Band of the Week: Sleepbringer, Silver Loves Mercury and more!

Why hello thar, lovelies. Sorry Band of the Week's been a bit AWOL the last few weeks - blame revision and my parents' poor internet connection. To make up for it, let's have a nice big BotW feature, shall we?

Let's kick off with some doom metal in the form of Canadian band Sleepbringer. Check out the only music I've been able to find by them, Compendium:


Next up,Texas-based hard rockers Silver Loves Mercury. Wonderfully dirty, female fronted sleaze. Just a Facebook link for these guys - HERE. Well, there's some videos too, but they're not the best quality, so that'll have to do.

Then, because I finally got round to looking them up a few weeks back, let's have the delicious Alice In Chains. Grungy goodness. Streams of some tracks can be found on their site HERE. Let's also have a video. Here's Would? from the album Dirt.

Following on, Ivyrise - pop rock loveliness from the main support band on McFly's recent UK tour. Here's latest single Line Up The Stars from their self-titled debut album.

And finally, the most awesome With Knives, a new(ish) project from Josh Newton (of numerous bands, including Every Time I Die) and Joe Trohman (yes, that dude from Fall Out Boy). Stoner rock? Probably. Not an area I'm overly familiar with, but I've just seen a comparison (from a trusted dude) to QOTSA and Baroness. I'm going to take that as a good sign. Here's their just-released debut EP, Schadenfreude:


Will that do, or would we like more scrumminess? More?

One more. Not exactly a band, but this is from the guys at Hat Films who do gaming videos on YouTube. They make pretty much all of the music for their vids and this materialised out of a recent Minecraft video.

Hopefully Band of the Week should go back to being regular now I have a decent net connection again.

Band Of The Week: One-Eyed Doll

Having recently rediscovered the awesomeness of bandcamp.com, I made the mistake of having a random hop through their catalogues. I came across a band by the name of One-Eyed Doll, thought their album art looked interesting so had a listen. I fell in love within two tracks. So, despite telling myself I wouldn't buy any more music for a while (not counting MATM's EP, because I've been looking forward to that for ages), I went ahead and bought 3 albums of scrummy One-Eyed Doll material.

One-Eyed Doll are kinda hard to define. They're female-fronted, that's obvious - vocalist Kimberly Freeman has a brilliant, distinctive voice that puts me in mind somewhat of Romily Alice of Japanese Voyeurs. Style-wise though, there's hard rock, punk and some sort of metal. I mean, some tracks show a very definite thrash metal influence. Not actually thrash metal themselves, but there's that feel there. There's also quite a strong grunge feeling on some tracks. Right old mash of influences, which is wonderful.

It was Freeman's voice that really drew me in - deceptively sweet and yet sometimes so harsh (which is probably what reminded me of Romily Alice). But what caught my attention was the track Be My Friend on the album Monster. It actually made me laugh out loud, which isn't that common a reaction from me with regards to music. It's such a sweet, funny and yet sinister song. It's that that made me fall in love. I didn't need to listen to the rest of the album - I downloaded it there and then, checked out a few of the tracks on their other albums and promptly downloaded Break and Hole as well. Then I discovered this little wonder.

How can you not enjoy that? There's that same fun take on things as there is in Be My Friend. So of course I had to download the You're A Vampire single too. Ahh, new music overdose.

What's wonderful is that on the band's bandcamp, you can pay whatever you want for their albums, including nothing. However tempting it may be to download it for free, I strongly suggest paying for their music - it's well worth the money, and they're the sort of band that actually need your cash.

Damnit, I wish I could see these guys live, but I doubt they'll be coming over to Australia any time soon. I will make do with their awesome albums and the "rockumentary" I found on YouTube. An hour and a half of awesomeness, including bits of live shows. Which look like total epic awesome. When I finally get my arse over to the States, I am totally hunting down at least one One-Eyed Doll show.

So, check 'em out, let me know what you think and pass it on.

Assorted One-Eyed Doll links:
Official site
Myspace
YouTube
Facebook
Last.FM
Bandcamp

Recommended tracks:
From Hole: Scapegoat, Hoochie Mama, Hole, Recipe 4 Success, Wheels On The Bus
From Monster: Be My Friend, Brief Candle, UFO, PAO!, Monster
From Break: Airplane Man, See Jane Run, Cinderblock, New Orleans, Resurrection
You're A Vampire/Battle On! (single/b-side)

Band Of The Week: super-mega-awesome feature... promise

Well, I didn't really feel like doing a proper Band Of The Week blog this week. So, instead, here's a few bands/artists I think everyone should check out.

