Month: May 2017

Musical Mystery Magic

Hey there everyone! Welcome to a Musical Mystery Magic night, tonight we present X-Vivo, The Holiday Electric, and Society Of Beggars.

In case some of you haven't heard of X-Vivo, they're a post industrial metal band from Berlin, Germany. "The Eyes of the Wolves Awake", taken from their new album Petrichor, can be best described as Slipknot meets Evanescence. The vocals in this song are both heavy and beautifully eerie; it's so strong in emotions that it will chill your bones. 

The Holidy Electric is a rock band from NYC. They recently released their new EP called Now, here is the title track which combines a mixture of classic rock and an 80's heavy metal song feel to it.

Society Of Beggars is an alternative rock band from Melbourne, Australia. "Old Haunts" is the single from their recent release An EP Called Night. The lyrics in the song sound like they are talking about wanting to restart something better and sticking together into a more hopeful life.  The song itself sound longing and adventurous. The video alone is about, "a group of ordinary people who are thrown together to share a ride in the backseat of a strange car, throughout the journey learning more about one another and discovering what truly counts in the end." Check it out for yourselves!

Thanks for listening!

Papa Roach – Crooked Teeth

You’ve gotta hand it to Papa Roach: their career could have peaked with “Last Resort” and taken them on the nostalgia tour route with also-rans like Adema and Motograter, but instead they’ve been doing a damned good job staying relevant into 2017 without fully crossing over to any one trend. They’ve always been a hard rock band at their core, but the Vacaville veterans gradually gathered other elements to their sound over the years – whether it be the nu-metal of Infest and lovehatetragedy, to their catchier arena rock of The Paramour Sessions, to flirting with electronica on The Connection. So it is that with new platter Crooked Teeth, Papa Roach continues their experimentation with poppier elements heard on more recent fare, while at the same time doing a nice throwback to the muscular angst that saw them playing Ozzfest stages early in their career.

And for the most part, it works. The harder songs of the bunch (like “Break the Fall” and “American Dreams”) are smartly arranged, knowing when to crank up the intensity and when to dial it back. The title track in particular is a wild-eyed stomper that nails the punk energy the band had on Infest and shows why Jacoby Shaddix has one of the most powerful voices in hard rock. Indeed, his voice is what carries most of Crooked Teeth’s songs – including lead single “Help” which could have sounded “eh” in another band’s hands – over the goal line into “catchy and memorable” territory.

There are some missteps, though. The straight-up pop song “Born For Greatness”, co-written with Jason Evigan (Jason Derulo, Maroon 5), puts much of the band in the background in favor of handclaps and stuttering hi-hats, offering little else in replay value. And “Sunrise Trailer Park”, with its acoustic verses and drunk driving storyline, tries too hard to be a moody hip hop tune and instead comes off wayyy dated. Everlast did this sort of thing better, and even a guest verse by Machine Gun Kelly doesn’t save it.

That being said, the second biggest standout on this album besides the title track is, surprisingly, another pop song. The sparse ballad “Periscope” sees Shaddix scale back his pipes to a restrained croon for a duet with Skylar Gray that is more effective than one would think. I don’t imagine it being played live anytime soon, but if Papa Roach were ever looking for a potential crossover radio hit, this could do it for them.

If you didn’t like Papa Roach before, or if you just wrote them off after “Last Resort” got played to death back in the day, Crooked Teeth won’t do much to change your mind. For current fans, or those willing to give it a chance, the album offers plenty of hard rocking moments while throwing in a couple of curveballs. Maybe the cramped Hollywood studio where they recorded this album helped the looser, “let’s do what we want” vibe, but overall the guys do sound like they’re having the most fun they’ve had in years. For the most part, it’s a fun ride for the listener, too.

DREAMCAR Live at St. Andrews Hall, Detroit, MI

Members of No Doubt and AFI took the stage at St. Andrews Hall on Friday, May 26th as DREAMCAR, a group comprising of Tony Kanal, Adrian Young, and Tom Dumont of No Doubt and AFI frontman Davey Havok.

Within the first few seconds of "After I Confessed", the entire crowd began to dance. Despite only being half-full, the room was filled to the brim with energy and excitement. 

Vocalist Davey Havok is known for his captivating stage presence, but his theatrical charm as he powered through each song was unparalelled. I found myself smiling and laughing as he engaged with multiple members of the audience in relation to each song.

Bassist Tony Kanal and guitarist Tom Dumont have an easily visible rapport onstage. Occasionally visiting each other to play face to face, several times through the set I was delighted to see them smiling and having fun, clearly happy with what they were doing. It was relieving to see the band enjoying themselves, as opposed to the "I'm so serious" attitude that seems to accompany a lot of bands these days. 

Drummer Adrian Young was on his game. Behind a red kit adorned with sparkles, he managed to play with effortless precision and a variety of facial expressions, which are often the best part of watching drummers do what they do best.

Overall, this show was a lot of fun. There was no roughness in the crowd, everybody was smiling and dancing, the band were on point, and even the venue staff seemed to be having a good time. If you didn't catch them on this past tour, you truly missed out. 

See the photos of DREAMCAR from RMP here.

