Tagged: livemusicreview

Frost Hammer - Live at Reeds Sometimes you just get lucky. There I was, minding my own business, sharing a club sandwich with my father-in-law, when an email pops across my iPhone. Nothing too unusual. At the Ripple we get over 400 band submissions a month. But something about this email caught my eye. First, they were local boys, coming from San Jose, and I always want to support local music. Second, this wasn't a demo or a first ep, or some fine studio recording. What came across were [...]

Etienne summarizes MESH, and Squinzi shows the images of that weekend.

(In my best Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson voice) Finally!! The Black Dahlia Murder !! has come back...to your stereo!! Yes Waiveriders, The Black Dahlia Murder is back! Detroit's resident death metal superstars bring you their new album Ritual . I've been waiting to get my hands on this album for months and now it is finally in my possession. Excited, yes I am!! Ritual is the 5th studio album from The Black Dahlia Murder and damn it is epic as fuck! Before we get to the awesome music, let's touch [...]

Acid Bath – Paegan Terrorism Tactics Nola Stoner Rock is the genre that pops up on my iTunes when Acid Bath comes up and I ain’t gonna argue. Mean, nasty, throaty, fuzzy, and heavy. “Paegan Love Song” runs through its riff with the intensity of a felon dashing from the law. Drums blitz me like bullets from the outlaw’s guns. Bass thunders like the getaway car’s motor. It’s impossible not to wrapped up in this song, slash the sleeves from my tee-shirt, go out and get tattooed and join [...]

Hello Wave Riders!! On the ole' Ripple Effect I am known for reviewing my fair share of Metal and Hardcore albums. Non stop Brutality is just one side of the many facets of my musical make up. Today I want to share a kinder more heart felt side. Today I bring you City and Colour's new album, Little Hell . Canadian born Dallas Green is the master mind behind City and Colour . The name City and Colour comes from his own name: Dallas a city, and Green, a colour (color for [...]

Last Wednesday was Yuksek debut in Shanghai produced by S.T.D. Squinzi reports with cool photos and a quick review of the show.

Since becoming a part of the Ripple Clan I have been given twenty six (give or take one or two) artists to listen to and I have only reviewed eight (this is the ninth). No, it isn't slack of me, the others just didn't click. Priory didn't click with me either. It snapped. So loudly my hermit crab hid in its shell. So loudly that there was a noise complaint put in by the neighbours. So loudly the stray cat that insists on sleeping on my car and getting it's foot prints everywhere didn't show up for a [...]

The Valley Path is your local bar's alt-country band, in the aftermath of some tragedy, jamming, having just discovered both pot and Black Sabbath. US Christmas (USX) are Allison Krause gone stoner/dark psychedelic rock. Discerning minds might have already postulated this, seeing their logo, aka the "deer ouroboros." It's one song, 39 minutes long. Like Sleep's Dopesmoker . Or Roareth's Acts I-VI. Not a true 39-minute epic, like Roareth , not a great 5-minute song the band was too stoned [...]

These days you gotta have a gimmick. And Ghost , a new band from Sweden, has a lot of them. They wear robes, pope hats and face paint (even the drummer when they play live). Their lyrics are Satanic but sound like they picked up most of their occult knowledge from King Diamond interviews. There are rumors that under the costumes there are well known musicians from other metal bands. They’ve also received negative attention because there’s already a long-running Japanese band with the same band name. All of this has resulted in strong opinions in the [...]

I unearthed my battered copy of Tapping The Source by the Lazy Cowgirls recently and then the very next day this new LP by Brooklyn’s Live Ones shows up. Before even hearing a note of the Live Ones , I knew the similarities were pretty obvious. Both albums have black and white no frills covers and contain high energy punk influenced rock & roll. Yer Quite Welcome’s album cover is an action shot of the band playing at NYC’s notorious dirtbag rock bar the Ding Dong Lounge. I can tell because [...]

Can you hear it? The sounds of familiar 8-bit noises and metallic riffs ring through the air. “What is this sound.”, you ask yourself. This is the sound of Urizen . Born from a secret laboratory in Colorado and transported to Texas, Urizen are on the rise. There latest record, Universe:Red sets a new standard for progressive metal. Universe:Red is the third installment from Texas Avant-Metalers Urizen . From the first track, “A Noiseless Flash” you can already tell this will be a special album. Reminiscent of your [...]

