Remove
Article
LATEST ARTICLES - PAGE 22

Interview: Right On, Kid

Right On, Kid
Adam Grundy

Recently I was able to catch up with the band Right On, Kid for an interview about their new album, Life is a Movie, as well as a music video (that feels like a movie) for the song “Stay Close.” In this feature, I asked thew band about how their touring regimen has been going, the band’s core influences, as well as what the rest of the year looks like for the band. Be sure to check out their new music video for “Stay Close” linked in this article.

Read More “Right On, Kid”

Review: PLEXXAGLASS – Where Is Your God, Knowing What You Know Now?

Adam Grundy

Welcome to the world of Plexxaglass! This brooding collection of songs found on the singer’s debut is filled with raw emotion, great vocals, and killer production as well. Where is Your God, Knowing What You Know Now? is simply put an artistic statement to the boldest degree, as the nonbinary vocalist shines all over the LP. Led by the first song, “Lilith,” produced by Mike Shinoda, it becomes crystal clear that this artist is here for the long haul. The ultra-talented vocalist sways from one song to the next with veteran poise not normally seen this early on in a career.

Read More “PLEXXAGLASS – Where Is Your God, Knowing What You Know Now?”

Interview: Dan Ozzi

Dan Ozzi
Adam Grundy

A couple of weeks ago, I was able to schedule a Zoom interview with the extremely busy, Dan Ozzi. In this interview, we discussed his unique writing process for his new book called Sellout, some unique stories of his time working in the music industry, advice he would give to other writers, as well as his process for preparing for an interview. Be sure to check out Sellout, which is available for purchase here.

Read More “Dan Ozzi”

Interview: Keep It A Secret

Keep it a Secret
Adam Grundy

Recently I was able to catch up with the band Keep It A Secret before they released their latest single, “Middle With My Thumbs Up.” In this Zoom interview, I asked each of the band members about their core influences, their dream show on what bands they think they would be best to open for, as well as some of the back story on how they became the band they are today. The band has been steadily releasing new material, and is considering an EP at some point soon.

Read More “Keep It A Secret”
Remove

Review: Incubus – Morning View

Adam Grundy

It’s amazing what a little visual perspective can do for a band. While many of the 90’s Alt-Rock and nu-metal scene were sledging away in the studio, Incubus decided to create an environment most conducive to the music they wanted to create. The band decided to live in a large, spacious house in Malibu, California. This would be the last record made with bassist Alex “Dirk” Katunich, and he described in interviews that the band, “tried to do that for at least the writing portion of Make Yourself, but we didn’t have enough clout at the time. The idea was to not feel as if you were driving [somewhere] to work on a record. You could just get up and it was a natural extension of your day.” Vocalist Brandon Boyd shared that sentiment in other ways by saying, “every time we’d pull into the street we had the view of the ocean and Pacific Coast Highway. I got a big creative boner every time I’d show up to the house.” And from that, Incubus would give birth to the record now known as Morning View. If Make Yourself was an introduction to the sound that the band would start to round out their repertoire for their career, Morning View was them becoming true artists in every sense of the word.

Read More “Incubus – Morning View”

Interview: Keith Buckley of Every Time I Die

Drew Beringer

It’s been five long years but the new gods of Buffalo are set to return with their most complete and powerful album yet. Radical – Every Time I Die’s ninth full-length – features 16 of the band’s most personal, vulnerable, and heaviest songs yet with a couple of new wrinkles and twists thrown in for good measure. Vocalist Keith Buckley has been to hell and back and has lived to tell it, as the veteran frontman took time out of his busy schedule to cut it up with me about sitting on the record during a pandemic, his newfound writing style, and Malignant.

Read More “Keith Buckley of Every Time I Die”

Review: Sweep Echo – Moments Before The Wind

Adam Grundy

The New Jersey based emo band called Sweep Echo is really onto something great on Moments Before the Wind, an EP that was just released and is filled with stylistic, brooding hooks and that sound that is inescapably familiar for those who grew up during the emo boom of the 00’s. Comprised of guitarist/vocalist Dan Holden, guitarist Eddie Flynn, bassist Vince Mannino, and drummer Ty Perle, Sweep Echo does a great job of putting the best parts of the genre into a three song collection filled with purpose.

