Title: Out Of The Pit
Artist: Kobra and the Lotus
Label: Sonic Unyon
Release Date: 9 March 2010
In One Word: Meh
Sometime last year a 4-track promo sampler from Calgary, AB’s Kobra and the Lotus landed in the Music Vice mailbox, and with the release this March of the band’s debut album Out Of The Pit, I’m a...
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Title: Elect The Dead Symphony
Artist: Serj Tankian
Label: Warner
Release Date: 9 March 2010
In One Word: Refreshing
As a bona fide System Of A Down fan, it’s perhaps high time I checked out frontman Serj’s solo output… this release is the Symphony version of 2007’s Elect The Dead, and what a place to start! While System certainly...
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Title: Chasing The Grail
Artist: Fozzy
Label: Riot!
Release Date: Out Now
In One Word: Ozzy!
OK, so first things first, it’s hard to take the notion of a professional wrestler fronting a band seriously but I am assured by the highest of sources (ha!) that Fozzy are the real deal and the fact they’ve been around now for...
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Gig/Concert: Jamie Cullum
Venue: Massey Hall, Toronto, ON, Canada
Date: 9 March 2010
Headliners: Jamie Cullum
In one word: Charming
Massey Hall is a venue with an illustrious music history having hosted many legendary performances, one of the most famous of all being the 1953 concert with jazz influentials Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and the rest of The Quintet....
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Title: Hands
Artist: Little Boots
Label: Warner
Release Date: 2 March 2010
In One Word: Contrived
By definition pop music is “commercial popular music, in particular accessible, tuneful music of a kind popular since the 1950s and sometimes contrasted with rock, soul, or other forms of popular music.” (Credit to the trusty dictionary on my MacBook.) For an actual...
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Gig/Concert: Tinariwen
Venue: Phoenix Concert Theatre, Sherbourne Street, Toronto, ON, Canada
Date: 4 March 2010
Headliners: Tinariwen
In one word: Radiant
Tonight in Toronto “one of the most superb bands” in world music performed to a packed-out Phoenix Concert Theatre. That’s a paraphrase of the introduction given by Small World Music’s Executive Director Alan Davis as Tinariwen took...
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Title: The Haunting
Artist: Black Soul Strangers
Label: Squeek Records
Release Date: 14 March 2010
In One Word: Fetching
When you search for ‘haunting’ in a dictionary, what seems to be a re-occurring definition is ‘remaining in the consciousness; not quickly forgotten’ and that is exactly what Black Soul Stranger’s latest single, “The Haunting”, is; its certainly not quickly...
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Gig/Concert: Soundwave Festival
Venue: Steel Blue Oval, Perth
Date: 1 March 2010
Headliners: Faith No More, Jimmy Eat World
In one word: Sweltering
With positive memories of the swift organisation of the 2009 Soundwave Festival it was with disappointment that several of the opening bands for this year’s show played to empty fields due to a bottlenecked, one-gate...
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Gig/Concert: Soundwave Festival Melbourne
Venue: Royal Ascot Showgrounds
Date: 26 February 2010
Headliners: Faith No More, Jane’s Addiction
In one word: Belter
Whereas Big Day Out contained a grand mix of what can only be described as bogans in Australian flags, Soundwave contained a much wider array of people such as emo bogans, metal bogans, ska bogans and punk...
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Gig/Concert: John Waters (actor, filmmaker and all-round influential pop cult icon)
Venue: Hamer Hall, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Date: 27 February 2010
Headliners: John Waters
In one word: Dapper
Now I know we’re a music website and all that but you just can’t escape the filthy influence of Baltimore’s own John Waters on popular culture; his work on the musical...
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