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Record Reviews1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 | 0-9| A| B| C| D| E| F| G| H| I| J| K| L| M | | N| O| P| Q| R| S| T| U| V| W| X| Y| Z| < Prev Section | Next Section >  RSS Feed
CELL BLOCK 5:
Push It: CD
Pretty run‑of‑the‑mill punk/hardcore with a Dwarves influence. It's better than some, but still not particularly crucial to these ears.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Industrial Strength)
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CELL MATES:
Shoulda Kept That Quarter: 7”
Garage punk with a slight hardcore tinge. I think that these tracks were culled from a demo, though I can’t recall why I think that. Neither insipid nor inspired. If you still have your New Bomb Turks records, which I’m guessing that you do, you could probably let this one pass you by.
–Vincent Battilana (Wallride, wallriderecords.com)
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CELLMATES:
Shoulda Kept That Quarter!: 7”
It’s so hard to review stuff like this. Cellmates play fast, kinda garagey (maybe garage-ish?), kinda hardcore-leaning punk. It didn’t make me want to cut off my ears, nor did it rock my socks off. Finding anything interesting or insightful to say about it is apparently beyond my abilities as a reviewer.
–Ryan Horky (Wall Ride, wallriderecords.com)
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CELLOS:
Bomb Shelter: LP
A sweet ‘n’ mellow mix of Unsane-style skronk rock and more artier fare. By the end, you feel like you’ve been trying to kill one mutha of a hangover with a power saw/boric acid highball and, yep, that’s a good thing.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Dead Beat)
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CENOBITES:
Self-titled: CD
Cenobites are the hook-wielding torture-demons from Clive Barker’s novella The Hellbound Heart and the Hellraiser movies. “We have such sights to show you,” Pinhead, the leader of the Cenobites, promises in the classic line, offering an indescribable convergence of pleasure and pain. In a way, that’s what this band offers, too. Although I would say that the pain of listening to nineteen of their sloppy, angry hardcore songs far outweighs the pleasure that arrives when it’s over.
–MP Johnson (reverbnation.com/cenobites)
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CENTERHITS / YOUR PEST BAND:
Split: 7"
Wow. Sample Centerhits lyrics: “Shave his stubbles! Waiting? While I get calcium so fast!” The Centerhits are kinda reminiscent of mid-period Modern Machines meets the Soviettes. Boy/girl vocals. Punk + rock + a lot of energy! And, actually, Your Pest Band is pretty similar. Lots of loud guitars! The more I listen to this, the more I like it. I like this genre that’s a little more complicated, a little more ROCK than pop punk, but just barely. If this were a cereal, both of these bands would be Rice Krispies with bananas! A solid formula, plus something of substance! Something that gives you the power to ride your bike and jump up and down, and, maybe, at the same time. Impossible? Perhaps!
–Maddy (Snuffy Smiles)
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CENTERHITS, THE:
City Girl Friend: 7” EP
Five rockin’ punk blasts with male and female vocals. The Centerhits, a Japanese three piece, don’t let up with their poppy rockers. At first, I was kinda thinkin’ that they sounded like early Donnas, but more rockin’, more punk, and actually good (and have a male singer, too). Then I realized that nothing could make the Donnas this good, so I abandoned that thought. Could they be the Japanese Soviettes if they got another member? Yes, possibly. Their lyrics are about, well, it’s not always clear. I’m not sure that I can get my head around what, e.g., “She won’t know her head is banbanbeef” is supposed to convey; but, I do know that “Make you disco!” is meant to be a threat (as well it should be). Despite the indecipherability of some of their lyrics, this 7” is pretty damn good. I’m beginning to think that Snuffy Smiles should consider offering 7” subscriptions. Just about everything that comes from ‘em is pretty rad.
–Vincent Battilana (Snuffy Smiles)
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CENTIMETERS:
Help Is On the Way: CD
Side one: Gloomy pop, sorta like Christian Death covering
the Velvet Underground. It started to remind me of early Pink Floyd at the end.