Keep Flying Make Their Mark with New EP

A year after the release of their debut EP Follow Your Nightmares, New Jersey/Pennsylvania/New York pop punk band Keep Flying released their second EP, Walkabout, on May 26th.

Filled to the brim with references to film and television, this EP is unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. A refreshing reminder of the golden era of pop punk before everything was about pizza, hating your hometown, and your ex-girlfriend, Keep Flying’s unique sound is accentuated perfectly by their horn section.

Yes, you read that right. No, they’re not a ska band.

In six songs, Walkabout will guide you on an emotional journey through heartbreak, addiction, anger, recovery, and optimism.

Songs like “High Cholesterol” and “Live Together, Die Alone” visit themes of self-acceptance and optimism for the future, while songs like “Miranda” and “Jamestown” provide a juxtaposition with themes of cynicism, resentment, and frustration with the human condition. Anyone who’s been following the Menzel brothers (frontmen Henry and D.Jay) will experience a very pleasant familiarity with the fifth track, “Misbehave”.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that Walkabout blows its predecessor (Follow Your Nightmares) right out of the water. This EP delivers on every front.

With emotional and powerful lyrics, as well as strong, driving music behind them, the only disappointment with Walkabout is that is isn’t longer.

Rating: 9/10

Favourite Song: Jamestown

Favourite lyric: “I can’t imagine what it’s like to live a life so numb, so devoid of all emotion. Look at what you’ve become.”

Watch the Keep Flying video for “High Cholestrol” HERE.

Walkabout was released May 26th, and is available on all online retailers, as well as www.keepflying.band

Periphery – “Nolly” Getgood

Ahead of Periphery's biggest headline show to date at the O2 Forum in London, I had the opportunity to sit down with bassist Adam 'Nolly' Getgood for an in-depth discussion about Periphery III: Select Difficulty, music production and his recent descision to take a step back form touring with the band. Read the full interview below:

 

It’s been a year since Periphery III: Select Difficulty was released. One thing that I noticed was that unlike Juggernaut (2015), which was a high concept, very ambitious double album, this record did not have to follow this concept. Was it nice to not be constrained in this way when making the new album, being able to let individual songs stand on their own a bit more?

I think it’s always sort of a double-edged sword when there’s no defined concept that you’re working towards. If there’s an overarching story, you have something at least to think about when you write the music, and you kind of feel like you’re creating with a purpose. I think it’s difficult for any creator to have just a completely blank page in front of them and just be told like “do something awesome” …you know, it’s kind of good to have a restraint there. I think for sure the band was happy, and I was happy (laughs) not to have to construct something of that length and complexity again, and instead be able to kind of just give each song independent tweaking and really just be able to concentrate on each song individually, and get a load of different feels and sounds in there, and go back in a little bit of a way to some of the older albums which had more of a kind of playful feel to them. I think P3 did that.

 

How else did the recording process differ from Juggernaut to P3? It seems Misha [Mansoor] was more on point with the production in comparison to Juggernaut which was much more of a group effort in that regard?

I think “producing” or “production” as a term is something that is quite …it’s used as kind of a band-aid, catch-all term for a lot of things. Certainly on the very first albums …I know you didn’t ask about those but …those very first albums were very much Misha-driven as a principal songwriter. Juggernaut became far more of a group effort in terms of songwriting. Often Misha is still the kind of channel that other people’s ideas come through, and essentially, to me he’s still the kind of conduit that forms the sound of Periphery.

P3 …I don’t know, I think what really happened actually, and probably what you have in your mind is that the division of responsibility on that album musically, was more that Misha kind of oversaw the production of the songs; the arrangements, the songwriting …ensuring everything was on point there and letting me do my thing when it came to the technical exercise of recording. Physically and location-wise it was nice because we recorded the majority of the album in Misha’s apartment. I relocated to the States for a few months, and we worked in a kind of homely atmosphere. Then at the end of the process, we did the live drums, which is a strange way round of doing things, but it seems to be happening more and more in this modern day and age and I think it’s quite a good way of doing things because Matt [Halpern] had the maximum amount of time to learn the material …that’s always an issue, if the drummer has to suddenly internalise all of the songs, with all of the last minute changes that occur, and he’s the guy that has to record in the biggest ‘chunks’, you can’t really chop up drums quite so much.

We were working with programmed drums during the pre-production, and tracked the guitars to the programmed drums. We went to some effort to make these pretty close to what Matt was going to play, but being quite a spontaneous musician, Matt added a lot of cool stuff that would have taken hours of second guessing to create in a programmed world.

 

Are there any songs on Periphery III that stand out as favorites to you?

Yeah for sure. I think a song that I really like from this album is Prayer Position, which …I have to be careful because that was one that I had a bit more of a hand in writing than some of the others, but at the same time I don’t think it’s just my ego that’s dictating that to me. I think that for me, the song just has a really cool, kind of bouncy tempo …again, Misha acted as the conduit for that and made some pretty integral changes to my original ideas that changes them into some really awesome riffs , in my opinion.

