Upon second noticing, I now see that that single I just reviewed DOES in fact credit four musicians. But this CD sure doesn't! That extra guitarist is Gone With The Wind(TM), replaced by cute electronic bleeps and bloops on top of the jangly-jingly rhythm guitar from Heaven. Ooo! I just thought of a fantastic new slogan for The Fundamentalist Christians Club: "We put the 'Heave' back in 'Heaven'!" Do you like it? Did you earn it? Stop stealing it! Goddamn you! MINE!

Me. Me. Me. seems ... read more

Actually, if a man's memory can be relied upon these days, I swear that the time I saw Air Miami live in 1994, they had four members. I mean, each one of them did - even the woman! Ha! No, but we do get a little dirty here from time to time.

I mean four band members. I SWEAR they had an extra guitarist. If so, that would explain why this single clearly features both a jangly Unrest Mark E. Robinson rhythm guitar AND a cute, simplistic lead guitar playing a few notes atop. It's a terrific ... read more

The other day I went to Wikipedia to look up some info about this album, and what did I find but this introduction:

“Agnostic Front is the worst band ever formed on the face of the earth ever. Countless scientific studies have shown that prolonged exposure to the Agnostic Front vocalist reduced your brain to mush which then slowly leaks from your anus.”

Although this colorful description was removed by some Wikipedia asshole within the next half hour, it made me feel good. It made ... read more

Angolian Fromp are back and ready to PAR-DEE like Chef Boy-AR-DEE!!!!!

With the twin caveats that Vinnie Stigma seems like a nice guy and I don't want a bunch of skinheads to beat me up, I still must express disappointment in the new Agnostic Front CD. Although they've brought back the speed that was missing from Another Voice, the songs are still hampered by uneventful slow 'mosh' sections, weird vocals, and chord changes so tied to the NYHC tradition that I feel like I've heard most of them ... read more

Roger Miret's back with another voice, and unfortunately it's his dumbest yet. He sounds like a bloated, 400-pound Wendy O. Williams! As always, his intonation shoots upwards and back down with every single word out of his mouth, but this time he sounds like a two-ton man with a 45-pound tongue contributing voice-over to a talking cow cartoon. What in the hell happened to him? There's no anger or intensity in his voice at all - more than anything, he sounds like somebody MAKING FUN of Roger ... read more

Every time I hear a new album on "Epitaph," I feeeeeeear tomorrow - I'll be crying! Yes, I FEEEEEEEAR tomorrow I'll be CRYING! Awww come on, you're diggin' my King Crimson joke now, baby! Come on now! These don't pop up too often in NYHC reviews! Smoke me while ya GOT me, bab-uh!

I love hardcore punk. Let's get this straight: I LOVE HARDCORE PUNK. It's fast as hell, mean as hell and I love the guitars and shit. It is energy put down on compact disc and you are supposed to bounce up ... read more

Okay so here's what's up. The production? Still too late-'90sy clean to be hotly overangry (produced by Rancid's head generic fashion victim Lars Frederiksen), but the riffs are a lot more atypical this time around. At most, maybe two of these 17 songs could be called "anthems." The rest vacillate between ridiculously high-speed hardcore rants, pogo-speed punk rock tunes extremely reminiscent of the Ramones and metallic midtempo songs along the lines of what the band did on One Voice. ... read more

Six years later, the formerly brutal NYHC quart/quintet ends up on Epitaph and voila! They sound just like Bad Religion! Roger has his original shout back and sounds really cool, but the production is so slick and late-'90s hardcore generic that it's impossible for any rage or intensity to slice through. The band is playing fast hardcore punk again, but the riffs seems a lot more obvious and anthemic this time around. That's not always bad - there are several catchy as hell tunes ... read more

Their most metallic release by a wide shot of Constitutional temperance! The mix is tough and generic, like later MOD or oh I don't know later Testament or later oh I don't know or oh. Tough, heavy, firm, boisterous - the *pristine* heavy metal mix of the '90s. And the songs are MUCH slower than before. It's not only mixed like Sepultura's Chaos AD - it's as SLOW as that album too! Or at least a lot of it is. It's not sludge metal - it's midtempo metal, occasionally veering into punk speed but ... read more

The singing is overwith, homles! Some tough skinhead must've pointed at Roger's vocalizing sissitude and laughed in a manly fashion because on this one he's...umm. How to describe. Well it's not barking or screaming. Or even yelling. Quite honestly he's not even raising his voice. He's just using a really stupid vocal inflection throughout the whole album. Everything sounds like an "o". So you can't understand a goddamned second of the seconds. Rather than try to describe exactly how ... read more

A crossover record, but more than that. This is not a mere case of making hardcore songs longer and adding more slow parts. In fact, most of the songs still hover around 2 minutes long and are fast as the wind. The real difference between this record and Victim In Spain is that on this one, Agnostic Front and their producer have put an extremely accessible slant onto the normally facepoundingly brutal NYHC subgenre. The mix is heavy - like heavy metal! But fast and bouncy, like hardcore punk! ... read more

Eleven minutes of classic, crushing hardcore.