Read More “Sweep Echo – Moments Before The Wind”

Review: Smallpools – Life in a Simulation

Adam Grundy

After countless stand-alone singles, EPs, and relentless touring, Smallpools have finally returned with their proper sophomore release called Life in a Simulation. The pop-rock band consisting of vocalist/keyboardist Sean Scanlon, drummer Beau Kuther, and guitarist/producer Mike Kamerman released their debut, Lovetap! in 2015, which seems like forever in regards to following up a popular debut. The marketing strategy for Life in a Simulation was fairly unique in that many of the singles released from the record slowly trickled out over the last year or so, including a great collaboration with Morgxn on the song “Slowdown.” While I feel the best may still be to come for Smallpools, this album definitely feels like a rebirth and a celebration of the uncertainty to the days that lie ahead.

Read More “Smallpools – Life in a Simulation”

Review: Counting Crows – Recovering the Satellites

Craig Manning

Few trends scream “nineties” more loudly than the “rebellion against fame” album. Nirvana made In Utero. Pearl Jam made Vitalogy. R.E.M. made Monster. Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine a rock band ever becoming famous enough in the mainstream to then justify the creation of a “rebellion against fame” album. For awhile there, though, making this type of album—usually a louder, more abrasive follow-up to a cleaner, more tasteful, massively successful predecessor—was a rock ‘n’ roll rite of passage. Few bands ever steered into the skid quite as much as Counting Crows did on Recovering the Satellites.

It’s difficult, from the vantage point of 2021’s pop music status quo, to describe how absolutely massive Counting Crows were in the mid-90s. The band’s debut, 1993’s August & Everything After, is certified seven-times platinum in the United States and has sold well north of 10 million copies worldwide. The flagship single, “Mr. Jones,” made it to number 2 on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 chart. Ironically, “Mr. Jones” was a song about wanting to be famous; to be “big, big stars.” “When I look at the television I wanna see me/Staring right back at me,” frontman Adam Duritz sang in the song.

Be careful what you wish for, Adam.

Read More “Counting Crows – Recovering the Satellites”
Remove

Interview: Michael Kamerman of Smallpools

Smallpools
Adam Grundy

Recently I was able to connect with Michael Kamerman of the pop rock band Smallpools before he and his bandmates embarked on a comprehensive U.S. headlining tour. In this interview, I asked Michael about the songwriting process evolution with his band, the material found in Smallpools sophomore record Life in a Simulation, as well as what’s he’s most looking forward to with getting back on the road. Life in a Simulation will be released this Friday on all of your favorite streaming services.

Read More “Michael Kamerman of Smallpools”

Review: We Are Scientists – Huffy

Adam Grundy

After recently celebrating the anniversary of their debut album, With Love & Squalor, with a comprehensive and successful tour of the states before the pandemic hit, We Are Scientists have returned with their seventh studio album. Huffy sounds like a band refreshed, re-focused, and re-energized for the future that lays in front of them. Filled with lush pop hooks and brilliant harmonies, We Are Scientists are doing their best to use this momentum to continue to stick around in the limelight. If this band can capitalize on this great-sounding record, it may be time for more of us to put our trust back into scientists.

Read More “We Are Scientists – Huffy”

Hey, Hi, How’s Your Weekend Going?

Chorus.fm Logo
Jason Tate

I try not to be too heavy-handed when it comes to pitching our upgrade membership program. I try and keep the big sell to once a year, and as we walk into October, it’s that time again.

As I wrote about last year, things are bizarre in the online space. Ad revenue has still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. The place for a small independent, primarily text-based music website and community is extremely not in the mainstream of where the internet is these days. But, tens of thousands of people still come and read our homepage daily, and thousands of people hang out and talk in our forums as well. And, like so many of you, I still have a passion for music that bursts from my seams.