I was writing this riff, the first riff of the song, and funnily enough it was happening whilst the guys were jamming out what became Lune in Misha’s living room. I didn’t have a bass rig to jam through for that and I went into the other room with this idea that I had been toying around with in the evenings when we hadn’t been recording, and laid it down …but I recorded it with a straight feel, [rather than the triplet feel that appears in the final song] which I liked, but it was a really awkward tempo and we actually kind of abandoned that idea a couple of times, kept bringing it back and couldn’t really make anything work. Misha then, as a joke as he sometimes does when he’s programming drums …not really a joke but just kind of as a hail mary on the idea, just programmed and changed the feel to a triplet, one of those things where ideas just go the other way and you end up with a completely new sound for the riff because It’s all looping in an odd place and accents are changing. We listened for a second and kind of chuckled, but then we were like “wait a minute …that’s actually really cool!” and that completely change the idea and I was really happy because I thought there was some potential in that riff, and with that change it was given a whole new lease of life and that made it stand out on the record for me, it’s kind of a stomper from beginning to end.

 

The Price Is Wrong was nominated for Grammy Award last year, which must have been pretty amazing …how did that feel?

A bit surreal, to be honest. I don’t know if I really registered the importance of it. It was really cool, but to be completely honest I think that the fact that they chose that song from the album gave me the sense that it was perhaps not necessarily on that song’s merit. I am really grateful for the nomination, it’s amazing …I’m really proud of the fact that it happened and my parents were over the moon. I think that song for us was kind of a quick punch in the face that we put at the beginning of the album, and there was so much more effort that went into other songs that I think any distinct listener would be able to pick up on. I’m sorry if I come across as unhappy, because I am super grateful, but what I’m saying is, I take that Grammy and apply it to the whole album in my head.

 

This album [P3] doesn’t have a distinct ‘opening track’ as with albums in the past. Was that a conscious decision or something that came about more naturally?

That was a really conscious decision. From the moment that The Price Is Wrong was completed as a song …because that existed as a demo since prior to Juggernaut which we just never managed to top-and-tail it correctly into the form that it now has …from the moment that was finished, we thought this needs to be the opening song on the album, because exactly that: all of the other albums had started in a more gradual, swelling kind of way, and that’s really cool but we just thought, what better way to change things up than to come out of the gate with a blast beat like that.

 

Tonight is a big night for you personally, being the first Periphery show you’ve played in a while as well as the only for this tour. How are you feeling about tonight’s show?

I’m feeling really good about it now. It’s sort of a stress actually to jump in for just one show, I have to learn the whole setlist, I have to have my rig set up. There’s a lot of unknowns, there a plenty of songs that I haven’t actually played with the band because they’ve been added to the setlist since I left …there was quite a lot of stress on that front, but now that we’ve done the soundcheck and everything’s sounding cool, and I feel stronger about the songs I feel really good about it, I think it’s going to be an awesome show …the biggest headliner that Periphery has ever played …which is why I kind of cherry picked this one! (laughs). The London shows have always been amazing and it seemed appropriate to come along and do this while [the band] are in my home country and reaching for the stars with a bigger venue that they never normally play, which looks like it’s about to sell out, too.

 

The dates without you present so far have not had a live bassist, with the band using a backing track. Do you know if this is something that is set to continue?

As far as I know it is. I can be completely candid about it, when I said that I didn’t want to continue touring I left the decision as to what would happen to the band, because ultimately it is their decision. Had they come to me and said “we really want to have somebody else on stage in your place” that would have been have been fine …obviously I would have felt sorry that that wasn’t me one some level, but at the same time I’d completely respect that wish. They wanted to try the backing track thing, especially as it takes time to ‘suss-out’ somebody that you’d want to join your touring crew and there were some dates upcoming straight away …they tried it out, and I think pretty quickly they decided that although it’s not ideal, it’s the best of the solutions that are available to them, which of course I’m happy about because nobody has taken my place on the stage (laughs). In fact, it’s me playing on the stage …I did new [live] versions of the songs and sent them to the band so they didn’t have just album tracks to use. I also think it’s a sound guy’s dream, having less instrumentalists on stage (laughs). Obviously, you hear some fans saying it’s a shave having a track and not a live musician, and I can definitely appreciate that sentiment, but I also appreciate the band’s decision that after touring for so many years, it’s a huge deal to add someone new to the fold – there’s so much mutual experience that we’ve built up as a group through touring together, the band really knows eachother emotionally and personally in incredibly deep ways, and for somebody else to come into that is a really difficult thing, with so much potential for that to go wrong and plus I think the band still values the contributions that I can make to what they do in terms of production and continuing to be involved in songwriting. For them, it’s the right decision to make.

 

Now that you have more time freed up from not touring, what do you have going on outside of Periphery?

Living life, becoming an adult! I got married during the recording of Periphery III, and that wasn’t the reason but was definitely one of the catalysts to wanting to settle down and actually experience life as a normal person. Especially with the band being based in the US and me being form the UK, a lot of what’s “down time" for the rest of the guys involves me being in the USA. For them, it’s just a quick nip out to do a quick session of something, or some songwriting, whatever …and for me that means taking time out to go to the US and live there. I was away for many months out of the yea, home for very few …it got to the point where I wanted to move on with being a ‘normal’ human being. Also, the production side has gone really well for me, and in many ways I feel like I have more of a passion for that than for other aspects of music performance and especially touring. It’s been really nice to dive into [producing] more head-on, I’ve worked with some really amazing clients which I am very grateful for and continuing to do so, I’m trying to find that work/life balance that I’ve been craving for a while.

