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Cannibal Corpse and Behemoth Prove It Feels Damn Good to ‘Be Alive’ at Webster Hall
Cannibal Corpse are one of the constants of the metal universe, a perfect example of artistic conservatism as a life path. Their music has remained essentially unchanged since their 1990 debut album, Eaten Back to Life: They play fast, aggressive death metal, but somehow manage to shoehorn just enough melody into their songs to make […]
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Machine Head Bring a Massive, Anthemic Roar to New York ‘Homecoming’ Show at Irving Plaza
Better Than: Thinking about what you dressed like, and how you styled your hair, in 1999. Machine Head are a Bay Area band, but they’ve always had a strong bond with New York; their label of twenty years, Roadrunner Records, was based here, and they’ve been a solid and consistent draw any time they came […]
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Live: George Thorogood Lights Up B.B. King’s
George Thorogood & The Destroyers w/Tom Hambridge & The Rattlesnakes B.B. King Blues Club Wednesday, August 8 Better than: Jack White. The last time I was at B.B. King Blues Club in Times Square (right next to the Sanrio store, across from Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum), I saw Napalm Death. From the early 2000s to […]
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Q&A: Orrin Evans On The Economics Of Trio Albums, Jazz Musicians’ Constant Reinvention, And Records That Are Too Long
Pianist Orrin Evans is a busy man. With nearly 20 albums out under his own leadership and a slew of impressive sideman performances to his credit, he’s built a sterling reputation on the modern, straight-ahead jazz scene. His music has melody and swing, with a dash of groove here and there, and he frequently pays […]
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Live: L’Arc-En-Ciel Land At Madison Square Garden
L’Arc-en-Ciel Madison Square Garden Sunday, March 25 Better than: Hearing critics just talk about weird foreign scenes and stylistic blends and collisions at the EMP Pop Conference. Japanese hard rock band L’Arc-en-Ciel have been in well-deserved self-celebration mode of late. They celebrated their 20th anniversary with the 2011 triple-disc best-of Twenity, then announced their first […]
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Q&A: Vernon Reid On Artificial Afrika, Playing With Photoshop, And Creating An Afrodelic Experience
Guitarist Vernon Reid is best known as the leader of the hard rock/metal band Living Colour. Before that, though, he was a fixture on the New York avant-garde scene, blending rock, jazz and noise as a member of drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society, duetting with Bill Frisell on the album Smash & Scatteration, and […]
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Sam Rivers, R.I.P.
A Spotify playlist of Sam Rivers’ work is here. Jazz composer, multi-instrumentalist, and organizer Sam Rivers died of pneumonia on December 26. Rivers’ importance to the American jazz avant-garde extended beyond his recordings and performances. In his demonstration of artistic self-reliance and community-building with his Bond Street loft space Studio RivBea, Rivers (who mostly played […]
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Q&A: Pistolera’s Sandra Velasquez On Singing In Spanish, Criss-Crossing The Country, And Rapid-Response Songwriting
The powerhouse NYC quartet Pistolera started out meshing uptempo, Latin party music with politically engaged lyrics, but on their third release El Desierto y la Ciudad (Luchadora), they shift into a more atmospheric mode, offering a suite of songs meant to be heard in sequence and all together. Lead singer Sandra Velasquez talked about the […]
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Q&A: Nader Sadek On Wearing Deicide T-Shirts In Cairo And Humanity’s Oil-Fueled Pursuit Of Its Own Destruction
Egypt-born visual artist Nader Sadek has been bringing the worlds of avant-garde art and extreme metal together for several years. His 2007 installation Faceless arose out of his experiences living as a metalhead in Cairo, and combined oddly Edward Gorey-ish drawings of a niqab-clad woman standing in landscapes not unlike the ones you might see […]
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Live: Calle 13 Make The Wait Worth It At Irving Plaza
Calle 13 Irving Plaza Friday, May 6 Sure, they came onstage 45 minutes later than advertised, but the crowd was only a little grumpy about being kept waiting. (Those who booed and threw empty beer cans and plastic cups at Irving Plaza’s hanging video screen every time a new song came over the PA were […]