Recently I was nicknamed Steve Perry by one of my professors and I couldn’t understand why. I don’t have an awesome singing voice and bear no resemblance to the former Journey lead singer. Still I embraced the new moniker and figured it could have been worse. Two of my classmates in the same class are nicknamed Bono and Hillary Swank because one is a pretentious guy who wears weird sunglasses all the time and the other has a similar overbite to the Academy Award winning actress respectively. Then it hit me- I have grown out my hair and [...]

“Today we ditched the city for a cabin in the woods. Gonna write a record.” With those words, the three friends of The End of America embarked on a journey of reflection, self-discovery, and finally redemption in a cabin in the Adirondacks. And just as impressively, using nothing but acoustic guitars, a banjo, mandolin, and their voices, they managed to take me along with them. Now, in truth, I’m probably going to over-analyze the heck out of this album, much the same way some bespectacled intellectual tries to find meaning in a [...]

This sounds like the album I’ve always wanted Queens Of The Stone Age to make. And that means it sounds like Wishbone Ash and The Groundhogs playing a festival on the island where the 1973 movie The Wicker Man takes place. The Kings of Frog Island are a collaboration between guitarist and producer Mark Buteux, R. "Doj" Watson and Mat Bethancourt, of the awesome band Josiah (R.I.P.). III is the third and final installment in a trilogy that began in 2005. I never heard the first [...]

The events described below took place from 7 AM to 8 PM on (date omitted). There was nothing to indicate that this past Wednesday would be any different from any of the Wednesdays that came before. I awoke with the preset alarm, cleaned myself up, ate my breakfast, and proceeded to work. My workday was filled with the normal rigamorole I had come to expect. Indeed, the perfectly rehearsed normalcy was not marred by an incident either outstandingly good or bad. After my work was completed I grabbed my lunch container and [...]

For the past couple of years, there have been a lot of great debut albums by indie bands. Now that may be hard to believe for some, but it’s surprisingly true. Whether it’s a New York new wave band or another alternative indie rock band, the quality is out there, but the key is finding those bands. Back in 2008 I kept hearing about this New York post-punk, new wave, and indie rock band that has a playful, party sound called The Virgins . Sadly, it wasn’t until 2009 when I took advantage of actually checking out their eponymous [...]

The Pope has a new entry into his top ten list. Yeah, I know it’s only March as of the writing of this piece, but when an album punches you repeatedly in the face, kidney region, and groin area a hundred and sixty-two times before it’s made one complete revolution, then by default, said album has effectively muscled it’s way in. Lair of the Minotaur . Evil Power . Metal, metal, and more metal! Not since Skeletonwitch ’s Breathing the Fire have I listened to an album that has felt so damned immediate, and folks, [...]

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. An old cliche, but true, and one that applies to rock 'n roll as well as any place else. Any band can pull off a decent show when everything is meticulously managed, produced, and every moment is scripted by the "how-to-put-on-a-gig-and-be-a- rock-star" book. But what if it ain't going by the book? What if the book's been barfed on, covered in lighter fluid, set aflame and tossed out the fricking window? If you really want to see what a band is made of, what character the [...]

At the time of this writing, Truth Corroded is a big fish in a little pond . . . the pond being Australia. Therefore, Truth Corroded is a small fish in a very large pond, swimming around with some seriously big fish and millions of similar sized and smaller fish. Let me tell you right now, this won’t be the case for very long. Having already toured in support of metal heavyweights such as Behemoth , Sepultura , Dark Tranquility , and God Forbid (just to name a few) these [...]

Writing for The Ripple Effect has given all of us here some insight on a bunch of labels that are cruising along just under the radar. We’re found a ton of Indie labels over the last two plus years and we’re constantly being surprised by the passion and quality of the material being released under the various banners. Some labels are approaching their releases from a place of reverence towards the music and musicians that they’ve loved for a time by releasing re-issues or unreleased material, while others concentrate on putting out music that they may enjoy, but [...]