 

I personally really love the Clear EP (2014). None of these songs have ever been played live …is there a reason for this?

I think there’s a few things going on there. One, it was kind of an experiment with every song being spearheaded by a different member of the band …because of that nature, they don’t really fit so much under …it is still a Periphery release, but it doesn’t really fit under the category of something that’s created by the ‘band’, if that makes sense. The other problem is it’s difficult to find time in the setlist to play enough material to do justice to the older things that people want to hear and the new songs. At this point to kind retroactively go back and start shining a light on those songs just means we’re taking away time that we could be playing the newest material that we’re most proud of. Those songs exist, and I’ve actually checked that out quite recently and it’s kind of funny that I’d forgotten how most of them even went, but it’s not that we hate them or anything like that …if we could play for three hours a night or something maybe we would get to playing those songs but in the time that we have it’s just hard to prioritise those ones.

 

Lots of bands nowadays seem to be doing ‘full album tours’. Especially with Juggernaut being such a solid piece thematically from beginning to end, is this something Periphery have ever been interested in?

When we wrote and put out Juggernaut, there was kind of this idea that perhaps one day that might be doable, although there’s quite a few technical hurdles to get through. Something we try to do with almost every album is to not put all the songs that are in the same key and therefore same guitar tuning next to each other. What you’d end up with would be probably needing to change guitar after every song in order to be able to play the songs in order …it would be such a mess walking off stage after every song, picking up a new guitar and coming back and doing [the next]. This plus the album length; even to just consider playing Omega in its entirety would be pretty huge. Again, we come onto the same thing like, is it worth doing that over playing the new material? Is it worth taking away and opportunity for a fan who might want to come and see Periphery and wants to see what they heard most recently in the new songs that they like – is it worth taking that ‘one visit’ away from them, you know? It’s an interesting thing, I think perhaps maybe it’s something that may be considered further into the band’s career and maybe not with juggernaut. At this point there’s so much new material and we really do believe in the latest thing that we put out.

I always thought it was crazy that Dream Theatre used to put on shows where they would play other people’s albums, like when they played Master of Puppets (Metallica) from beginning to end …that’s pretty crazy isn’t it? (laughs).

 

What led to the decision to cut Icarus Lives from the set?

The decision to cut Icarus is something that came just as I finished touring with the band. I think somebody found a way of polling fans as to what they would like to see. We kind of half expected Icarus to be pretty high on that list but it actually came out really low.

 

I think as band’s catalogues grow, they feel the need to play the ‘hits’ or fan favorites, but often times discover that they don’t necessarily need to do this to please fans. Would you agree?

Totally. I think that’s what happens. The funny thing is, really if you think about it …Icarus has got just a great main riff, and people go nuts for that …but then actually the response kind of chills out a lot for most of the rest of [the song] until the very end when that riff comes back. We should just play that riff on its own for like, 3 minutes (laughs).

 

Finally, is there anything you can tell me about future plans for/with Periphery?

There are some really cool tours coming up. In some ways I’m a little bit of an outsider to the most current plans because it’s not that necessary for me to know but just from knowing the guys and talking about what’s coming up I think there’s some really cool stuff that they’re going to be doing in the coming time. Of course, it has been over a year since we finished recording Periphery III, and while it hasn’t quite started yet, I get the feeling that we’re starting to kind of hit that point where people are interested to start writing new material again, and I think that’s quite an exciting time. Having been out of the fold for a while now I think I maybe feel a bit more inspired than I have in recent times to write some material, so I’m eager to be able to contribute to that. Also, to see what the band’s got going on, because they never fail to surprise me with the quality of their new material.

 

Periphery III: Select Difficulty is out now on Sumerian Records.

Photo Credit: Nick Budosh Photography.

Mobina Galore – Groezrock 2017

Mobina Galore, a band name that oozes of James Bond alike namedropping, but there's plenty of Mobina for everyone. Jenna and Marcia combine their talents on guitar and drum together to form a Canadian powerchord punk combo that will send listeners straight into a moshpit from the first note. So when Mobina Galore graced the Watch Out stage at Groezrock 2017, RMP Magazine just had to have a nice chat with them over a glass of wine in the searing sun.

 

Hello,

Welcome to Groezrock, first time here. How was the show?

 

Marcia : Awesome!

 

Jenna : Awesome, probably my favorite show i ever played. I was out there kind of watching people file in prettty much right on top of our first song. I was thinking to myself, allright this one is up there for one of my favorite shows. Great response, so it was cool.

 

But you're also doing a small acoustic set at the American Socks stand, what can we expect from that set?

 

Jenna : Well, who knows. We never do acoustic, it's like very rare for us to do that. We've only done it maybe twice in the past, a couple of months ago back in Canada. Now that we've like got that set over with i'm just excited to get out there, play a couple of songs and i don't know, if i fuck it up, like whatever. It's not a big deal.

