Brando Gassman and Andy Sinclair’s hard-hitting musical skills and unironic love of metal. Sam Locke Warde’s bloody-minded humor and migraine-inducing shrieks. Twenty songs averaging a minute in length. Result? Police Brutality.
Album Reviews
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Album Review – Fetal Pig: Autopia
Fetal Pig Autopia fetalpig.bandcamp.com Jesus said “Behold the lilies of the field. They toil not, neither do they spin.” For some reason Fetal Pig reminds me of Jesus’ lilies. With a band history going back nearly 20 years, these guys do what they do not because it makes them rich and famous–because it hasn’t–but because […]
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Album Review – Rahlan Kay: Now You Know
Rahlan Kay is the new hip-hop handle for Rowland Gibson, who has in the past been known as Genuyne, DNA and Testfyi. Rowland is a producer and MC from Cedar Rapids who has been a regular in the Iowa hip-hop scene for over ten years. He’s nothing if not persistent. There’s more than a few sketchy MCs around who are legends in their own minds, but Rowland’s different–he’s church folk, a family man and dead serious about his craft.
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Album Review – P-Tek: Oh! What a Miracle
P-Tek (Adam Protextor) makes me feel old, since he’s a friend of my son, Sean. You might know Adam from his involvement with the Resist Evil horror movie, which starred another Iowa City hip-hop head, Coolzey. Adam’s verbal gymnastics and bent sense of humor, in full effect on Oh! What A Miracle! owes a debt to Coolzey and his Sucker MCs posse, but he’s cinematically deranged in his own special way.
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Album Review – The Wheelers: Bubix
The Wheelers are a pan-Iowan band with members scattered between Iowa City and Ames. Other joint efforts between these two cities often result in heavy drinking, name calling and injuries and, while I can’t confirm that The Wheelers encounter a similar fate when they get together, the teetering energy here is very much the same.
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Album Review – Acoustic Guillotine: Self-Titled
Billy Mac and Pete R are veteran Iowa City musicians, going back to the 1980s punk/hardcore heyday. Though this self-titled album is more metal than anything else, I have to plead ignorance as to which metal sub-genre Acoustic Guillotine pledges their allegiance to. Their bass-and-guitar-duo sound lacks metal’s trademark guitar heroics, but they’re too energetic and obtuse to be stoner rock.
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Show Preview/Album Review: The Wandering Bears at The Mill, 9/24/11
The Wandering Bears will play this Saturday, Sept. 24, at the Mill, sharing a fantastic bill with Iowa City’s Datagun and opening for Caroline Smith & the Goodnight Sleeps. The Wandering Bears craft smart, unique pop tunes with substance and catchy hooks. Their songs are about men and women and the stupid things we do to each other, but with a mix of sweet reminiscence, real heartbreak, and…
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Album Review – Milk & Eggs: Self Titled
Milk & Eggs is Jordan Sellergren, who has only been performing for a couple of years. But judging from the quality of her songs and the poised, yet vulnerable way she sings them, she’s been working on music in private for much longer. Her eponymous debut is deeply rooted in the acoustic folk tradition. Though […]
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Album Review – Pieta Brown: Mercury
The monochrome photo of Pieta Brown on the cover of her album Mercury (out Sept. 27 on Red House Records) carries a certain “Mona Lisa” inscrutability. The unusual lighting from beneath nearly washes out her face drawing you almost self-consciously to her gaze. While I usually don’t expect her album covers to directly represent the […]
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Album Review – Blizzard At Sea: Invariance
Blizzard At Sea claims to be a metal band. Sure, singer/guitarist Steven Douglas tortures his vocal chords with a classic Cookie Monster gargle, but something else is going on here. Before kicking into proggy start-stop riffing, “Island Of Stars” begins with an extended dreamy intro, anchored with oceanic bass, reminding me of the trancey minimalism […]
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Album Review – Idris Goodwin: Break Beat Bars
Hip hop was born as party music, constructed out of the raw materials available in the streets of the outer boroughs–funk & soul records and under-the-lamppost boasts. That it has persisted for 30-odd years is a testament to its contingency, constantly morphing to fit the now, spreading like a virus to every corner of the […]
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Album Review – Supersonic Piss: The Shit's S/T (a.k.a. Umbilical Noose)
Ah yes, Supersonic Piss. Iowa City’s scary heavy metal punk rock cosmic bummer band. When I first heard the band name, I flashed on visiting the Omaha Zoo’s rain forest when the tapirs were in heat. Their courtship seemed to involve a stealthy yet brutal assault by the male, which the female answered with a […]
