February 2021
TITLE | ARTIST | LABEL | FORMAT | DATE |
---|---|---|---|---|
For Those That Wish To Exist [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Summer Sky Wave LP] | Architects | EPITAPH | Vinyl | 2021-02-26 |
Life is Not A Lesson [LP] | Glitterer | ANTI | Vinyl | 2021-02-26 |
Amorphous [LP] | Icon For Hire | ICON FOR HIRE | Vinyl | 2021-02-19 |
Earth Is A Black Hole [Crystal Clear LP] | Teenage Wrist | EPITAPH | Vinyl | 2021-02-12 |
The Highlights | The Weeknd | XO/Republic | CD | 2021-02-05 |
Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! [LP] | Aaron Lee Tasjan | NEW WEST RECORDS | Vinyl | 2021-03-26 |
For Those That Wish To Exist [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Summer Sky Wave LP]
ARCHITECTS are back with their ninth studio album“For Those That Wish To Exist”. The band have confirmed their ascent to the very upper echelons of British heavy music. Few bands, of this modern era or any other, can match the quintet’s ability to blend uncompromising heavi-ness with razor-sharp melodic musicianship.
A versatile metal group based out of Brighton, England, Architects employ a lethal combination of breakdown-heavy guitars, melodic vocals and symphonic-ambient post-metal. That sonic delivery is conducted from a platform built on veganism and environmental activism.
Life is Not a Lesson is Glitterer’s second full-length album, featuring Ned Russin, bassist/vocalist of seminal hardcore-punk band Title Fight. This time Ned has produced the record himself, notwithstanding some recording and performance help from his twin brother, Ben, and some other friends, as well as mixing and mastering by Arthur Rizk (Code Orange, Power Trip). It may surprise you to hear that, irrespective of worldly doom and gloom, the new songs are even catchier and bigger-sounding than those from his 2019 release, Looking Through the Shades. With roomier drums and more electric-guitars-per-square-inch than ever, Life is Not a Lesson has a way of evoking an alternate-universe version of Guided By Voices, one with a hardcore-punk background. Life is Not a Lesson proves to be a rigorous reckoning with the life of the mind at a time when there’s not much life outside the mind.
Since forming in 2007, Icon For Hire (composed of singer Ariel Bloomer and guitarist Shawn Jump) have quietly amassed a legion of followers. Currently sitting at over half a million monthly listeners on Spotify, Icon For Hire are the sleeping giants of the modern rock scene, and are now ready to step into the forefront with new album ‘Amorphous’.
Icon For Hire’s sound is one that effortlessly blends heavy riffs, elements of electronic production and soaring vocal lines into a powerful & bold sonic explosion.However, at the heart of Icon For Hire’s music is a message of positivity, self-love and personal empowerment from the painfully relatable and rousing lyrics of Ariel.
For Amorphous, the band worked with Grammy Nominated engineer Romesh Dodangoda (known for his previous work producing the last Bring Me The Horizon album as well as acts such as Don Broco, Busted, and Kids in Glass Houses).
The album has been completely funded by fans through Kickstarter. This success was achieved thanks to the band’s highly dedicated ICON Army fanbase that support them on Patreon and have been there for the band though thick, thin, litigation, addiction and more.
Having overcome both personal and professional adversity, Icon For Hire are living proof that you can take control of your life—and that’s perhaps the greatest success anyone can hope to accomplish.
The world may seem like a pretty strange place right now, but if nothing else that’s forced us into realizing that being human is a shared experience. That sentiment lies at the core of Earth Is A Black Hole, the second full-length from the Los Angeles rock act Teenage Wrist.
The album also marks the group’s first release as a duo, with guitarist Marshall Gallagher stepping up as frontman, and longtime drummer Anthony Salazar backing him up in spectacular fashion. Gallagher explains. “I wanted to keep this band going and we didn’t know exactly what that would look like, so I wrote two songs and demoed them myself to see if everyone was still on board.” Those songs turned out to be the jangly power ballad “Yellowbelly” and spacey rocker “Wear U Down”—and with that, a new era of Teenage Wrist was born.
The artistic liberation of this lineup change, coupled with the past two years the band spent touring alongside genre-smashing acts such as Thrice, allowed Teenage Wrist to expand on the shoegazing sound that helped establish them as one of the most exciting rock bands around today. From lush, guitar-driven songs like “High Again” to the atmospheric ambience of “Stella” and syncopated aggression of “Earth Is A Black Hole,“—most evidently on the swirling anthem “Silverspoon,“— Earth Is A Black Hole sees the band shifting their songwriting focus to a more modern sound that showcases the limitless potential of the band.
On February 5th, XO/Republic will be releasing a career spanning album from The Weeknd pulling together a collection of his biggest songs from the last ten years.
Every now and then an artist comes along who makes you remember why you started listening to albums in the first place: Aaron Lee Tasjan is that artist. With his off-center charm and restless creative dazzle, he makes music with conviction that has its roots in rock’s murky past, armed with an arsenal of songs that spill over with humor, intelligence, irony, and at times prophecy.He updates the idea of androgyny but dispels the emotional and social ambiguity with lyrics that reflect his own geographic and artistic wanderings.
Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! is 11 songs. The man who began the album, is not the same man who completed it, transformed both by the experiences that inspired the songs and crafting them. This is not anxious music for anxious times, but rather music as an antidote for anxious times. It is the sound of the future arriving.