March 2010
1 post
Fornax Chemica - Chemical Furnace
Fornax Chemica are one of the most impressively fresh things I’ve heard come out of New Zealand in a long time. They blend vocal-less post-rock with technical and progressive metal and the result is spectacular.
I first saw these guys at a gig in Hamilton where probably only 20 people showed up. I had no idea what to expect going in, but the name intrigued me and man was I not...
November 2009
1 post
October 2009
6 posts
1 tag
1 tag
4 tags
The Tea Party - Transmission
The Tea Party are a band that throughout their career, have continually managed to reinvent their sound, while retaining the core components of blending a rock mentality with world music.
Transmission sits squarely in the middle of their career, and is probably the most different album they’ve ever done. Much darker in sound and theme than anything they’ve done before or since,...
3 tags
Dead Letter Circus
Dead Letter Circus are one of the up and coming Australian alternative rock bands that people are keeping a very close eye on. Exploding on to the rock scene with their first self titled EP with its soaring vocals, guitars drenched in delay effects, and tight rhythm section (the drums are pumping!)
Highlights for me are the chorus from “Disconnect and Apply” which has one of my...
Ultraspank - Progress
Ultraspank for me are one of the bands from my “Nu-metal” phase as a teenager that I can listen to any time and doesn’t feel dated for me. Not the usual kind of thing I’d post on here, but they’re a guilty pleasure that I enjoy :)
Much like pitchshifter, they make heavier use of programming and synths than most bands of this type without quite getting into...
Devin Townsend Project - Ki
The Devin Townsend Project (not to be confused with the Devin Townsend Band) is (oddly enough) Devin Townsend’s latest project. Since becoming sober, and chopping off the ‘skullet’, he’s decided to release a series of 4 albums in fairly quick succession, just months apart, over the course of a year. The idea is that each album will be slightly heavier than the last, and...
Karnivool - Sound Awake
Sound Awake is without a doubt my pick for Album of the Year in 2009. I’ve held off posting this to make sure I’d really let the album sink in. Well, over 100 album plays and 2 live concerts later, I think I’ve left it long enough.
If you like your music interesting, heavy, melodic, catchy, and original, then you’ll love Sound Awake. Since Themata (written and recorded...
September 2009
5 posts
Decortica - A New Aesthetic
I first found out about Decortica a few weeks ago and bought their album after hearing 3 songs. Boy was I happy when I discovered those 3 songs weren’t even close to being the best songs on the album!
Decortica are a local Alt Rock 3 piece from Auckland, New Zealand. I find them a hard band to categorize. They have the enough hooks to do quite well in the mainstream music world I would...
Dredg - The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion
Dredg’s new album “The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion” is a mouthful to tell your friends about, and an earful to listen to. The band seem to be focusing considerably less on being experimental and shunning original song structure just for the sake of it, and the result is a varied and excellent album that I’d recommend to all my friends.
The album starts off with a...
MadLove - White With Foam
Trevor Dunn, bassist for Mr. Bungle and Fantomas has formed a new band, and unsurprisingly its excellent! Surprisingly however, its lacking in the weirdness you might expect from his projects.
While its definitely slightly left of mainstream, the bass grooves, jazzy feel on some tracks, and fairly minimalistic instrumentation make this album a really easy listen from start to finish.
Sunny Kim...
April 2009
2 posts
5 tags
Mammal - The Majority
http://www.myspace.com/mammaltheband
Mammal are a very political, funky, heavy-rock band from Melbourne. Sounds like Rage against the machine? It’s not. While frontman Ezekiel Ox raps many of the lyrics over an incredibly tight 3 piece band, there is little resemblance to Rage in their overall sound. Zeke’s one of the most interesting front-men I’ve seen in a rock band in a...
