This past Saturday was St. Patrick’s Day in the Quad Cities, which boasts the only bi-state St. Patrick’s Day parade in the United States. The occasion saw hundreds of people dressed in green and imbibing drinks throughout the day. As a veteran bartender, I know that the madness of St. Patrick’s calms by roughly 6 […]
Broc Nelson
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Strange News — ‘Liar’s Curse’
Liar's Curse by Strange News It is reasonable in an increasingly unreasonable world to crave nostalgia. As AI and surveillance technologies continue to invade our lives and each day’s news cycle is more absurd than the last, sometimes you have to sit back and pretend it’s 1974, when tech billionaires were mere fantasy and people […]
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Review: Black Box Theatre’s ‘The Lion in Winter’ weaves a tapestry of family drama, medieval intrigue and humor
The Black Box Theatre of Moline, Illinois, as the name implies, is a simple theater space. That didn’t hold back its recent production of The Lion in Winter, which closed the company’s 2025 season with a slow-burning play that uses the intimacy of its space to ratchet up the intensity of its production of James […]
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Album Review: Camp Regret — ‘Camp Regret’
Emerging from the dormant memories of basement shows, DIY venues, crashing on couches and floors on tour and the nostalgia for a more active local music scene comes another supergroup of Quad Cities musicians in the form of Camp Regret. Featuring members of past acts such as Meth & Goats, Ice Hockey and Lazer Mountain, Camp Regret may not be young pups, but they are out to prove that you can teach old dogs new tricks with their debut, self-titled album.
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Album Review: Anchoress — ‘Sugarsong’
Sugarsong by Anchoress. Iowa has been the birthplace of some incredible heavy music acts. Marshalltown’s Modern Life Is War are melodic hardcore royalty. Iowa City wrought Aseethe and their punishing doom metal and Dryad with their outstanding crusty black metal. Out of Dubuque, Telekinetic Yeti make stoned doom metal. Muscatine’s Closet Witch, by all rights, […]
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Album Review: Deivore — ‘Divinity Glutted’
The brainchild of Ben Smasher and frequent collaborator Joseph Norman (also of black metallers Necrotic Theurgist), Deivore has a prolific output of noise and sound collages, primarily composed of guitar and synthesizers, that blur the lines between improvisational jazz, noise music and modern compositional music.
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Album Review: Pit Lord — ‘Massive Grilling Capacity’
There is a persistent conflict in heavy metal: that of silliness versus profound seriousness. Extreme metal sees the most self-serious, philosophical bands win critical favor and masked bands are, again, taking the top of the charts. The most complex and challenging musicians in the metal sphere are still prone to wearing corpse paint, writing songs […]
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Album Review: GooD Cal-El — ‘Buried Talents’
Buried Talents by GooD Cal-El Spirituality in hip hop comes in many forms, far from the image of clean language and repackaged praise music the idea conjures in my brain. Killah Priest, Brother Ali, Lupe Fiasco, Yasiin Bey, Chance the Rapper, Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole have all spit religious bars over beats while balancing […]
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Review: A mile of lights turn the Figge into Iowa’s biggest public artwork — a sight to see from both sides of the Mississippi
On May 18, 2025, the city of Davenport, Iowa began to glow. Nestled amongst the downtown’s old buildings, the Figge Art Museum celebrated its 20th anniversary by unveiling Evanescent Field, an architectural art project by internationally acclaimed light artist Leo Villareal. Hundreds of onlookers gathered in the promenade to the already stunning museum designed by […]
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Review: Davenport horror fans cheered for iconic kills, scored live by legendary composer Fabio Frizzi
The gang at Void Church added something new to their repertoire by co-hosting Italian composer Fabio Frizzi at The Capitol Theater in Davenport on Thursday, May 8. Void Church typically aims for an audio-visual experience of goth and shoegaze based concerts complete with custom lighting, visuals, and the occasional fog machine as well as DJ-driven […]
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Album Review: Cory Peak — ‘Computer Image’
Computer Image by Cory Peak Cory Peak has to be one of Iowa’s most adventurous artists. Probably best known as the bassist for the grindcore/emoviolence powerhouse that is Closet Witch, Peak recently produced beats and did animation for the Iowa hip-hop project Negus Lamé. On top of all of that, Peak has been at work […]
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Album Review: Margaret Driscal — ‘Mommy Planet’
Mommy Planet by Margaret Driscal Dystopian fiction tends towards themes of technocratic authoritarianism, the persecution of marginalized groups and generally, bad vibes. There is often a Byronic hero or some sort of picaresque adventure that awaits the protagonist who, against all odds, finds some sort of victory in the face of all-encompassing oppression. To be […]