 

Marcia : Little more casual, not as much pressure.

 

You've recently released your new album, Feeling Disconnected. And the album title pretty much covers the load. Songs about detachment, feeling disconnected. How did the album come to live?

 

Jenna : It was an unintentional themed album. We've had a collection of songs that we wrote over the last couple of years. With the amount of touring we've done and travelling we've done it kind of made his way into all of our songs. It came all together quite unintentionally. When we finished the album looking for a title we were looking through the lyrics. When you think about it from a different perspective you kind of remove yourself from it and find what the theme is. And it was just like feeling disconnected just kind of clicked right away. There's this theme on every song of the record.

I don't think we could write an intentional album that has a theme to it. I feel like it would be too much pressure. Some people are really good at concept albums. But i don't think that's us. Because we are together so much time, we experience the same things. We write from a different perspective and when they come together it kind of creates the same energy from both ends.

 

Feeling Disconnected was produced by John Paul Peters, who produced bands as Propagandhi and Comeback Kid. Has his touch have an influence on Feeling Disconnected?

 

Marcia :

He's incredible. As soon as you go into the studio it's basically like he's a member of the band. He is so excited about everything. He has so many ideas, but he's also like, hey what do you think about this. Next song he'll come up with something else. He's great at like harmonies and back up vocals.

 

Jenna : Just little tricks in the studio too. How to set things up. He's so miticulious. It will take us just a whole day to set up the microphones on the amp. No, take it back a little… But it works like right.

 

Marcia : He's on board and he just always takes it up to the next level.

 

Mobina Galore hails from Winnipeg, Heart Of The Continent. Home to some of my favorite artists, The Weakerthans, Propagandhi. But you have a song about Vancouver, which city has your preference?

 

Jenna : People are always like, oh, they're from Vancouver because we have a song called Vancouver. When we were writing the album we already had some songs. We've deciced we were going to spend some weeks in Vancouver and just stay there with friends and write for a couple of weeks. So we've decided to go to Vancouver. That song specificially had all the verses to it that i had written but i didn't had a chorus. We wanted to bring the chorus to this uplifting space. So Marcia ended up writing the chorus on the way to Vancouver. About that experience. It was just very relevant to Vancouver at that time. Vancouver was that place for us where we were finalising and getting tracks together for the record.

 

Marcia : People then always think that we're moving to Vancouver. But it is beautiful place that we love to hang out.

 

The European tour has been going a while now, has Europe welcomed you back on this tour?

 

Marcia : Amazing, Europe is our favorite place to tour. It's beautiful and the hospitality. We've got a bottle of wine here. It's really sunny outside, i can barely think right now. People are just like so excited about music here. They'll pass a poster on a bar wall and see Mobina Galore and be like, ok, i'm going to look that up and if i like them i'll might go to a show. Back home that's not really how, people don't pay attention to new bands in Canada and US. It's a lot harder to get your foot in the door. We just love it here. This is our fourth time touring here. We've been averaging twice a year, maybe knock it up to three.

 

You recently toured with Against Me, one of the bands you looked up to. How has it been?

 

Marcia : It was incredible. It was a total dream. They are such lovely people. We were a little bit nervous because people always say you shouldn't meet your heroes. Because they will never live up to what you think. We didn't know what to expect. It was just like from the moment we met. It was probably Laura that we met first. She just walked up into our dressing room. The whole tour we got along so well. Really inspiring to play shows with them everyday. We play before them so we better

like live up to it. It feels like they really did push us to do better.

 

 

Next to Against Me, another influence is The Distillers, is this the main influence to your vocal style or other influences you want to mention?

 

Jenna : I think that's the most difficult question to answer. Like some bands you hear them and you can take three bands that they sound like. I don't feel we have that in anyway. Vocally for sure it is where The Distillers come into place. I just wanted to be able to scream and it ended up working really well for me. Musically, instrumentally and stuff like that, i don't know. It's so hard because we both have different influences. We're powerchord punk, we don't do any fancy shit.

 

Marcia : It's hard to say because you listen to so much different music and you don't know what seeps in where. We can't pinpoint, for us anyway. We can't say that we tried to write like this person.

Or tried to make a song like this person. You just like listen to like these twenty bands on a regular basis and probably they all seep in a bit a little bit into your playing.

 

Mobina Galore is a two piece, guitar and drums and combined vocals. Is this your favorite way of playing or do you feel a certain limitation to it?

 

Marcia : It's kind of the only way. When we first started playing music together we played with a thrird person. She played keyboard, we never had a bass player. She didn't want to play anymore.

We were open to finding new people to play music with but we couldn't. Before we knew it we had written an album, and we recorded an album and it was just the two of us. Now we're like to far in it. We're comfortable with the music that we are producing and the sound we're putting out. At least in the foreseeable future we don't plan to change it. Or grow the band in that way.

 

What's next for Mobina Galore, any plans regarding tours or releases in the nearby future?

 

Jenna : after this tour we'll play Punk Rock Bowling in Las Vegas and we're playing Fest in Florida. It's kind of our first doing this bigger festival stages. We're doing a North American tour in the summer. And already planning on coming back here in like October or November. Anything we come here, we're just right away planning to came back here in the next six months.

