Intentionally or not, Tokyo’s Melt-Banana has grabbed hardcore’s sense of urgency by its thick head and rerouted it through a discordant, start-stop blare of No Wave and extreme noise. While this formula has endeared the quartet to punks, intellectuals and adrenaline-crazed youngsters (the latter constituency no doubt increased by a 1995 US tour supporting Mr.…
Formed as a result of guitarist/vocalist Nick Sakes’ “late-20’s crisis” of needing a musical outlet, Dazzling Killmen matured quickly, sloughing off the jazzy overtones of early material and refining the more aggressive elements of their sound over two Steve Albini-engineered studio albums. The St. Louis quartet — which also included drummer Blake Fleming, bassist Darin…
Some preliminary clarification for trainspotters: While several of these bands’ members have roots in Washington, DC’s post-punk community, the Circus Lupus/Antimony/Las Mordidas/Monorchid family tree is the least complicated to document in terms of line-up similarity and stylistic evolution. But the bands that can be traced from these branches (Ignition, Gray Matter, Unrest, Embrace, The Warmers,…
Hardcore’s “emotive” roots are best traced subjectively: Older listeners pinpoint Guy Picciotto and Brendan Canty’s pre-Fugazi band Rites of Spring; neophytes fast-forward to 1994 and Sunny Day Real Estate. Whatever these bands’ role in everything that followed, the one trait they share is a lack of fear — to express one’s vulnerability in a scene…
These folks either wrote reviews that appear on the site or wrote for Trouser Press magazine. If anyone listed below cares to E-mail us with a link you’d like added, just let us know. And ditto if anyone is AWOL from this list. Grant AldenDavid AntrobusJem AswadTroy J. AugustoMichael AzerradCary BakerMichael BakerEmily BeckerJohn BergstromArt BlackJohn…
