German stoner rock trio KADAVAR will release their fifth studio album, For the Dead Travel Fast (Nuclear Blast), on October 11. In advance of this highly anticipated work, the band has just released a video for the lead single, “The Devil’s Master.”
Welcome back to our ongoing series of LOUDER THAN LIFE 2019 artist profiles, our weekly guide through the lineup of acts who’ll take the stage at Louisville, Kentucky’s Highland Festival Grounds at Kentucky Expo Center September 27-29 in what’s sure to be one of the biggest concert events of the year. This week, we’re taking a closer look at Canadian psych-blues outfit CROWN LANDS.
One of the bands jump-starting LOUDER THAN LIFE on Friday is CROWN LANDS, a duo hailing from Oshawa, Ontario. For the past four years, Cody Bowles (drums/vocals) and Kevin Comeau (guitars/keyboards/pedals) have been expertly crafting hard-stomping rock that finds the sweet spot between WOLFMOTHER, THE WHITE STRIPES, and RUSH while belying the seeming limitations of their streamlined blueprint. Songs like “Being Right” and “Mountain” retain a touch of garage rawness while still sounding like widescreen epics, and hepped-up jumpers like “Misery” and “Mantra” have a fair bit of glitter encrusted on their shitkicker boots. Continue reading
Welcome back to our ongoing series of LOUDER THAN LIFE 2019 artist profiles, our weekly guide through the lineup of acts who’ll take the stage at Louisville, Kentucky’s Highland Festival Grounds at Kentucky Expo Center September 27-29 in what’s sure to be one of the biggest concert events of the year. This week, we’re taking a closer look at newly-formed supergroup DEADLAND RITUAL.
Not every unsigned band can grab a spot on the lineup for a festival on the magnitude of LARGER THAN LIFE. But then, not every unsigned band can unravel the certified Hall of Fame pedigree of DEADLAND RITUAL. Boasting the assembled firepower of drummer Matt Sorum (VELVET REVOLVER, GUNS N’ ROSES, THE CULT), guitarist Steve Stevens (BILLY IDOL, VINCE NEIL), bassist Geezer Butler (BLACK SABBATH, HEAVEN & HELL), and vocalist Franky Perez (APOCALYPTICA, SCARS ON BROADWAY), DEADLAND RITUAL’s deft audio alchemy combines a century’s worth of hard rocks and heavy metals into a sleek and shiny new alloy that’s both classic and cutting edge. Judging from their two officially released singles, “Down in Flames” and “Broken & Bruised,” a kind of sultry doom will be the unit’s primary stock-in-trade, riding the Big Groove of the formidable Butler/Sorum rhythm section on a thick slab of power riffs and impassioned vocals underneath a desert sky of electric gray. Continue reading
With what passes for rock and roll nowadays, who could really blame those that say the genre is dead or dying? But if you scratch just a little bit deeper, you’ll find there is a whole new generation of artists well versed in the finer points of classic rock, penning brand new messages in fifty year old ink. Greta Van Fleet may have garnered the lion’s share of hedgerow bustling from the mainstream, but there was a bumper crop of retro-leaning acts in 2018 proving there will always be plenty of room for bands that want to wrap themselves in velvets and party like it’s 1974. It was tough to whittle the whole year down to ten releases, and even tougher to rank them. But after countless hours of analysis, these are the best things I heard this year; if you don’t think they make ‘em like they used to, you need to check this shit out.
After releasing one of 2018’s finest hunks of retro-rock (the downright dazzling Ain’t No Shame), Norwegian flower-power trio Friendship are kicking off the new year with the re-release of their 2012 debut single. Both “Alpha Male” and its corresponding b-side “Give It Time” show that the band’s knack for funky and fluid, sexy and soulful sunshine rock was in place from the start, whip-tight power-pop filtered through a kaleidoscopic lens of swaggering psychedelia.
Stoner rock fans across North America will have reason to rejoice in March 2019, when English horror-psych mavens Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats join forces with Swedish retro-rockers Graveyard for a co-headlining jaunt dubbed the “Peace Across the Wasteland” tour. Ticket pre-sales for the nineteen-date tour, which kicks off at Philadelphia’s Union Transfer on March 6 and runs through March 30 at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto, begin October 24, with the general on-sale beginning two days later.
Ace Frehley
Spaceman
Entertainment One
No matter the status of his endlessly fluctuating relationship with his former bandmates/business partners, and no matter who’s stage left working his suit and wearing his makeup, Ace Frehley will always be the lead guitar player for KISS. One of the most influential axemen in rock and roll history (haters and naysayers be damned), Frehley has spent a large swath of the sixteen-plus years since his last public appearance with the band firmly cementing his reputation as the once-and-forever Space Ace, touring and releasing a string of albums that show off his singular talents and find inspiration in his formidable legacy. His newest release, Spaceman, plays up the KISS connections and corollaries more than any other project in his solo catalog, which should give longtime fans and followers plenty to sink their teeth into.
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats
Wasteland
Rise Above Records
In addition to having a keenly honed knack for riff-driven/pop-tinged sugar-and-sludge psychedelia, Kevin Starrs does atmosphere better than anybody working in heavy music today. As creative force and sole constant member of Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats, his albums play like 70mm cult horror classics bootlegged onto well-worn VHS cassettes, casting their cathode ray glow over otherwise darkened bedrooms. The colors are vibrant but washed-out, it’s warbly and more than a little distorted, the on-screen movements leave tracers, and the whole thing has just enough fuzz and static on it to seem genuinely creepy. Acid-steeped, with a heavy dose of psychopaths, brainwashers, and a ready steady flow of that red red kroovy, the Uncle Acid canon is a grindhouse marathon for the mind’s eye. The latest opus from Starrs and Co., Wasteland, brings the “post-apocalyptic dystopia” genre into the oeuvre, a tale of walled cities, mindless masses, piped-in propaganda, and hidden computer discs filled with long-forgotten memories and perhaps the keys to freedom. The premise may sound prog, but the execution is blessedly pure classic rock hesh.
Business is damn sure picking up for Richmond, Virginia hesher riff-kings SATAN’S SATYRS. They’re gearing up for a North American tour with fellow Cavaliers WINDHAND that’ll take up most of October and November, and their sludgy, sleazy new album The Lucky Ones will see release October 19, courtesy of Bad Omen Records and RidingEasy. To whet your appetite and catch a little contact high before the whole slab drops, you can check out the second advance track from The Lucky Ones, the T.REX-in-a-Trans Am stomper “She Beast,” now streaming via YouTube.
In celebration of the 30th Anniversary of their platinum-certified debut album, hard rockers KINGDOM COME have reunited and will be touring the U.S. this fall. The band’s original lineup is largely intact (drummer James Kottak, guitarists Danny Stag and Rick Steier, and bassist Johnny B. Frank), with longtime MONTROSE vocalist Keith St. John stepping in for original frontman Lenny Wolf (who declined to take part but has given the project his blessing). They will be performing Kingdom Come in its entirety, along with selections from their 1989 follow-up In Your Face.