Side two was more of the same. Interesting, but not big whoop.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Space Baby)
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CENTRAL CITY TRANSMISSION:
Incommunicado: CDEP
Whoa, what the fuck is this, Modest Mouse? Eek. Jangly, airy college radio rock with hand wringing, poetaster lyrics that sound like they were penned by Jewel during a break-up-inspired fudge brownie/crying binge. Oof. Oscar Wilde’s ascotted corpse must be spinning in it’s grave. After each horrid song I expected to hear some dorky college kid D.J. with a pimply voice that hasn’t dropped yet. I’ll admit this: the very last song actually didn’t seem so bad, but that might just be because the previous four songs had all the zing and kapow of a couple of grandma boobs. Kids: This CD is an example of why art classes can be dangerous.
–aphid (Kapow)
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CENTRO, EL:
Prohibido!: CD
Pennywise sucked the first time. –Not Josh
–Guest Contributor (Finger)
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CEPHALIC CARNAGE:
Xenosapien: CD
Kinda wild to see something this extreme getting the glossy full promo Relapse treatment. This shit is crazy; blazing metal with trade-off guttural and high pitched vocals. The time signatures are out of control. Must be hard as hell to play this stuff. Not my scene at all, but if you dig tech metal gone grindcore, lunch is served.
–Mike Frame (Relapse)
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CEREMONY:
Scared People: 7"
You know how Assholeparade seem to take exact equal doses from punk, hardcore, and thrash? Ceremony follow in perfect form. I saw this band live a couple months ago and it was fucking great. So intense, sooo intense, and this 7” maintains that level of intensity. They slow it down at parts but the raging never stops, and they finish it up with a Negative FX cover.
–Daryl Gussin (Bridge 9)
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CEREMONY:
Rohnert Park: LP
A friend of mine recently told me to check out Ceremony, a Northern California hardcore band that takes their name from a Joy Division song. Seeing that it was on Bridge Nine—a label notorious for a plethora of youth crew bands—I was dubious but became impressed upon listening to Rohnert Park, Ceremony’s latest release. While previous releases fall into a stereotypical fast, gang vocal hardcore sound, the thirteen songs on this album come off sounding much more like Black Flag meets the Dicks. The vocals are snotty and full of angst with the music ranging from aggressive to the occasional ethereal. Tracks such as “Into the Wayside Part II” and its follow up, “Into the Wayside Part III” include homemade audio samples with some actual singing, too. But the majority of this is quick hardcore with lots of early punk influence shining through. As I’ve mentioned in past reviews, the key here is the band is obviously not playing their influences (in interviews I’ve seen them include Sunny Day Real Estate, Beat Happening, Deerhunter and obviously Joy Division as bands they’re into), which makes for a more original take on the music. Songs such as the opener, “Into the Wayside Part I/Sick” and “Terminal Addiction” are standouts with catchy lyrics that retain intensity and aggression. Rohnert Park isn’t by any means the best album of 2010, but it’s the attention to subtle things such as the bottle tapping on “Terminal Addiction” or the trudging, emotionless music and vocals of “The Doldrums (FriendlyCity)” that matches the song title so well, which make this a refreshing album. As the hardcore kids used to say (or maybe they still do?), get this or pose.
–Kurt Morris (Bridge Nine)
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CEREMONY:
Zoo: CD/LP
I really loved Ceremony’s last album, Rohnert Park. It seemed inspired by acts such as the Dicks and Black Flag. The sound was passionate, creative, and intense. There was fury matched with sincerity. Now they’ve signed to Matador and seemingly lost much of that feeling and their edge. While the album starts with a great song, “Hysteria,” the other eleven songs (twelve songs, thirty-six minutes total) just seem dull and tired. While there are a few exceptions, such as “World Blue,” the sound and vocals seem muted and lacking passion. The entire album seems too long, monotonous, and boring. Musically, the band is hardly intense and seem to be channeling Wire, Dead Kennedys, Public Image Ltd. and the Sex Pistols, but not in an inspiring way. It’s as though they took a little bit from each of those bands and came up with something average instead of outstanding. It seems as though they’re starting to play their influences, which is always a bad idea. The band may argue something such as “We’re maturing” or “we didn’t sell out” and that may be true and is totally acceptable, but it doesn’t have to mean that they lose the things that made them good in the first place: creativity, intensity, and focus.
