Like Moths To Flame – When We Don’t Exist | Album Review

Review by Billy Geary

The problem with Ohio metalcore group Like Moths to Flame’s latest effort When We Don’t Exist is that it brings literally nothing new to a genre already more stale than that piece of cake that’s been sitting on the bench for the last couple of weeks. The passion and energy is bleedingly obvious in the music, but so is fact that the bands song writing is in desperate need of an overhaul.

When We Don’t Exist seemingly takes every single metalcore stereotype possible and rolls it into one big wall of sound. Excessive amount of breakdowns? Check. Angry, tough guy vocals/lyrics? Check. Awkward clean vocals in the chorus? Check. We’ve literally heard it all before. You could pick any one of the album’s 11 tracks and find the same things. Take ‘GNF’ for example, featuring the inspired lyrics of ‘I don’t give a fuck about the way you’re feeling’ before the guitars take the listener into another open string chug fest.
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Photos: (Part 2) Big Day Out 2012 – Gold Coast Parklands – 22nd January 2012

Photographer: Stuart Blythe

Photographer: Stuart Blythe
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Big Day Out, Brisbane, Festival, Photos, Stuart Blythe

Review: Big Day Out 2012 – Gold Coast Parklands – 22nd January 2012

Review by Lauren Sherritt
Big Day Out – it’s not just a music festival. It’s a fashion show, the latest summer clothes coming out to play (2012 including girls shortest short shorts, guys screen printed singlets and a whole lot of hair on everyone). It’s a test of the strength of boyfriends’ spines as they hoist their girlfriends high above the crowds on their shoulders. It’s a feat of endurance, a challenge put to the elements that no kind of weather can stop the show, a day of sunscreen and sunburn, of thrills, friendship and fried food. And yes, there is some excellent music as well.

The Gold Coast leg of the festival kicked off at eleven a.m. For those of us travelling from further afield the day started much earlier, a mixture of trains and shuttle buses becoming more and more crowded with others in festival garb as we neared the event.

Ticket checks, bag checks, ID checks done and we were in. The sun shone brightly, the outside glare making us squint to make out the shape of Abbe May and band on the contrasting dark stage, their hard rock carving through the muggy air.
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Photos: (Part 1) Big Day Out 2012 – Gold Coast Parklands – 22nd January 2012

Photographer: Stuart Blythe

Photographer: Stuart Blythe
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Big Day Out, Brisbane, Festival, Photos, Stuart Blythe

KAT DAVIDSON – “UNTIDY” – BRISBANE COMEDY FESTIVAL 2012

Kat Davidson is a comedian. She would like you to think she’s funny, insightful and sharp, but deep down she’s untidy.

Untidy takes you inside the mind of one of Brisbane’s finest comedians. Kat doesn’t see the world in black and white, she sees it in degrees of untidiness. It’s in the clutter and mess of life where she finds the funny.

Kat has been a goth and a bondage mistress, an executive, a wife and an ABC radio presenter. She has done all of this while appearing to be control of her destiny. Deep down, Kat is an untidy human being. Then again, aren’t we all?
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David Lynch – Crazy Clown Time | Album Review

Review by Lana Hall
David Lynch makes movies. Sometimes unintelligible, often disturbing and always with some scenes that, although on the surface seem innocuous, are downright creepy in feel. Apparently this particular effect is created by employing a specific low droning sound, a kind of ‘fear note’. The sound, when paired with an innocent looking setting, has the effect of convincing you something sinister is going on, even though appearances are above board. Given his skill in utilising this trick in his movies, it’s safe to assume that Mr Lynch knows a bit about how music evokes emotions, especially once you realise that he has collaborated on the soundtracks for several of his movies.

Crazy Clown Time is Lynch’s first full length, solo offering. The instrument playing and vocals (helped along by extensive use of a vocoder) are entirely his own, with the exception of the first track, ‘Pinky’s Dream’, which features Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) whispering and yelping her way through the song. By Lynch’s own admission, the album was born from a series of home-based jams and experiments, and this is how it presents. Crazy Clown Time is an atmospheric, hypnagogic waltz through the outpourings of Lynch’s mind, the best of which are cut together and collected on this album.

Early evidence that this is Lynch’s work comes from ‘Good Day Today’, a tracks whose tenebrous tones sit juxtaposed with a seemingly innocent, wailing lyrical desire that ‘I want to have a good day today…’ just before what sounds like gunfire is added into the mix.

Best tracks were ‘So Glad,’ ‘Noah’s Ark’ and ‘These are my friends’. These songs stand out because they showcase a new side of the rare talent that Lynch brings to music. These tracks reveal his ability to invoke in the mind of the listener a particular scene, an emotion, a moment in time, without needing to resort to narrative lyrics in order to do so. It’s one thing to hear a song from a soundtrack and recall the scene that accompanied it in a movie; it’s another thing altogether to be able to conjure a specific scene in a listener’s mind simply through tones. But at its best, this is what Crazy Clown Time is capable of. It’s different, sometimes amusing and it leaves you wanting to know more about his ambience-invoking superpowers.

Review by Lana Hall

David Lynch official site.

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Tour News: Blitzen Trapper – Australian Headline Shows – April 2012

Flannel-wearing alt-country Northwestern rockers Blitzen Trapper are returning to the Australia. Having announced dates on East Coast Bluesfest the band will also be appearing at West Coast Blues n Roots Festival and headline shows in Sydney and Melbourne.

The Portland, Oregon outfit released their third Sub Pop album American Goldwing in September through Inertia. The album was written and recorded in a span of six months, before touring globally, playing at iconic festivals such as Lollapalooza and Newport Folk Festival. According to vocalist Eric Earley, it was during this time the band realised this new album was extraordinary, referring to it as “the real record”.
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Devin Townsend Project + Meshuggah + Dredg sidewaves announced!

DEVIN TOWNSEND; one of the most admired and lauded figures in the metal world will be bringing his astonishingly deep and varied catalogue of mind-blowing music to Sidewaves in Sydney and Melbourne.

Devin Townsend has amazed, beguiled and occasionally baffled all comers in numerous incarnations spanning the extreme noise metal of Strapping Young Lad to the intricate melodies of Ocean Machine; Devin has had his hand in almost every genre of music, from industrial metal to progressive rock to ambient sounds. All of these projects had one thing in common: GENIUS.

In his incarnation as DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT, ‘Hevy Devy’ makes his most grandiose musical statement with an extravagant conceptual quadrilogy showcasing his talents and diversity as a songwriter. From the extreme metal to his more mellow work. ‘Ghost’, the final chapter of the quadrilogy is among the most celebrated creations of his career, a blissfully laid back opus. “Townsend has delivered on a level not previously imagined” – Metalinjection.net
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The Fauves – Japanese Engines | Album Review

Review by Ben Connolly
Longevity was probably not high on the list of adjectives when describing The Fauves back in their heyday of the late 90s. They were one of the numerous guitar pop bands riding on the coat tails of Triple J nationalisation, laying claim to a niche which polarized the audience – snarky, cynical lyrics under laid with a straight-edged, post-Seattle dirge. Poking fun at itself as much as the scene it worked within, the band was undoubtedly voted the act least likely to see the end of the decade.

Seeing its name pop up in random gig guides intermittently throughout the next two decades was, then, always greeted with a curious cock of the head and the inevitable wonderings about how they’re still around. Ardent fans lifted them to a cult-like status, and reviews always pegged them in the “criminally under-rated” category.
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