Perhaps inspired by last week’s stream of Deftones frontman Chino Moreno’s collaboration with Circa Survive’s Anthony Green, last week I finally got around to listening to the debut EP by another of Moreno’s projects, ††† (“Crosses”), his electronic collaboration with Far’s Shaun Lopez. I found the EP not just listenable but really, really good — after finishing it once, I started it over and listened to the whole thing again. Unlike our usual steady diet of metal, it was easy to let Crosses exist in the background while I worked, easy to enjoy the smooth electronic beats, blips, bloops and Chino’s distinct voice without devoting the music my full attention. Who ever said side-projects couldn’t be interesting?

Less than a year after the release of †, Crosses are back with their second EP… wait for it… ††. Rolling Stone is streaming the track “Prurien†” from the EP now, which you can and should listen to and download here.

Oh, and in case anyone is planning on reposting this and is wondering how you make the † symbol, it’s Option-T on a Mac (PC: I couldn’t tell ya). Copy-and-paste is sweet, too.

-VN

Photo credit: Tyler William Parker for Rolling Stone

The weather is beautiful out, it’s the weekend, and I have a ton of new albums to listen to. I’m gonna put some shit on my iPod, get stoned, go eat some ice cream, and crank some shit. It’s a rough life, but someone’s gotta lead it.

Before I do that, here’s a wrap-up of crap that happened this week:

• We spoke to Phil Anselmo, former Killswitch Engage/current The Empire Shall Fall vocalist Jesse Leach, and the dude who proposed to his girlfriend on-stage at a Fear Factory concert.
• We debuted a new column by Cynic’s Paul Masvidal.
• We’re streaming Unleashed’s new album, As Yggdrasil Trembles.
• Vince’s heavy metal road trip re-cap continues!
• We love Meek is Murder, and we’re not being sarcastic.
• Refused are reuniting! Well, they’re not, actually, but Far is!
• The end is nigh.

Okey dokey… sprinkles here I come! Have a good weekend everybody.

-AR

It turns out that Refused are not reuniting after all, and while Rival Schools will release a new album soon there’s been no indication that Quicksand will also. Oh well; it was fun to think about.

Thankfully there’s at least one important late ’90s metal-ish band that will be releasing new music in 2010… and it’s Jonah Matringa’s Far. Far were another one of those bands who seemed to enjoy much more success in critical circles then in, ya know, reality. Their two records, 1996’s Tin Cans With Strings To You and 1998’s Water and Solutions, were way ahead of their time but never got quite the recognition they deserved. As Metal Insider‘s Bram Teitelman put it, Far were “Heavy, but not metal, emotional, but not emo” and for that reason while I’m sure many of you won’t care about Far I’m guessing that any fans of mid/late ’90s metal/post-hardcore bands like Helmet, Refused and Quicksand will care a great deal.

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In the “actually didn’t see this one coming” department, a press release tells us that Sacramento post-hardcore pioneers Far have reunited. The band played two secret shows last week in California and have a string of dates lined up in the UK for November; they’ve also recorded a cover of Ginuwine’s “Pony” under the pseudonym Hot Little Pony, which is now streaming on the Hot Little Pony MySpace page.

Oh, what’s that, you don’t know who Far is? Poseurs. Look it up.

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