–Kurt Morris (Matador)
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CF98:
Enjoy: CD
I had the joy of meeting this band in Krakow, Poland, just three days before I moved back to Wisconsin. I sat in on one of their practices and then we all went beer drinking in a park downtown. Great bunch of guys, and girl. I was impressed, and a little surprised, to find such a polished sounding punk band in Poland, where hardcore and “newmetal” are most prevalent. Until meeting CF98, I never knew there was such as thing as “Kalifornia punk.” I guess that means bands like Pennywise, NOFX, and the like. Not totally my cup of tea, but I found myself listening to this CD endlessly. I heard some of their music before meeting them and was impressed with Karolina’s perfect English vocals. Once I met her, I noticed her thick Polish accent that somehow does not come through in this recording. Bizarre. Great songs about Polish cockrings (called a ‘buffalo's eye”, I learned), girlfriends getting older, and short-lived friends. I’m just thankful their drummer’s father works in Krakow's city hall, which somehow kept the city cops from taking me in for drinking beer in the park. Dla Karolina, Blinek, Stabi, & Alek, dziekuje bardzo. Harnas butelki sa najpiszny!
–Rhythm Chicken (Pasazer: www.cf98.pl)
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CHAD FREY:
Audiorape: CD
This is some really weird outsider stuff with bad lyrics sung-spoken off-key over generic guitar riffs. He sings about being depressed and how TV and junk food are bad for you and how you shouldn’t download illegally. It’s really, really bad, maybe some of the most hardcore of outsider music fans could get some pleasure from it, but even that’s a reach. Stay away.
–Craven (Frey Nation)
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CHAINS, THE:
On Top of Things!: CD
Meticulously executed and profoundly anemic Nuggets-box-set ‘60s rehash from five Francophones (apparently Quebecois) (which would, i guess, make this Nuggets-box-set ‘60s rehash Vol. 2), who are to be commended for their impeccable playing and production and excoriated for their stunning and utter listlessness. I mean, this record is so sedate that it sounds like records that tried to sound like this back in the EIGHTIES sounded like, and that is about as far from a compliment as it gets (ladies and gentlemen – for those who couldn’t handle the sheer, animal passion of the Fuzztones – here’s the Chains!). At their best, the band evoke the clinical calculations of the Spongetones (minus the occasionally brilliant results); at their worst – a cover of Eddie Cochran’s “Nervous Breakdown” so tepid it makes the Brian Briggs version sound like the work of blood-crazed Neanderthal sex workers – they sound like the only band they could ever be capable of out-rocking at The Great North American Rock-Off might be the Shoes. As far as i can tell, the only thing The Chains might conceivably be considered “on top of” is a frickin’ road map. Just say “non!” BEST SONG: “Fortune Teller,” although this version is much too slow for my manly tastes, and wouldn’t anybody who would be into the song own several serviceable versions (Hollies, Dogs) already? BEST SONG TITLE: “Nervous Breakdown” FANTASTIC AMAZING TRIVIA FACT: Bass player Frédéric Charest has the most accent marks in his name; guitarist Sébastien Hould and drummer Éric Boulanger are tied for second.
–Rev. Norb (Get Hip)
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CHAINSAW:
We Are Not Very Nice: CD
Yeah, well, you’re not very good either, so i guess it’s a horse apiece. One school of thought in the gnarled tapestry of ‘70s punk was that if one were to take the Hard Rock of the day, forcibly remove all its virtuosity, pomposity and pretty-boy-osity and replace said distastefully effete quanta with vileness, aggression, and “attitude,” the result would be, like, punk rock, and we would be good to go, forever and ever, Amen. It’s not really my place to pass judgment either way on what people in bands in the ‘70s thought was “punk” or not, but i will state that the notion of Punk Rock as Hard Rock’s sleazy underground cousin has never been one i’ve been overly keen to embrace. There are some decent moments here (most notably the deliciously crude “Polaride Pictures” and the faux-live material [including a serviceable run-through of “No Fun” and, best of all, canned applause!]), but, all in all, this band sounds a little too much like an outfit who would’ve shared the bill with the Sleaze Sisters in that Times Square movie for my Stripes, Chucks ‘n’ Spikes tastes. I wonder if they ever played any shows with that band called Blitzkrieg Bop? BEST SONG: “Polaride Pictures” BEST SONG TITLE: “Polaride Pictures” FANTASTIC AMAZING TRIVIA FACT: “Baker’s Dozen” is not track thirteen.
