ROCK OF ÆGES
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012 at 3:00pm by Satan Rosenbloom
Check your preconceptions at the door when you’re first crossing The Bridge. There’s nothing on ÆGES’s debut album as metallic as bassist Tony Baumeister’s other band 16 or attitudinal as guitarist Mark Holcomb’s old hardcore band Undertow; the songs on The Bridge are way less conventional than what vocalist/guitarist Kemble Walters plays in The Blank Faces, and the fact that there are proper songs at all separate this stuff from drummer Larry Herweg’s other band Pelican.
All those bands sound completely different, and yet The Bridge doesn’t bear the sonic stamp of any of them, or any combination of any of them. That The Bridge sounds so little like ÆGES’s pedigree, and so much like a breed of tuneful post-hardcore bands that hasn’t been popular for like 15 years (and was never even THAT popular in the mid-90s), suggests that these guys are in it for the love of the game. Add ÆGES to the ranks of Vallenfyre, Bloodbath and Dukes of the Stratosphear: bands whose members turn their back on innovation and focus on the music that moved ‘em when they were kids.





An asterisk amidst the exclamation points, Git Some play atypical hardcore for like-minded weirdos — which isn’t to say that this self-titled
Ageism and rockism are strange and inextricable bedfellows, limbs inconveniently entangled. Conventional wisdom dictates that, more or less, rock n’ roll belongs to the young and furious. Time serves to either tame or shame. Rod Stewart makes blue-eyed soul for the cataract set, while Alice Cooper’s continued desperate insistence on eyeliner and leather appears even more embarrassing than his golf get-ups. With some three decades since their respective debuts, neither Keith Morris nor J. Mascis ought to make credible music for expanding audiences. The former SST labelmates should be coasting on the classics, something Dinosaur Jr. did rather effectively at last year’s Bug anniversary gigs. Yet they persevere, with new projects seemingly ill-suited for men of a certain age.
















The finest Southern Lord style band not signed to Southern Lord, Rise And Fall return in fine ferocious form with Faith (Deathwish). Face-ripping pit beasts like “Deceiver” and “Hidden Hands” abound, and the breakdown on “Dead Weight” is especially crushing. As with 2009′s Our Circle Is Vicious, the Belgians remain unashamed of their sonic diversity. “Things Are Different Now” veers into nihilistic noise rock terrain well trod by Today Is The Day or Unsane, while the hulking post-metal of “Faith / Fate” bulldozes the record to a triumphant close.








People I trust tell me I’m supposed to give a shit about Dallas’ Power Trip. After checking out this self-titled 7″ (
“I’m having fingernails for breakfast.” With that, German unintentional comedy troupe Bitterness Exhumed stumble hard and hilariously out the gate on their eponymous debut (