Aamir al-Loki: Wonderfully odd self-described goth-pop. I'd put it closer to electronic rock, but goth-pop will do. Make sure to check out her new album Kill Your Demons. (Yes, I know I already wrote about her last week, but I'm just emphasising the point.)

Ahab: Funeral doom metal. I've never listened to doom metal in my life, but I'm pretty much in love with Ahab. Brilliantly atmospheric, plus their work's based on Moby Dick and whatnot. Someone on last.fm called it "whalecore". Made me smile.

The Damned Things: Pretty much straight up rock, with some melodic metal influences. Fall Out Boy + Anthrax + Every Time I Die evidently = a brilliant combination.

The Left Rights: Brainchild of Jimmy Urine and Steve, Righ? from Mindless Self Indulgence. Bizarre, crude, not all that imaginative, but good fun. Warning: may offend. No, seriously, may offend. I've seen the comments on some of their stuff.

Me And The Mountain: English, female-fronted rock. And if you dare compare them to Paramore I'm likely to kill you. Just because it's a female fronted rock band doesn't make it like Paramore. Besides, Me And The Mountain are shitloads better than Paramore. The debut EP Ruthless is due out at the beginning of February - should be on the iTunes store.

Get Scared: Post-hardcore type stuff. Or possibly rock with post-hardcore influences. Who needs this whole Black Veil Brides hype when you can have Get Scared and they're so much better?

The Blackout: More post-hardcore. Better live than on disc, so if you get the chance to see one of their gigs, take it. Although I warn you, it may mangle your knees. Check out their new track too - free download at the mo.

Last but not least, the wonderful Emilie Autumn, love of my life. Well, my musical life and she's a gorgeous woman too. Hey, a girl can dream. Ahem. Self-labelled "victoriandustrial", look out for the epic electric violin solos against industrial beats. On top of all that scrumminess is her voice. Eargasm, much. Seriously, go check her out. Hmm... maybe next week's band of the week can be for EA. Seeing as she's my favourite musician and all that and I don't babble about her enough. Mmm.

Anyways, go check them out, tell me what you think and pass it on.

Band of the Week: The Damned Things

Fall Out Boy. Anthrax. Every Time I Die. Listened to any of them? Like any of 'em? Listened to The Damned Things? If not, you should totally check 'em out. They're amazing.

And now I'm going to back that statement up. Or a least attempt to. The Damned Things are one of these supergroup type bands, made up of Andy Hurley (drums) and Joe Trohman (guitar) from Fall Out Boy, Keith Buckley (vocals) from Every Time I Die and Scott Ian (guitar) and Rob Caggiano (guitar) from Anthrax. Three fairly dissimilar bands. I mean, FOB are/were kinda pop-punk, alternative, Anthrax are one of the big four of thrash metal and ETID play some sort of metalcore (don't ask me what, I haven't managed to figure it out yet). Diverse bunch of musical experiences there. The result is a hell of a lot more coherent than you might expect though. The Damned Things play straight-up hard rock with a strong heavy metal influence. And damn, it sounds so good.

For instance, take Friday Night (Going Down In Flames). It's quite simply a good solid rock track. Plus, it's got a brilliant chorus that I reckon is just brilliant for singing along to. Lovely little guitar solo, great vocals, good solid rhythm. And it's on free download at the moment, which is just wonderful. It'll tide me over until the album comes out in December. Currently, it's playing on repeat on my iTunes.

The only other tracks I've heard so far are We've Got A Situation Here and album title track Ironiclast. Again, good strong tracks with brilliant vocals from Mr Buckley. I do love his voice. It's just a great voice for rock. I spent months listening to the rough mix of We've Got A Situation Here on their MySpace, so it was kinda nice when they put the final version up. It was great to see the changes that had been made. Nothing drastic, but it was a far more refined version, which is what you'd expect, really, but I mean totally awesomely refined. They've still only got the rough mix of Ironiclast up, but going by their standards, I reckon the final version of that's going to be pretty damn awesome too.

Hmmm... what else to say? Well, totally check 'em out if you like rock, hard rock, heavy metal (especially of the early variety) and hey, just check 'em out full stop. They're wonderful. I mean, they make me want to headbang and I really don't like headbanging - it gives me the most ridiculous headaches. The debut album, Ironiclast, is due for release on December 14th. Anyways, check 'em out, tell me what you think and pass it on.

