Collateral Damage is an Italian rock band that was formed somewhere in 2004 by guitarist Alex Damage, drummer Slam Cage and guitarist Blade. The band found his official line up in 2006 when Matt took on vocals duty and Steve came to play the bass. They recorded and self produced their first demo disc in 2008 which contained three songs.
From the viewpoint of the music reviewer, the continued digitalisation of the music industry has come with mixed blessings, for where physical promo copies have now become a rarity, one increasingly comes across some truly incredible bands and artists which, thanks to an ever more accessible Internet, can grow from local phenomena into (moderately) global players...all without the aid of the money-grabbing major labels.
Zozobra is the new band of Caleb Scofield, known from bands such as Old Man Gloom and the well-known Cave In. Nowadays, also his Cave In colleagues Adam McGrath and JR Conners joined in on the new record Savage Masters.
Xavier Rudd might sound familiar to your ears. He's a multitalented Australian singer-songwriter and a strong environmental activist. As a direct consequence, the songs he produces are mostly society bound. He uses his music as a tool to stand up for the Aboriginees he cares so much about and to prevail our vulnerable Mother Earth. Also on his latest piece of music, which goes by the name of Spirit Bird, these elements are clearly present and thoroughly worked out.
The Winter Sounds is an indie rock band from New Orleans. These guys must be some of the hardest-working bands out there at the moment, having played a rough amount of 500 shows over the course of the past five years. Their hard work has brought them where they are today, releasing their third album, which goes by the fast title of Runner. Let's first of all put it straight that this album is definitely not an eye catcher within the genre.
With the signing of the Canadian Erimha, Victory Records has proven once again that they aren't narrow-minded at all. We know the label of hardcore, punk, screamo and emo bands, but Reign Through Immortality, is a real metal record that stands somewhere between black metal and death metal. The most remarkable thing about it is its production. For a new band, every detail sounds crystal clear, lifting the album to a higher level.
It's been 13 years since Hungarian shamanistic Punk legend VHK released their previous album, and therefore it should not be a surprise that most younger music lovers haven't heard about this band yet! I mean, it was even a first for myself, and when the band was founded in 1975, I was about to turn 14!
Even though Unkind without a doubt are crust metal, it is not a complete sound-inferno that awaits me here, but surprisingly differentiated stuff. Sure, at times they are crashing through the Finnish lake district with a vengeance, but they don't only destroy everything, but do real songs. What makes Unkind differ from the rest of the crust horde is the fact that they put more emphasis on variety, musically as vocally.
Pete Karlsson, known from e.g. Maze Of Torment, Deceiver or Thrown, and especially his (solo) project Flesh, returns under a new moniker, The Pete Flesh Deathtrip. The first album under this name was recorded at Studio Beast with engineer / mixer / master Peter Bjärgö.
Behind this Finnish Electronics project, we find one Veli-Matti “Läjä” Äijälä, none less than the mastermind behind the bands Terveet Kädet, Death Trip, Aavikon Kone Ja Moottori, Billy Boys, The Sultans, and The Bugariloves...whom kicked off this project at the end of the '70s as a means to doing stuff quite different from what he usually does.
