Upper Wilds Ponder the Enormity of the Cosmos with ‘Jupiter’
Alt-rock trio Upper Wilds’ energy and enthusiasm are seemingly endless, and like the universe, they take great pains to explore and chronicle on Jupiter.
noise rock
Reconsidering Sonic Youth’s ‘Confusion Is Sex’ at 40 Years Old
Sonic Youth’s Confusion Is Sex is impressively raw and uncompromising, thrilling and terrifying as a walk through the Lower East Side in the early 1980s.
Purling Hiss Take the Piss Out of Mainstream Rock on ‘Drag on Girard’
Purling Hiss’ Drag on Girard carries on a long-standing tradition of revisiting and updating the garage rock canon to extend its legacies to the next level.
Black Belt Eagle Scout Hones Her Message and Perfects Her Sound
With her third album, Black Belt Eagle Scout dazzles us with lush atmospheres, seismic rhythms, and a voice that unfurls from another and perhaps a better world.
Noise Rockers Chat Pile Mine the Depths of Human Misery (Without Being Miserable)
Chat Pile’s full-length debut God’s Country is a grim yet thrilling soundtrack to American decline, drawing on heavy traditions from nu-metal to slasher films.
SCALPING Embrace Eclectic EDM Approaches on Debut ‘Void’
SCALPING’s Void energetically captures music designed for a club/real-time environment and hybridizes any number of EDM, punk, and metal precursors.
DITZ Come Out Hard and Dark with Debut ‘The Great Regression”
Brighton post-punk/metal five-piece DITZ come out hard and dark on their debut ‘The Great Regression’, delivering an album of urgency and visceral intensity.
The Weird and the Loud Collide on Minibeast’s ‘On Ice’
Mission of Burma’s Peter Prescott returns as Minibeast for On Ice, which revels in all of the noises, be they acoustic, amplified, or synthetic.
‘In/Out/In’ Makes a Taut Case for Sonic Youth’s Continued Relevance
In/Out/In, a collection of almost entirely instrumental tracks recorded during Sonic Youth’s final decade, would be a crucial record if it was the only thing they ever recorded.
Drummer Mephisto Halabi Breaks Down the Walls of His ‘Arabic Room’
Mephisto Halabi’s The Arabic Room blends eastern exoticism, circuit-bent electronics, and some of the heaviest free improvisations you might ever hear.
MetalMatters: The Best New Heavy Albums of September 2021
Here we are with the September crop of the best heavy music, featuring everything across the board from extreme metal to noise and post-rock.
Crossing Boundaries: An Interview with Liars’ Angus Andrew
Liars’ founding member Angus Andrew talks with PopMatters about revisiting the band’s past work and creating a new sci-fi album, The Apple Drop.