–Rev. Norb (Dionysus)
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CHAINSAW:
Just Need It: 7” EP
Some strong Japanese gallop-core here, loud as fuck and just a dash of metal in all the right places.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Even Worse)
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CHAINSAW MEN:
Electric Juju: CD
Mid-tempo bar punk. The fact that the hooks are pretty darn catchy saves this from being chucked across the room.
–Jimmy Alvarado (NKVD, PO Box 60369, San Diego, CA 92166)
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CHAINSAW TO THE FACE:
Self-titled: 7"
Nineteen songs on a 7”? What da? Easy listening is definitely not going to happen here. A blur of start and stops that makes it hard to figure out the song separations if you don’t pay attention. Ugliness played at slow speeds and then pushed to their max abilities in speed. Music that is played so aggressively that I imagine the guitar and bass player’s fingers have calluses that are super thick but still bleed from playing a set. Their drummer, caffeinated to the point of heart failure, unleashes beats at a breakneck pace. I imagine a vocalist who can no longer speak due to the harsh torment his vocal chords receive from the all the guttural yelling. If you want happy, get Abba’s Greatest Hits. Looking for something downright ugly and brutal? This is a good place as any.
–Donofthedead (Cowabunga)
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CHALET CHALET:
Self-titled: CD
The vocalist of this band is turning me on. I bet he’s a good kisser. And the recording is so raw and exciting. Almost a little Sonic Youth back in day, at times (esp. with noisy guitar). It’s fun and exciting and makes you want to jump up and down – not in a “oi pogoing” kind of way – but in a grabbing all your friends and screaming and hooting a lot like it’s the Beatles’ first US concert. I’m usually not to into the newer melodic punk rock and roll shit, but the rawness of the sound, the hot vocals, and quickness of everything (this four-song EP is totally like a whirlwind) that is going on around me gets me excited for the future of this band. If you like loud, quirky, energetic post-punk with a more unique-non Dischordian feel, then go buy this record. I hate most modern music, and this is one of those few bands that gives me hopes for the future of rock’n’roll/punk. Chalet Chalet is like the sped-up evil brothers of all those boring bands like the Strokes, The Vines, and all those other wasteful MTV 2 crap-fests of bands. They don’t give a fuck. Hot Hot Heat should stop trying to sound like Dexy’s Midnight Runners and try to sound like Chalet Chalet.
–Sarah Shay (Walk In Cold)
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CHALLENGED, THE:
Relapse: CD
Most of this album is actually pretty tight, but, honestly, not incredibly original, which is mostly forgivable because the band is still fairly new. The music itself draws sound from Bouncing Souls, Pinhead Gunpowder, and Lifetime. What would really help is to tell whoever’s singing on track five to never sing again. It’s sound like he’s trying to imitate Erik Funk of Dillinger Four and ended up sounding like that pterodactyl from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Their last track is another punk song about not caring what others think, and it’s now so cliché that the only people who still don’t find it ironic that bands with songs like this send out review copies are the people who still think the earth is flat.
–Bryan Static (Cabana 1)
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CHALLENGED, THE:
Loaded Language: CD
Early Green Day style pop punk (mostly straight forward, with a little bit of fancy guitar licks thrown in, like before they signed to Reprise and started pretending they weren’t as capable of playing their instruments). Some of the songs get to be a little long for my attention span, but the occasional bits of dueling/trading lead vocals keeps it interesting.
–Joe Evans III (Rally, rallyrecords.com)
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CHALLENGER:
Give the People What They Want in Lethal Doses: CD
Dave Laney and Al Burian of
Milemarker drop the didactic delivery of said band and go straight for the punk
rock jugular. Give the People… is filled with sonic relics from the past: one can hear the strains of
Killing Joke, Shellac, Archers Of Loaf, Pegboy, Seaweed, and Bluetip buried in
this Monorchid-meets-Jawbreaker outfit of anthemic, emotional post punk. It
might come as a surprise to Milemarker fans but to those who were familiar with
Laney and Burian’s pre-Milemarker bands, Griver and Hellbender respectively,
it’s the record you’ve been waiting for them to make. And by god, it’s a
keeper.
–greg (Jade Tree)
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