We've been here twice a year, people want you to come back. We're giving the next couple of years 100% to touring.

Categories
Geen categorie

Metal Mondays, May 22nd, 2017

Once again, Metal Mondays is back! This week we’ve got not three, not four, but six tracks performed by five different artists, including Avelion, Home 276/423, and Lions Among Us.

To kick things off, we’ve got Home 276/423 and their track “Song of Indignity”. The hardcore act from North Carolina has a heavy, in your face sound that fits in well with East Coast hardcore.

Pittsburgh based post-hardcore band Lions Among Us have submitted “Dreamcatcher”, a year old song that still packs a punch.

Now, two songs from the Italian band Avelion. “Burst Inside” and “Fading Out” are both from their album Illusion of Transparency.


If you like funk, metal, and rap, you’ll like The Altobeelays and their song, “Unkle Furious”.

Until the next Metal Mondays!

Live – Periphery London 20/5/2017

Tonight is a special night for Periphery. London’s own O2 Forum plays host to the largest headline date in the history of the band. A two and a half thousand strong sold out crowd are patiently awaiting this evening’s set, which constitutes one of only two UK dates for the prog metallers in 2017.

To start off the night, Italy’s own Destrange warms up the crowd successfully with a myriad of prog riffs combined with a high energy, hardcore punk flair. The atmosphere continues to be built upon by The Contortionist in direct support, who manage to create a slightly more subdued mood in comparison to Destrange, but not without the inclusion of the essential metal flavour that the crowd demands. Vocalist Mike Lessard spends the majority of the band’s set in the shadows of the stage, reminiscent of Tool’s Maynard, allowing the sonic aspects of the show to take center stage, with the sextet remaining mostly backlit throughout. Their varied set runs the gamut between gentle and melodic through to heavy guitar riffs and screams. Overall, both openers have tonight in amalgamation demonstrated some of the aspects of tonight’s headliner that fans hold most dear; a line-up that has clearly been meticulously prepared for tonight’s audience.

After what seems like an eternity of anticipation, the main event is here. Periphery take that stage to a roaring crowd, soaring straight into 2015’s Juggernaut prelude track A Black Minute. What follows is a heavy hitting compilation of songs which afford a high representation of new material from the band’s latest full length effort Periphery III: Select Difficulty. This combined with an incredible blazing light show provides a visual as well as aural spectacle that is definitely not lost on the ravenous, ever moving crowd. The set is peppered with older favorites spanning the entire discography, and major crowd pleasers such as The Bad Thing and Masamune go down as well as ever. Periphery even treated the assembly of Londoners to a cover of Memento, from guitarists Misha Mansoor and Mark Holcombe’s side project Haunted Shores.

Tonight is clearly an emotional evening, not just for those in the horde of metal fans in front of the stage, but for those on the stage too. At many points during the set, frontman Spencer Sotelo thanks the crowd for being part of the “greatest show in the history of Periphery”, and is perceptively overwhelmed by the turn out and participation of the fans singing every lyric, often above the noise of the band’s multiple guitars and heavy drums. It is clear that tonight’s show is perhaps even more significant for bassist Nolly Getgood, who takes the stage with his bandmates tonight for one night only, and for the first time in over a year, having chosen to take a step back from touring. Towards the end of the show, Getgood even takes to center mic to thank everyone for the “best show he has ever played”. This is followed by a powerful rendition of Periphery III’s closing track Lune, which acts as a catharsis for any energy unspent from tonight’s audience, and ends the night with a thunderous chant of the song’s final “whoa…” refrain.

Overall, this is a night that will not soon be forgotten both by fans and the band alike, and I fell that it is only a matter of time before Periphery return to UK shores to even bigger crowds and even bigger venues.

Jeff Rosenstock Groezrock 2017

Jeff Rosenstock must be one of the busiest working men in punk rock. When not destroying stages as Death Rosenstock, Jeff is probably in the studio producing his friends records. So when Jeff finally found his ticket to Groezrock we at RMP decided to invite him and exchange some thoughts on his first Groezrock perfomance.

Hello,

First time playing Groezrock and it happens to be the start of your Euro tour today. Siked?

 

Yeah, really excited. I wanted to play Groezrock for a long time. I'm glad that we finally snuck our way in here. I'm really excited to play, to go on tour. We've been in Europe for like two or three days just kind of getting over jetlag, hanging out, getting to seeing our buddies all play yesterday. Siked to be finally get to it and shred.

 

And you just released a new song this week, Dramamine, what's the story behind it?

 

Dramamine, i might even have it on my right now. It's like a motion sickness pill that you take when you fly. Also it knocks you the fuck out and helps you sleep. I wrote that song during our world tour last year. When we were flying from America to Australia, and then to Europe and then back to America and flying to California to record. I don't know, i don't feel that i usually write songs like that. Whatever song i write i want to try and follow it through and make it a song. We are about to get on a ferry from Leeds to Ireland and i was kind of thinking about how fucking sick it was goint to be to have a glass of wine, smoke some weed, drop a Dramamine, sleep for a few hours.

 

Your latest album Worry, where the tour is revolving around, was released end of last year.