Assorted The Damned Things links:
MySpace
Last.FM
Free download of Friday Night (Going Down In Flames) (you'll need to "Like" the band first)

Band of the Week: Escape The Fate

I think a bit of background's in order, given the subject that I'm going to focus on here. Escape the Fate are a (mainly) post-hardcore band, formed in 2004. Their vocalist and lyricist for the first release was Ronnie Radke. The band kicked him out in 2007/2008 following issues with drugs and his arrest for battery. He got locked up for some period of time (which I haven't been able to find out). So, the band took on a new vocalist, Craig Mabbitt, formerly of blessthefall and The Word Alive. They've since released a second album (This War Is Ours) and are due another set for release in November.

Now, there is nothing, in my opinion, especially distinctive about Escape the Fate. I love them, but they're just a fairly generic post-hardcore band. Nothing wrong with that. So, instead of trying to explain why I like them, other than that I'm pretty much in love with post-hardcore/alternative rock stuff, I'm going to focus on the whole Craig vs. Ronnie debate.

As I just explained, Mr. Radke got kicked out because he got arrested for various things and was basically preventing the band from touring. Fair do's. New vocalist comes on board, new album gets released and suddenly you have a whole bunch of fans who think ETF was better when Ronnie was doing the vocals. I only got into them in early 2009, so I missed the initial reaction, but I can imagine it was pretty huge. Every site I see that has ETF on has this huge debate about which vocalist is better and then you get the majority of sane (but quiet) people who point out that they both have their good and bad points and hey, if the guy's gonna muck around and get himself locked up, the band were hardly going to wait for him. But they're definitely the quiet ones. The loud ones are largely Ronnie supporters (from what I've personally seen) who provide very little support for their assertions that Craig is a crap vocalist other than a lot of expletives and repetition of the phrases "ETF was better with Ronnie", "ETF sucks now", "Ronnie MADE ETF" and numerous variations on them. Some have suggested that the band should no longer be called Escape The Fate because the founder member isn't part of it any more. At which point I hasten to point out that bassist Max Green has also been with the band from the beginning and, from what I can gather, so have drummer Robert Ortiz and guitarist Bryan "Monte" Money.

I have so far refrained from wading into this argument (I don't think it can really be called a debate, with such crappy arguments/evidence) for fear of getting mauled by rabid, pissed off fans. So I'm being a coward and doing so from the safety of my quiet little blog. Here follow my thoughts on the matter. If you're a fan who's likely to get offended by someone else's opinions, you should probably leave now.

I can hear very little difference in the vocals. Yes, I can tell it's two different people, but from Ronnie's on Dying Is Your Latest Fashion to Craig's on This War Is Ours, I can honestly say they both sound very similar. This is not a bad thing - it's good for continuity. Personally, I think Craig's vocals are slightly stronger and he seems to have more range, but other than that... nope, can't see what the problem is. Wow, that was shorter than I thought it'd be.

There's been a slight change in the sound of the band overall between the two albums, but once again, it's nothing major. Anyway, a change in sound is to be expected - you can't expect a band to stay the same for their whole career, it'd be boring. Where DIYLF is mainly straight up emo-tinged post-hardcore, This War Is Ours to me is more varied, with some almost pop-rock moments on Ashley and Something to the heavier tones of This War Is Ours (The Guillotine Part II). This is good - I like variety in an album. And then there's It's Just Me, which I personally think is a brilliant track, but I've seen people label it as too poppy and someone went as far as to compare it to Panic! At The Disco. I love Panic! and I don't think It's Just Me sounds anything like their work.

All in all, this whole Ronnie vs. Craig thing sounds to me like a lot of fans who can't cope with the fact that bands change and that if someone's going to fuck around as much as Ronnie did, the band has little choice but to act as they did. They could hardly wait for him to be released before they went on tour or recorded again, could they? Also, if those fans love his vocals so much, he's part of a new band now - can they not just listen to them instead? Hmm? Right, babble over.

Assorted Escape The Fate links:
MySpace
Last.FM

Recommended Tracks (album)
Situations, Not Good Enough For Truth In Cliche, The Webs We Weave, Reverse This Curse (Dying Is Your Latest Fashion)
The Flood, This War Is Ours (The Guillotine Part II), It's Just Me, 10 Miles Wide, Bad Blood (b-side) (This War Is Ours)