Distillers’ 2003 album Coral Fang. Full Article »

While the rest of the nation was watching Barack Obama accept the Democratic nomination in Denver, Radiohead was in Santa Barbara, CA, bringing their international summer-long In Rainbows tour to a triumphant, if subdued, close. The biggest band in the world proved last night exactly why they can give their album away and still be a wild success; they’re maniacally passionate about what they do, and the authenticity of delivery matched with sheer instrumental genius lifts them head and shoulders beyond the lion’s share of arena bands out there.

Radiohead proved once again last night that they’re atmospheric pioneers in a purgatorial electronic landscape, where the running theme is delicate despair with bursts of angelic optimism. Whether they’re pushing industry envelopes, making crazy laser beam videos or simply blowing minds and dropping jaws with their music, this band is undoubtedly among the best of our generation. Full Article »

Axl Rose didn’t call the FBI, but today it became more than obvious that someone really was serious about that threat. Johnny and I sat on a pew in the U.S. District Court building in Downtown L.A. as Skwerl sat behind glass, in handcuffs, and still in his jammies since the FBI arrested him at 6:59 this morning.

After five or so other cases were presented, the United States of America presented her case against Skwerl. The proceeding was mostly about what his bail was going to be set at. The U.S.A. requested bail be set at $50,000. Skwerl’s court-appointed attorney thankfully called B.S. on that one and recommended his bail be $5,000 and that this case is the kind of case where the defendant should have been summoned to appear instead of being accosted by five F.B.I. agents at his home in a quiet neighborhood. Full Article »

The Game’s ego is his biggest downfall. Sure, he’s got the cash to enlist a top-shelf dream team of producers– Kanye West, DJ Hi-Tek and Scott Storch among them; He’s always been beat-focused, so a hefty range of big beats is mando. But this time all the cameos and producers in the world won’t save a weak rhyme. LAX simply serves as further evidence that Mr. Jayceon Taylor can’t carry a record on his own. The guy simply refuses to evolve beyond lyrical self-fellation and delusions of thug grandeur.

Don’t get me wrong- LAX has its moments in the sun. How could it not? I can’t remember a more star-studded hip-hop album. Kanye turns a production page in his portfolio with Angel, stepping outside the glow-in-the-dark theatrics and laying the groundwork for one of the best tracks on the album, while Raekwon puts things back in motion with one of his best verses in years on Bulletproof Diaries. The Game actually holds his own on this one, too. Best album track? Well, it aint an embarrassment- that’s a start, right? Full Article »

I heard Rose Hill Drive for the first time just a few weeks ago. I remember getting an email from my brother, who’d just come back from a taping of Conan O’Brien’s show in New York and was amped as all hell about the musical guest. “Sick vocals, sick bass, nasty lead guitar and solid fucking drums! They look like the Hanson brothers all grown up,” he told me. “Like the White Stripes on steroids.”Understanding fully that Jack White on steroids would pretty much cause the universe to collapse in on itself, I took this news for the slight exaggeration it had to be. But my interest was piqued. I caught ‘em on Conan later that night, and after seeing them tear the shit out of their new single Sneak Out, I understood what my brother was so excited about. I knew we had to talk to these guys.

We got tracked down drummer Nathan Barnes to get a bearing on what the band’s up to, where they’ve learned from the legends and what it means to be a band breaking into a dying industry. Full Article »