Hardcore PORNOGRAPHY, that is!!!! When you see Roger Miret's 11-inch "microphone" slither into the hot pink slit of Vinnie Stigma's guitar, you'll squirt mountains of etc.

Now that all the Christians have left the room, let's talk seriously about this LP. The mix is BRUTAL -- no Agnostic Front release has come close since. They sound SO FUCKING MEAN. Really low guitar drone fuzz (unlike the high-pitched somesuch favored by Minor Threat ... read more

A decade later, Mike Palm gathers a couple of replacement fellows and picks up right where This Is The Voice left off. If you read that review, you know exactly what this album sounds like! Only difference is that there are a few too many tunes on here that are obvious (and bland). In fap, during "Broken Dreams" tonight, my fiancee was astonished to discover that I was playing Agent Orange. Aghast, she exclaimed, "REALLY??? It sounds like friggin' Dave Matthews!" So keep ... read more

2010 UPDATE: I ORIGINALLY GAVE THIS A "10"!? GOOD GOD! IT HAS THE WORST PRODUCTION I'VE EVER HEARD IN MY LIFE! OTHERWISE IT'S JUST LIKE THE FIRST RECORD BUT WITH A FEW HAPPIER SONGS. HERE'S MY ORIGINAL REVIEW THOUGH:

This, to me, is the epitome of what "pop punk" should be. No snotty Juanny Rotten-wannabe vocals. No tinny Archers of Loaf guitars. No overdone sugary Vaselines doodoo log. But full, bold guitar tones, lovely singing that's not too high but not too low, bold ... read more

Hang on just a second - my dog is engaged in a furious argument with a drink coaster.

Okay, we're clear. Agent Orange is from Southern California. Their first record shows a real desire to be a serious "melodic" (as in '60s melody - Byrds, Beatles, Samhain) (but not Samhain, necessarily) band while using the guitar tones, production and upbeat tempos of early 80s So.Cal. punk rock. The combination works and there are several great guitar riffs, but only if you're willing to ignore ... read more

Every time a new Aerosmith album comes out (and the same goes for the Rolling Stones), the band members go on and on in the press about how they were unhappy with the previous (commercially unsuccessful) record because the record companies were forcing them to do certain things and the record didn't really represent what the band wanted to do, etc etc etc shut the fuck up. So Joe and Steve are doing it again. Talking about how there were too many outside writers and producers involved with Get ... read more

"I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" is a hit single by American rock band Aerosmith. It was taken from the Armageddon soundtrack and debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the first and only song by a rock band to debut at #1 [1]. The song stayed at number one for four weeks from September 5 to September 26, 1998. It also introduced Aerosmith to a whole new generation of fans. The song rose steadily up the charts in the UK, peaking at number four in November 1998.
That's ... read more

Holy Poledo! This isn't bad at all!!! Not at all!!! Now now, it's still not classic Aerosmith, but it actually sounds like they're trying to write memorable riffs again, rather than relying on mindless grooves and cheesy ballads (though there are a few of those here, of course, which is why it only gets a 6). The album as a whole doesn't have a uniform "sound," which probably has something to do with the fact that they worked with about a hundred million different songwriters. ... read more

I kinda like this one now! Really heavy guitars, some catchy stupid tunes. Even the ballads aren't that bad -- though the lyrics to "Livin' On The Edge" are pretty dumb. Original grade: 3 - Here's my bitter old review.

Okay, here's the situation. My parents left town on a week's vacation and they left the keys to the brand new Porsche. Would they mind? Ummm, well, of course not! I'll just take it for a little spin, and maybe show it off to a couple of friends! Yeah, I'll just cruise ... read more

Okay, never mind. A few years after Perm Vac, Aerosmith put out this sleazy girly pop album that pissed me off so much, it drove me away from the band for a good several years. In recent years, good decent folk kept telling me, "Oh, you GOTTA give Pump a chance! It's really good!" So finally I broke down and picked up the CD for four dollars, and discovered that I can no longer trust good decent folk because these songs are lame. They aren't bombastic rock and roll like on that Perm ... read more