I must admit that I hadn’t actually heard of Trial Kennedy until I read a great review for their upcoming album on Bombshellzine back in June. Despite a couple of EP releases (Present For a Day & Picture Frame), and frequent support tours with the likes of Gyroscope, Kisschasy & Fall Out Boy, its taken them about four years to finally release their first album. After receiving a record deal with Sony BMG, these four Melbournites headed over to Atlanta and worked with producer Nick DiDia (Stone Temple Pilots, Powderfinger, Incubus & Audioslave) to develop their debut album New Manic Art.
When Less Than Jakes last release In With The Out Crowd was critically panned for sounding too pop & commercial they mutually split from their previous partner Warner Bros. to start up their own label Sleep It Off. After listened to the fans they then decided to go back to basics for there follow up album GNV FLA. Chris Demakes (guitarist/vocalist) and JR (saxophonist) stated that “We should do what we’ve always done, and do what we do best” which resulted in “a quintessential Less Than Jake record”.
Ten years and six albums since Zebrahead’s first studio album and the boys are back with their latest release Phoenix.
With each album spaning so many genres and different sounds & considering that their last release (Broadcast to the World) was over two years ago, I was jumping with anticipation to see what would come out of Phoenix.
Agony & Irony is Alkaline Trio’s 6th studio album & sees the Chicago threesome split from their previous independent label to join with Epic records. While this has resulted in the usual backlash of sellout remarks (The band recently endorsed a limited edition set of Nike Alkaline Trio shoes), this is still a solid release that will should appeal to those that like their punk rock laced with a good dose of pop.
Today I was originally going to try write a review for the new alkaline Trio album, but instead I got distracted after listening to the latest effort from Me First And The Gimme Gimmes titled Have Another Ball.
Unfortunately it caught my attention in a bad way as this album is actually pretty substandard. Even though every Gimme Gimme release has had its fair share of hits & misses, their 7th studio album is by far their worst to date (technically it could be classified as their 1st album since it was originally going to be released as a b-side to their 1997 release Have A Ball).
Despite the general opinion that Weezer haven’t released a great album since their early days I still stuck by the band up to their last effort, Make Believe. After traded in their catchy rock riffs for cheesy synthesiser laden ballad’s this release was pretty forgettable & left me wanting more old school Weezer tunes. When I heard the fun upbeat single Pork & Beans (more on that later) from their latest release I was actually pretty excited about the rest of the songs as it sounded like it would be a return to form for the band.
I’ve been meaning to write a review for the new Donot’s album for quite a while (it was released way back in March), but since there’s no local distributer for their records in Australia I took me awhile to obtain my copy.
Despite the fact that they’ve been kicking around since 1993 and have released 5 fantastic albums these five German punk/rockers have yet to crack the the mainstream market outside of Europe. If you haven’t heard of them before then I would suggest listening to their massive 31 track Best Of / b-side / Live album The Story So Far: Ibbtown Chronicles. It was always going to be hard to top this record but the Donots have really outdone themselves with their latest effort titled Coma Chameleon.
After Offspring released their atrocious 2003 Splinter album I had pretty much given up on the band and thought they had gone the way of the dinosaur.
I was therefore surprised (and dare I say excited) after I saw them headline this year’s Soundwave Festival where they played a number of nostalgic tracks from their Smash & Ixnay albums and a couple of new songs. After hearing them live I was even a bit hopeful (secretly withheld of course) that their upcoming release would regain the credibility they’d lost with earlier craptacular singles Pretty Fly and Original Prankster.
Since I’ve been so Thrice crazy on hundredpennies lately I thought I would tackle some other recently released albums. There’s plenty to get through including new stuff from Weezer, Less Than Jake, Alkaline Trio, The Donots, Trial Kennedy and Offspring’s latest which I’ll be covering today. Keep checking back in the coming weeks if you want the lowdown on any of these albums and if you want me to cover any particular one first leave a comment & let me know.
I hope you’re ready for the final part of my Alchemy Index review, since this ones going to be a big one feel free to skip to the final verdict if you’re too lazy to read. While I found Thrice’s first two volumes to be slightly lacking in depth, they’ve more than made up for the disappointing Water EP with the final two volumes of III:Air & IV: Earth.
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