The RadioActivist

After a fairly brief period of downtime between the release of their well-received (by yours truly) Takeover debut EP, Oh No Not Stereo is back with a full-length followup. Having graduated from a two-piece trio to a two-piece quartet, the band is perhaps a little better suited for the ambitious sound they seem to desire, as well as the mainstream success they’ve been marching towards. Though their stay at Takeover was transitory (filing for breach of contract while Takeover worked on restructuring and the launch of Takeover Digital), the band was able to build enough buzz to self-release 003 while cleverly slipping into the segues of such substance-less TV slots as “Bam’s Unholy Union,” “Paris Hilton’s My New BFF” and “Meet the Barkers.” Unlike the hopeless majority of bands striving for the sound that ONNS seems to have keyed in on (emoey pop-rock with just as many movements and chord patterns as hooks), Oh No Not Stereo is one of the few that actually has the chops to pull it off. B

Of all the Sublime offshoots that sprang up after the death of vocalist Brad Nowell (Long Beach Shortbus, Long Beach Dub Allstars, Dubcat, Chapter 11, etc.), Volcano stands out as both the most shrouded in obscurity (playing few shows and with little press information or otherwise available) and the act least like a cash-grab (releasing only one album and letting it go out of print soon thereafter). Coincidentally, it also happens to be one of the best of the post-Sublime era. Fronted by Curt Kirkwood of Meat Puppets fame, Bud Gaugh and Mike “Miguel” Happoldt of Sublime man the drums and lead guitar respectively, with Jon Poutney of surf-punk act (and Sublime’s biggest influence) the Ziggens on bass. Kirkwood and Gaugh previously played together with Nirvana’s Krist Novaselic on the commercial and critical failure Eyes Adrift, but Volcano is a rather radical departure from the uninspired rock of the former. In the words of Kirkwood, “The producer says it sounds a lot like Eighties, SST

What made you decide to embark on a larger-scale tour after so many years without heavy touring, especially given economic conditions right now? Well, [the economy] part of it is just bad timing. But you know, what are you gonna do, sit it out and wait 'til the economy gets good? No. So…I mean, we've been obviously really fucking inactive. And we've only done west coast stuff, and really only California stuff. And we haven't done anything in a really long time. Last time we were here was in 2003, last time we were on the East Coast was in 2003 or '04. Our last studio record was in 2003. And you know, people are probably just writing us off. When we recorded the last record it was for some reason kind of a stressful time, and Max [Huber] left the band. It didn't end the band, but we sort of have taken these weird time-off periods for years now. We all get along, everything's fine and everything, but, you know, we never made a ton of money… so we all have jo

Upon a strong, mutual craving for Chicago-style pizza late one night last week, my girlfriend and I decided to boogie on down to the Windy City for the weekend. With no real plans in mind beyond grabbing a slice from Ronny’s do wntown, I was stoked to learn from TheOneTrueBill that the Queers were going to be in town on Saturday night. My girlfriend was a little apprehensive having never heard the Queers, but on the drive down I played “See Ya Later Fuckface” for her and that was all the persuasion she needed. Arriving late and just barely missing the openers, I was impressed at the sizeable crowd the Queers were able to draw at Reggie's. Of course, it makes sense (Chicago being home to a proud plenty of unapologetic opinionators, much like the Queers themselves and hometown favorites Screeching Weasel), but the only other time I’d seen the Queers was along with about 50 others in the dingy Des Moines metal dive Hairy Mary’s before it closed. So having a shoulder-to-shoulder mob c

Supergroups are the best. Obviously. True, some don’t always live up to their hype (see T4 Project, Black President and whatever monstrosity the Bad Religion / Limp Bizkit / Korn / Faith No More collab will eventually become) but the proven talent that comes with bringing together established musicians often yields the greatness one would expect. Such is the case for the High Tension Wires. Composed of Marked Men, Riverboat Gamblers and Reds, the High Tension Wires play a sugary but gritty blend of garage punk, power-pop and pop-punk much like, well, Marked Men, Riverboat Gamblers and the Reds. Midnight Cashier is a punk rock dance party and a half. Laden with catchy guitar riffs and enough hooks to tow the Spanish Armada, the hip-shaking tunes stretch through 11 songs in just 22 minutes that flow seamlessly without being drowned in homogeny. Infectious numbers like “Can’t Focus” and “Old Enough to Be Home Alone” have a snotty juvenile appeal that’s somehow kissed with a hint of since

