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Review: Sam and the Big Boys - "Fool's Gold" single

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I’ve been following these guys since before they even fully formed this group. I’ve performed with three of them in a couple of other longtime and one-off projects and they’re seriously among the best musicians the northeast Alabama region has to offer. In preparation for the release of their first full length “You Can Call Me Anything You Want” they’ve given us a taste of what’s ahead with “Fool’s Gold”. The single features lead vocals from guitarist Kody Martinez that really nail the 70’s rock sound the band regularly reinvents with a small hint of the folk rock that was big in that same era. He is, of course, backed by the rest of the band with noteworthy harmonies. The dueling guitar work from Kody and Zane Probus is always a highlight of seeing the band live, but it really comes to a front during the jam driven solo section of this single. On the bass, Sam Summerhill delivers a driving, but not too busy, bass line that catapults the song to something of a “summer anthem”, Simil...
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Review: Tiger Helicide - The River Squid (LP)

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    The year is 2025. The state of punk is in a weird place, reminiscent of some sort of inverted, Bizarro reality: every conservative ideal 2 allied so arduously against during the Reagan era has infected the country 10,000 fold, but many punks of that era have swallowed the MAGA Kool-Aid and have fallen victim to the same system they once decried. Despite this, there are some caveats to living in the mirror world. For one thing, Tiger Hellicide are good now.      The band's latest offering, The River Squid, feels like the culmination of decades of sprawling escapades into experimentation with the depths of dissonance cataclysmically coming to fruition, This record, quite simply, kicks ass. In the most cathartic, lived-in, gritty, real life, authentic way, portraying the suffering wrought by the mundanity of middle-of-nowhere existence that only the most daring, non-pretentious, working class post-punk can. Tiger Hellicide have transcended their mortal form and...
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Review: Phantom Eye – For Want Of (LP)

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      Jesse Norris ’ latest (and strongest) from solo project Phantom Eye is a near-perfect blend of post-punky romanticism and basement diary. Album opener “The Horns In Your Heart May Stop You” immediately evokes the sonics of Joy Division and early New Order , but is craftily adapted to soundtrack the inner dramas and traumas of the artist. “Girl (2025 Version)” has the unenviable task of following "THIYHMSY" but it  kills at that assignment. It has just as much throb as its 2024 predecessor but with more nuance. And feeling. All songs here offer the listener varying degrees of wistful melancholia. Pieces like “Drowned Out” kinda lead one to hear the last 30-plus years of the Cure if it had been recorded in the first 10 (imaginary) years. Or vice versa? For Mr. Norris (who wrote and produced and played all the instruments), For Want Of is the culmination of 5 years of personal struggle, growth, and just working through shit. Kinda mad at myself for mentionin...
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Review(s): TOWU - Hometown

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[Editor's Note: I wrote two reviews for one album (this time on purpose!). The first is my REAL review. The second is a "funny" one I wrote to show members of the band as a goof.] TOWU - Hometown R.I.P., TOWU (That's short for "Rest In Peace, The Old World Underground). Gadsden's own indie-proto-post-punky band of miscreants are calling it quits, or more like moving on to other racket(s). But first they have some last minute business to attend to, that being Hometown. And what a way to wrap it up! The record opens with "Broad", with its deceptive as hell intro. Jesse Norris is frantic and rambling and probably the most confident in his voice I've ever heard. I've previously complimented their use of saxophone. It doesn't just honk in Faux-No-Wave and it doesn't cheese up everything. Dude's a proper artist. The music is scatterbrained (in a good way). Jumping from style to style a million times in a tune is a trap that...
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Review: Subhymnal - 4.22.23

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  Live documentation of what must've been an intense performance. Corinna Cybele conducts soundscapes that are equal parts beauty and violence. Raw and primal and dangerous and all-encompassing. I dig it. -Harmless Subhymnal on Bandcamp Subhymnal on Facebook This review originally appeared in GAD! Zine issue 27
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Review: Altered Paradox - Silent Horror

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* Disclaimer: I do have a cameo on this album. But it is minimal and has no effect on the music (which is why they let me do it!)* Cleveland Ohio's Altered Paradox offers sludgey distorted metal awash in atmospheric fuzz. An abandoned waste barrel of screechy whispered commentary and yowelled what-the-fuckisms. It's like you're trapped in a dark chamber and you hear beating on the other side of the wall. Like they're trying to get out. But you're in and they're out. But your in is their out. I'm not metal-ly enough to go too deep into histrionics or genre-gazing, but I'm hardly inexperienced with such sounds. I know heavy shit when I hear it. Altered Paradox is HEAVY. And they're really damned good.  Altered Paradox is not here to reinvent the (metal) wheel, but you could hardly accuse them of patching an old tire. More like they wanna try every shape that wheel can be banged and dented into. They will ride on those obtuse angles and relish every bum...
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Show Review: Punk Rock Art Show 30, Birmingham, AL 4/22/23

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                                                                             (Flyer art by Patrick Quintanilla)     Last night's Punk Rock Art Show was super fun! It was our first time playing True Story  Brewing Company and I gotta say it was very cool. The staff were nice. The audience was that   great combination of friendly and rowdy. FUN FUN FUN. Lot's of killer art was there to look at and purchase. We missed Toxic Weasel cuz we're divas and always show up late. I'll be rockin' their sweet button and sticker like a fat spiky billboard for the next year to make up for it. We did catch The Killakee House and they were badass! Glad I finally got to experience them! They punk and they rawk. Our buddies Boss Rush sounded great from outside (we were getting our l...
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