How was it welcomed by fans and listeners?

 

Really good, i don't know. I made a bunch of records at this point. I kind of really never know if some one is going to like it or not. You go in and try to make your best record at that moment and you hope that people like it. This one really seem to hit people. Once Trump got elected it resonated with people in a different way. For some reason a whole lot of other punk bands were not talking about his shit. Like police brutality, gentrification, this kind of targeted advertising view, like life that we basically live in. Something is being marketed to you. You kind of lose control of your own thought. Which if feel is a big thing to the kind of situation we are in the States right now. Not a lot of people were talking about it.

 

Jeff, you're known for being a busy man. Next to your own release you also helped produce a ton of bands. The new The Smith Street Bands' releases, More Scared of You Than Your are of Me, was produced by you. A careerpath you feel like broadening?

 

I feel like i'm in it right now. It's cool, last year especially, when i was not on tour i was producing a record. It was wild. I like doing it. I hope i get to do it more.

If it's up to me i like doing live in a room, like the Smith Street Band, records that's the four them in a room. There are all playing live in a room to tape. I like to do it analog but i also record in my appartment. I don't have a tape recorder in my appartment. Just play with energy. Live always has that energy, i don't autotune shit, i don't pitch correct shit. I don't go through that constant gridding

of anything. I feel like i'm often trying to convince people that i'm with, no, your band is good, you don't need that shit. Don't do that just because other bands are doing that. Let's keep your voice, your voice. It would be stupid to take that away. That live energy that makes it special.

 

With Worry, you released a 20 min docu on youtube where we get in inside look into the recording of the new album. Quit the movie it turned out to be. Scary dreams and people getting run over by cars. Was that the plan to shoot?

 

My friend who made that movie, his name is JD Brown. We've been friends for a really long time, he's an actor in horror movies, and he's a writer. I saw the documentary that Modern Baseball did before their record came out. I just thought it was really cool. They got the movie announcer voice to narrate it. I was smoking weed one night and was talking to Side One and was like what if our movie was like a horror movie. It wasn't scripted. We would shoot stuff during after hours and we did a lot of voice overs afterwards. A lot of people who saw it on Youtube and commented just saw half of it, so sick to see you guys in the studio…

 

You're quite political, or at least not afraid to voice your choice. Given the fact that last year Donald Trump came to power, what would you like to share about the current state of the world?

 

Personally, i'm not very big on talking about it on social media. I think it's really important to talk to people. I think the voice and platform that Twitter and Facebook is giving everybody is good but also is reducing our actual human communication. Like every one on the left thinks that every one who voted for Trump is a racist and every body on the right thinks that every one who voted for Hillary is like a socialist. We probably all agree on a lot of stuff. But we don't talk any more. Because of that we have like this totalitarian facscist fucking asshole in charge. I think the people who voted for Trump didn't see that coming. Whatever. I'm waiting for us to kind of unite and do something to make it better. I think it's important to talk to people. Especially when i fell like kind of ass backwards into this platform that i have. To like talk about it occasionally. About how sexual assault happens at show all the fucking times. Women go to shows and get groped. We are conditioned to think that shit is ok.

I'm glad that a lot of people on our side are talking about it, we have to take action and get together and agree on this shit that we find real and that we have to fix.

 

And to end the interview, what's in store for Jeff Rosenstock for the nearby future?

 

Got an Antartico Vespuggi record coming out, i think in 2018. Some more touring, i'm writing music for a cartoon that is going to be on Cartoon Network. Hopefully at some point i'll just be able to smoke weed and chill out. Watch some basketball, play some synthesizers, some guitar and chill ou

AJJ Groezrock 2017

AJJ, or as their full name used to be, Andrew Jackson Jihad, have been a full on band since 2004 with a vast number of releases to show it. 2017 has led them to the Groezrock festival where they will be performing for the first time on the Watch Out Stage. RMP sat down with vocalist Sean Bonnette to catch up on their latest release The Bible 2 and future endeavours for the revamped AJJ.

Welcome to Groezrock, your first, any thoughts?

 

From the little that i walked around so far, there's a killer vibe. Everyone is so friendly.

I'm really excited to see The Deftones, that's my main band here.

 

Your latest album The Bible 2 has been released a few months ago, how has the response been to the new songs?

 

It's been really good. It's funny, because everytime we make a new album we always seek to achieve something a little bit different. In doing that we always end up pissing up a few of our hardcore fans. But then also those same fans seem to like our previous album more than they did. It's just wonderfull progress.

 

So basically you're always one album behind?

 

Yeah, that's how i feel it's supposed to be. Along with that it has two of my favorite songs that i have ever written. Two songs that i'm most proud of in the bands history.

 

Which are those songs?

 

My Brain Is A Human Body and Small Red Boy.

 

You've made a nicely choreographed video for one of the songs, Goodbye oh Goodbye, that caught some attention on the internet. Did the viral sensation atract a new crowd at shows?

 

I don't know if we seen a new crowd coming to the shows. A lot of people definitely heard of our band for the first time from that video. Time will have to tell whether that video brought more people to our shows or just drilled a bunch of OK Go fans. I love that video so much.

