
Check out my photos of Atoms For Peace at Club AMOK over at Stereogum .
A lot of bands try to blend doom metal and black metal, to strike that happy medium between epic crush and blistering blaze, but few do it as well as Europe's Lychgate. The band has got the dual guttural-growl/high-rasp vocal assault, can go from a relative crawl to an all-out blast in no time flat, and make music as weighty as it is rich in majestic atmosphere. Throw in a few gothic accents and you’re looking at something special. Lychgate has been been around - at least in spirit - for over a decade, initially as a solo project helmed [...]
A few days late but stacked with excellence, here is your collection of May's absolute jams. For optimal ease of consumption, you'll find it here in three forms: a 12-track downloadable zip of the month's best free MP3s, a 15-song Spotify playlist of May's finest Spotify-enabled tracks, and to close it out, a 46-track Soundcloud set of the essential songs you ought to have in your ears and under your belt before moving your mind onto June. For your weekend: Read More...
The idea of "music video" can mean a lot of things in 2013. On the internet, many of our most memorable experiences involving music and moving images have been fringey delights: An art-stunt of a late-night performance , a commercial that aired on a Coachella jumbotron , a spectacularly flubbed awards-show dive rendered in gif form . But the year has also been kind to the traditional music video, with directors like Nabil and Luke Monaghan coming further into their own and Western pop and rock music doing so well that I didn't even see fit to [...]
The idea of "music video" can mean a lot of things in 2013. On the internet, many of our most memorable experiences involving music and moving images have been fringey delights: An art-stunt of a late-night performance , a commercial that aired on a Coachella jumbotron , a spectacularly flubbed awards-show dive rendered in gif form . But the year has also been kind to the traditional music video, with directors like Nabil and Luke Monaghan coming further into their own and Western pop and rock music doing so well that I didn't even see fit to [...]

Check out my photos of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at the Fonda Theatre over at Stereogum .

Check out my photos of Queens of the Stone Age at Apogee's Berkeley Street Studio over at Stereogum .
2013 isn't technically half over yet, but we're deep into the part of the year where you start sweating the instant you leave your door, and that means it's a good time to take stock of all the disco robots, frantic rap nerds, and metal boundary-crushers who have thus far delighted us. It's impossible to pick a narrative out of this year's crop of great albums, as we've heard beautiful things from just about every corner of the music multiverse. But perhaps more than usual, our favorites of 2013 (so far) marry precise studio craft to open-hearted [...]
2013 isn't technically half over yet, but we're deep into the part of the year where you start sweating the instant you leave your door, and that means it's a good time to take stock of all the disco robots, frantic rap nerds, and metal boundary-crushers who have thus far delighted us. It's impossible to pick a narrative out of this year's crop of great albums, as we've heard beautiful things from just about every corner of the music multiverse. But perhaps more than usual, our favorites of 2013 (so far) marry precise studio craft to open-hearted [...]

Check out my photos of CHVRCHES at the Fonda Theatre over at Stereogum .

Check out my photos of Stones Fest at the Fonda Theatre over at Stereogum .
When we wrote about A Pregnant Light as a Band To Watch back in April, the one-man band had already proven itself more diverse than most. At that point in APL’s prolific and young career, APL treaded the waters of hardcore and postpunk while maintaining a firm grounding in hair-raising black metal, releasing limited edition cassettes that earned high praise from both Michael and me. Well, APL hasn’t completely rewritten the book with Domination Harmony — those cassettes are as limited as ever — but has continued to evolve what Deathless Maranatha, the force [...]
May has been a pretty intense month around here. Memorial Day Weekend brought Maryland Death Fest to Baltimore, and attendance was mandatory for any metalhead who wanted to keep his cred pass. (Absences were excused in cases of need; acceptable excuses included: unavoidable domestic or professional demands; financial concerns; injury; disability; agoraphobia; and/or inability to find a ride.) If you're not familiar, MDF is the only event held on American soil that can be compared to Europe's legendary metal festivals, like Germany's Wacken and France's Hellfest. And if you love metal, it's a total blast. Read More...

Check out my photos of Boris and Deafheaven at the Echoplex over at Stereogum .
Put your focus here. Let the Hate fill your mind. - By Ryan Stephenson

Check out my photos of Queens of the Stone Age at the Wiltern over at Stereogum .

Check out my photos of Arctic Monkeys at the Ventura Theater over at Stereogum .

Check out my photos of The Rolling Stones at the Staples Center over at Stereogum .

Check out my photos of Jim James at the Fonda Theatre over at Stereogum .

Check out my photos of Yo La Tengo at the Fonda Theatre over at Stereogum .