March 2009
13 posts
Mammal playing Auckland, April 24th
http://premier.ticketek.co.nz/shows/show.aspx?sh=MAMMAL09
One of the best, most energetic live rock acts I’ve ever seen. Support great independant bands taking the time to come and play in NZ and turn up! Tickets are only $15, so you all have no excuses. Blog on Mammal coming soon…
3 tags
Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet
http://www.myspace.com/porcupinetree
Porcupine Tree are a progressive rock band with influences ranging from Pink Floyd, Rush, and King Crimson, to Opeth style death metal, to beach-boys style vocal harmonies.
Fear of a blank planet was released in 2007 and is a concept album focussing on the ever increasing apathy of younger generations, brought on by virtual experiences instead of real ones,...
DZK - Torcher
Now I’m usually not a fan of rap or hiphop. Its never seemed to resonate with me, and most of what’s pushed out to the public is total crap, taking very little talent or musical ability. Having said that, I like to think I can recognize talent, and DKZ has some serious talent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuApQpZm9lE
Plus, he’s independent and releases all his songs for...
“Yacht rock refers to the highly polished brand of soft rock that emanated from...”
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yacht_Rock
7 tags
Twelve Foot Ninja - New Dawn EP
http://www.myspace.com/twelvefootninja
Twelve Foot Ninja are everything I love about music. Equal parts heavy, catchy, melodic, and a little bit weird.
New Dawn is their first 6 track EP, and it plays like some of the best bits of Mike Patton’s extensive musical catalogue. The only unfortunate thing about TFN (not tax file number), is the Patton comparisons that are inevitable when your...
2 tags
NIN|JA 09 EP
http://www.ninja2009.com/
I’ll start by saying I’m a huge NIN fan, liked rage and a lot of Audioslave, and never really got into Jane’s Addiction. This free EP contains 2 tracks from NIN, JA, and Streetsweeper (tom morello’s new project), who are about to start an 09 tour together.
The Streetsweeper tracks sound like a mix of sub-rage riffs, with saul williams style...
2 tags
Thru You - Kutiman mixes YouTube
http://thru-you.com/
Had to mention this. I’m usually fairly staunchly against DJ culture, and you wont see much of it on this blog (traditionally I’ve considered sampling other peoples songs a far less creative effort than writing your own) but I have to eat my words with this one… The creativity here is astounding.
Kutiman grabs every interesting musical sound he can find...
4 tags
Cog - Sharing Space
http://www.myspace.com/cogrockmusic
Cog are another Australian progressive rock band, but unlike Karnivool, they are a bit less heavy, a bit more experimental with their instrumentation and song structures, and a hell of a lot more political! Cog are a band that require a lot of thought and reflection to get the most out of.
Sharing space is their latest album, and is probably their softest...
MoshCam →
I’m not sure how people manage to record multi-cam footage of concerts, often with matched sound direct from the sound-desk, and put high quality streaming video of these entire concerts online for people to view for free but MoshCam seemed to have figured out a way. Lots of Aussie and International bands, great if you just can’t quite afford to fly to Australia to see a lot of these...
1 tag
Periphery
http://www.myspace.com/periphery
Periphery are a really polished sounding Math-core band in the vein of Meshuggah and Dillinger Escape Plan. They are currently working on their first album, and have just finalised their bands lineup from the sounds of it. Check out the song Zyglrox. Their guitarist Bulb has a bunch of awesome videos on youtube.
I would go so far as to say I think some of...
3 tags
Karnivool - Themata
http://www.myspace.com/karnivool
I found out about Karnivool in early 2008, totally out of left field and they blew me away, and made me discover the exploding Aussie modern rock scene.
Themata is a brilliantly put together album that will remind people mostly of Tool, with little sprinkles of meshuggah style technical metal, muse’s epic melodies and smooth vocals, but all in a package of...
1 tag
What is Signal2Noise?
The short and useless answer is its the name I had to pick after signaltonoise.tumblr.com was already taken.
The real answer is this is to become the music blog of me, Steve Dennis. It will be a heavily biased account of the bands I’m listening to, music I love, hate, random thoughts on music, possibly some self-indulgent wankery posting some of my own music on occasion, and generally...