 

It was really great, especially the after takes.

 

A funny thing about that, it kind of mirrors reality. We are actually just as pleased about how that video turned out as we are in that little part afterwards. If you get us a few drinks we just start of getting bloating about how well it turned out. It becomes a third layer to the video.

 

The band has evolved quite a bit over the years, recently the name change from Andrew Jackson Jihad to the abbreviation AJJ. How do you feel about the current course of the band?

 

The current album has been my favorite one so far i believe. I think for the next one we are probably are going to make something more spacious. If that makes sense. I feel like that with The Bible 2 we reached a point of maximalism. I feel kind of a like turning to the other direction, something more minimal. Something like quiter, more space, less instruments.

 

Next to AJJ you and Ben have your respective solo projects, . Ben released music as Wiccan Babysitter recently.

 

I actually got to play bass on some of those Wiccan Babysitter songs, which was cool returning a favor.

 

You recorded some amazing covers ranging from Slayer to Bowie. Any plans on pursuing the solo path more?

 

I have been recording a lot of electronic music, just on my own with no real plans yet to release it.

I wouldn't be surprised if that ended up seeing the light of day at some point. I'm not sure if i would make it a solo project or if i would just call it an AJJ song.. That's kind of the cool thing about our band, we don't have any rules dictating what are band is supposed to sound like. We will always be doing covers. These covers are really fun. It's cool to learn new chords and new devices on how to write a song.

 

AJJ has been placed in the folkpunk box so many times, although the new album shows some new aspects to the band?

 

It used to really bother me, i feel like now i kind of don't care. It makes sense for people to have a genre to relate to other people with. There's no real bad stigma that is see in folkpunk these days that i care to avoid. I do find it kind of silly when we have some many songs in so many genres.

 

You've covered songs from Neutral Milk Hotel to Stone Temple Pilots and of course your AV Club performance with underground hits. Any songs you haven't covered you wanted to do or even ones you wouldn't play?

 

Nothing that i currently that i have like ambitions toward. Although i downloaded a tablature tab, you can set the chords and it will start scrolling. You can just read and play, it's just like karaoke with guitar. When i get home after this tour i'm going to start learning a bunch of Beatles song. There are some evident tricks worth stealing.

 

What would be your favorite Beatles song?

 

Oh, the other Beatles won't like it very much but Maxwells Silver Hammer, the Paul McCartney song of Abbey Road. I've played through it a few times and it's really fun to play, it has a really cool chord in it.

 

Your merchgame has been strong since the beginning. From sweatpants to snugglie blankets and now glow in the dark shirts and coozies.

 

We have a coozie design that is designed as a parody on the Monster energy drink logo. We have a member of the band, he plays cello and he also helps oversee a lot of the merch. Mark Glick is a huge fan of Monster Energy Drink. He has a video blog were he reviews different Monster drinks. So he's pretty excited to be at this festival.

 

My favorite piece is still the salad glove, could you explain this wonderfull state of the art novelty to those we haven't heard of it yet?

 

Ben and i worked at a coffeeshop and we had gloves when we used to prepare the food. One day we just starting eating salad with our hands and it turned out to be a really good invention. For a long time it was just an inside joke that we had. It mades it way into that song, like a reference, that like no one understood untill we made the infomercial. Then we released the album. And then we released them for mass consumption. Lately we made download codes out of the Salad Gloves.

 

How are they selling?

 

We are millionaires now!

 

Sean, you once said that a constant them in your work is the act of striving and trying to do better. You even said the Jihad in the band name was a representation of that. Could you elaborate on that?

 

Sure, the purpose of that name, in it's very infancy, was that it was something could be interpreted in a bunch of different ways We wanted people to draw their own conclusion of that name. We weren't super attached it to it, one way or another. We decided to change it with like current political climate and realising that Muslims in America and in Western society at large have a really bad reputation and we were like capitalising on that very complicated word that they use. It didn't make me feel very good knowing that. Kind of in the spirit of that word, strive to be better, we decide to leave that word alone. At the same time i'm not going to be an asshole to anyone wearing an old shirt of ours. I don't really care to engage in any huge debates with anyone over it. It's just kind of a personal preference.

 

In the songs and artwork religion seems to be an influence, from Catholism to the Devil, the duality in life seems to be a recurring theme in your songs?

 

It's just such a rich theme to create art from. I'm fascinated by the nature of believe, by the idea of spiritual beings. I'll say that my favorite kind of movie is a horror movie where the devil impregnates a woman and an evil baby is born. I like the idea of a spiritual war being fought that humans aren't aware of. I feel like i kind of derailed and not making much sense any more.

 

Like in the song Small Red Boy?

 

Totally, i guess that's kind of what i'm getting at. Angels and devils are very fascinating to me.

I love angels, i think i got that from my grandmother. My grandmother believes stronghearted in

guardian angels and instilled that idea in me ever since i was a very small boy.

 

So what's next for AJJ?

 

We are hoping to go to Australia in September. I've been writing songs and making small recordings on my own and with friends. I think we will try to release a mini album at some point this year. Maybe work on even smaller releases, put out more singles and trying to become a more profilic band again. That's something i would like to do.