MetalSucks

The Starbucks Incident

Yes, I am going to continue to bitch about Slash. I understand that Slash is not Jimi Hendrix but this might be the single biggest betrayal to my formative years since Metallica released everything they’ve released from Load on, and I need to mourn.

So. Some lady says that the following singers are all on Slash’s new solo album, How Could Taking My Cues from Carlos Santana Possibly Go Wrong? I have added my own thoughts because that’s what we do around here. Click to read more…

As one of the chief riff providers for swaggercore titans Every Time I Die, Andy Williams takes pride in making the discordant into catchy. For a perfect example of this, look no further than the band’s latest (MetalSucks-approved) album, New Junk Aesthetic. Distilling the band’s decade-plus essence into a tight half hour, it’s a satisfying mix of thunderous heaviness and easily the most appealing material the band have put to tape. But while he’s often overshadowed by vocalist Keith Buckley’s relentless wiseassery, it’s his and Jordan Buckley’s Skynard-by-way-of-Dillinger-Escape-Plan guitar work that make the band stand out and ultimately worthwhile.

A self-described “chatty Cathy,” Andy Williams was remarkably frank and refreshingly earnest in a recent interview with MetalSucks on the eve of the release of New Junk Aesthetic. Among other things, he discussed why he can listen to the new album and none of the band’s other material, his thoughts on the new Converge record, the changing landscape of the scene he came up in, and life over at ETID’s new label, Epitaph.

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It seems that all the hip music blogs were all a-twitter yesterday about the latest side-project from Jack White. Yet unlike The White Stripes or The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather actually sounds pretty darn good. Unlike with those other projects, Mr. White steps away from the spotlight and plays the drums. His fellow Raconteur Jack Lawrence handles the bass and Queens Of The Stone Age member Dean Fertita is the axeman, but the real star of the show is singer Allison Mosshart of the staggeringly good duo The Kills.

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Between soaring inflation and a lagging economy, jobs disappearing and wages stagnating everyone has had to cut back. Maybe you make fewer trips in your car to save on gas. Maybe you limit your groceries to the barest necessities. Maybe you’ve managed to talk your wife out of having another kid so you won’t need to worry about feeding one more person in your home. Maybe you’ve scaled back your band’s membership from four people to just two. Like Adai, for example. Hey if it can work for great acts like the White Stripes, Jucifer and Sunn O))) then why not? Besides, considering the number of inept producers and idiot engineers who can’t seem to figure out how to make the bass guitar audible in the final mix (poor, poor Robert Trujillo) why bother with one, right?

Adai consists of a drummer and a guitarist/vocalist. Their style of music is similar to doom/sludge but seems a bit more…shall we say, Progressive? The sound of the band isn’t mired in low-end feedback or paced with a dragging sluggishness. At times Devin M’s axework can be quite melodic but don’t kid yourself into thinking they’re big on Maiden. The vocals are sporadic, incidental and barely audible growls like you might expect from a drone act. By and large this EP, running just under 24 minutes, is instrumental; and while it can be hit and miss, it does showcase a couple musicians that might evolve into a convincing force within a subgenre whose adherents are largely devotional.

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