Chat Pile plant yet another feather in their cap with the re-release of their first two EPs—2019’s This Dungeon Earth and Remove Your Skin Please—via a single-vinyl compendium welding together the two statements that preceded their formal introduction to the unwitting masses, 2022’s God’s Country. Read my FLOOD review.
“This myth of the ‘suffering artists,’ the myth of Van Gogh and ideas like this—perpetuated by Hollywood—have become abstracted. It guilt-trips us all into thinking that if our art is our job, it lacks purity, and purity is the highest art form. But really, all we’re doing is trying to manifest joy, or insight, or translate the human experience.” Read more of my interview with Mark Mallman on New Noise.
The nine tracks featured on The Live Quest provides arbiters who dare distinguish “good metal” from “bad metal” with an ample amount of evidence that Crystal Viper firmly belong in the former bracket. Read my New Noise interview with the band’s leader.
Touch and Go Records went to the trouble of assembling a Scratch Acid vinyl box set to the tune of $160—as well as individual reissues of their EPs for those in search of a more affordable option. Read my thoughts on Box Set/Scratch Acid/Berserker via Treble.
Available as a 4xLP and 5xCD box, Ida’s limited-edition Will You Find Me sets have so many cover songs, demos, outtakes and alternative mixes that it’s practically too heavy to carry up a flight of stairs. Read my review of the mammoth reissues for Treble.
Now in their 30th year, the Faint is an anomalous Saddle Creek band that never broke up. The gang is now finally putting its two best albums on wax for the first time ever. Read my review of the Blank Wave Arcade/Wet From Birth (Deluxe Editions) for Treble.
Jesika von Rabbit recently reached out to New Noise say she enjoys our Pet Sounds series and wanted to pay homage to her recently deceased pet, Buzz (who, for the record, was a cat and not a rabbit).
It could be argued—hell, let’s have it out right now; why wait for a rainy day?—that there’s actually no better time for a musician to launch a side venture when their primary project is experiencing peak success. Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme pulled it off with Them Crooked Vultures and Eagles of Death Metal. Jack White kept his seat with the White Stripes warm while engaging in extracurricular activities with the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather. And Chino Moreno put them all to shame by dividing his time between Deftones, Team Sleep, Crosses, Palm s and Saudade. And you have the nerve to call yourself busy?
The latest band to experience the music equivalent of polyamory is Sheer Mag. The Philadelphia punk-rock posse quickly started gaining traction less than a year after congealing in a dilapidated house in which they creatively made room for a studio too. Slipknot started out in a similarly shared dwelling, and it took them about four years of surviving their hellhole before terrestrial radio came a knockin’. Sheer Mag managed to do it in less than half that time, finding themselves transported to Coachella and a late-night TV talk show only two years after they set sail with their band.
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The two principal members of Shearling, a new band formed after the demise of Sprain, recently shed a lot of light on their ambitious, hour-long, single-track debut album, Motherfucker, I am Both: “Amen” and “Hallelujah”… Read my recent FLOOD interview, the first one the band gave in support of their debut album, for more.
From start to finish, Wet Leg’s Moisturizer hits all the right notes, creating the classic conundrum of whether to fade out a song or turn off the music altogether if you’ve got somewhere to be. Read my Music Connection review.
The Bad Penny (beta) 