T.S.O.L. is a legendary band by any standard and nothing can change that. But what a lot of people seem to forget is that a form of the band put out a small library of mediocre-to-bad records in the 1980s and early `90s without Jack Grisham: Wham , bam , no thank you , Ma’am. So before flinging about any standard volleys of internet critique, let’s all heave a sigh of content that the name T.S.O.L. is in the right hands. And that they’re still making good music. And that they’re giving it away for free. This whole “free-music-via-corporate-sponsors” scheme that acts like Pennywise and now T.S.O.L. are experimenting with is quite the conundrum. On the one hand, it could be argued that such a move is the epitome of selling out to corporate behemoths. However, much can be said about the bands’ willingness to offer up their music to fans free of charge, especially given this time of uncertainty in the music industry. And in T.S.O.L.’s case, Hurley has been a cornerstone of Southern Califor

Death to Our Enemies sounds a lot like the name of a hardcore band, and well, they kind of are. But they don’t sound a lot like a hardcore band. If a loose-fitting label must be applied to this Minneapolis three-piece, it’s gotta be some amalgamation of blues-tinged garage rock with dashes of monotone indie and occasional hardcore howls. Still, this blend is difficult to categorize, and even harder to imagine what kind of influences add up to such a concoction. Luckily their MySpace page does all the work, and in retrospect paints a fairly accurate picture of what a DTOE virgin would hear upon first listen: “The Stooges, T. Rex, Sonic Youth, Television, The Pixies, Hammerhead, The Melvins, Seawhores, Led Zeppelin, Muddy Waters & Black Sabbath.” ”Secret Handshake” gets things going with a bit of a Rocket from the Crypt (sans brass) heavy garage rock approach, with vocals that would sound more at home in Tennessee than the upper Midwest. “Karate Bike” follows with an infectious guita

For ten years, Cursive has been faced with the impossible task of simultaneously pleasing two distinct but similarly stubborn and equally elitist subsets of music fandom. Hipsters want Cursive to be their favorite indie rock band and punks want Cursive to be their favorite post-hardcore band. A brief glance at the revision history of the band’s Wikipedia entry showcases the futile struggle for genre primacy and, incidentally, the absurdity of it all. But with Mama, I’m Swollen , Cursive rises to the challenge and delivers a graceful tightrope rock of equal parts mellow indie and punk angst. Following on the heels of the genre-bending, circus-folk of 2006’s Happy Hollow , Mama, I’m Swollen is both a return to form and refinement of an ostensibly Cursive sound if ever one was able to be pinned down. The manifestly conceptual Happy Hollow has given way to a more free-form flow of storytelling, blurring the lines between the narrative and the annotations, merging the minutia and momentou

In Jersey, they’re called guidos. In Boston, they’re chuckleheads. Southern California just calls them bros. Wherever you are or whatever you do, there’s an overabundance of intolerably obnoxious, pinheaded macho males that effectively ruin some prime sector of society. In Minneapolis we have a very special pejorative amalgamation for the types of people we don’t want crowding our concerts and bars with their noxious colognes and juvenile mentalities and they are unaffectionately known exclusively as dude-bros. And in 2009, the dude-bros have put down their O.A.R. CDs, put on their green polos and found a whole new reason to get drunk: the Dropkick Murphys. The sad reality is that the Dropkick Murphys haven’t even really done anything to acquire these distasteful fans. Sure, they gained a few more mainstream fans signing with the Warner-backed Independent Label Group, but not a whole lot more than were already jumping on the bandwagon at the end of their Hellcat stint. As a touring ban

Female-fronted fury! This Chorus of One release splits two sharp Swedish punk acts that both happen to feature ladies at the helm, and both spit fiery blasts of short, fast and loud ferocity. Kamikatze, according to Last.fm, is a “three piece Punkband from Sweden. They please serious Punkrock like it shoud be: loud, hard and fast.” Pretty good description, but unlike mine, they forgot “short.” And with the average song clocking in at around a minute and a half, Kamikatze wastes no time pounding out rapid-fire rhythms and obnoxious screeching shouts. While the music mostly melds together in a shrill heap of sonic aggression, Kamikatze’s strength is in their wit, with amusing songs like “Crap Is the Shit” and their droll take on the classic anarchist rallying cry with “No Dogs No Masters.” The 49-second “I Love Television” pummels forth with a near-blast beat tempo and gang chorus, while their cover of the Zodiac Killers' “Kamikatze Attack” with all its indecipherable yelps is the cl