So, if you’d like to see us continue to do what we do, please consider becoming a supporting member of the website. Doing so gives you awesome perks like a dark theme for the website and removes all of the advertisements. I built the website to be extremely fast to load, and without ads, it’s almost unbelievable how speedy it feels. I know many of you use an ad-blocker, and I could be far more hostile to those that have them installed to incentivize either uninstalling them or becoming a member, but I don’t. But if you do use an ad-blocker, please consider just signing up for our smallest package. For pennies a day, you can get a better experience on the website and can be absolved of any ad-blocking guilt because without the ads and the supporting members, we simply could not exist.

There are three packages, all of them have the same perks, and you can choose what tier fits with you. The truth is, I’m bad at selling myself but built the kind of system I wish more online businesses had. I think we have a great core product, and we have an easy way to remove all ads and help keep us online. That’s really the entire pitch.

As always, thank you for reading. In a world dominated by YouTube or hot-take chasing SubStack personalities, it’s often hard to know where we fit into the landscape. But every week, I see how many people still check out our little corner of the internet. And every week, someone tells me they’ve discovered a new band they love because we wrote about them. And every week, I laugh at a joke posted somewhere in our community. So, I remain happy we’re still online, and if you feel the same, please consider becoming a member.

Thank you.

Review: Noah Gundersen – A Pillar of Salt

Craig Manning

Sometimes you can lose something that is still right there in front of you. A city you called home; a person who once felt as close to you as the wind on your face; a chapter of your life that still seems fresh in your memory, even if it’s long gone. These are the people and places and things that seem to form the beating heart of Noah Gundersen’s sublime fifth album, called A Pillar of Salt. It’s an album about bright little lost things; about flickers of memory so vivid that they seem like they’re happening now; of recollections or fragments of dreams that hurt like a dagger in your side because they remind you how much things have changed. Gundersen has always been good at conveying that type of loss: Of writing songs about lost loves that feel like cigarette smoke in your chest, or of capturing the very rhythm of autumn in his words and music. But it’s possible he’s never assembled a set of songs as stunningly beautiful and as disarmingly visceral as the 11 tracks that make up A Pillar of Salt. It’s an album that blindsides you, and that might just leave you gasping for air. I have not been able to go more than 24 hours without listening to it since I first heard it three weeks ago.

Read More “Noah Gundersen – A Pillar of Salt”

Review: Dave Grohl – The Storyteller

Dave Grohl - The Storyteller
Adam Grundy

Dave Grohl is a fucking legend. That’s not hyperbole. He literally has made some of the most recognizable rock songs in my generation, and still continues to crank out memorable tracks, whether it be with Foo Fighters, Them Crooked Vultures, guest spotting with Queens of the Stone Age, or releasing an opus of instrumental bliss under his own name, called Play. New to the stage is Dave Grohl the author, who has crafted an equally brilliant memoir entitled The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music. What you may not know about Mr. Grohl is his ability to convey such a wide range of emotions in his writing. From the heartbreaking loss of close friends in his life, to the exuberant highs of getting married and having three daughters, all mixed in with his unique ability to write about his time in music with such fervor and passion for being a part of music history. I was not planning to read this memoir in one sitting from cover to cover, but that’s exactly what happened. And much like the stories outlined beautifully in The Storyteller, everything packs purpose, and lessons are learned along the way that makes the journey more important than the end or the start.

Read More “Dave Grohl – The Storyteller”
Remove

Review: New Found Glory – Radiosurgery

Adam Grundy

Coming off of the moderate success of their sixth studio album, Not Without A Fight, the veteran pop-punk rockers chose trusted producer Neal Avron to oversee these sessions that would become Radiosurgery. New Found Glory released this album under Epitaph Records and would be their last studio album with their disgraced, original guitarist. Radiosurgery, for whatever reason, seems to get unfair treatment when comparing it to other NFG albums in their discography. While most wrote it off as standard fodder from the Florida pop-punk band, there really are some true gems on this album that is a satisfying listening experience from start to finish. The album received generally positive reviews from music critics, but only sold under 11,000 copies on the Billboard 200 charts (opening at #35). Radiosurgery would eventually peak at #26 on the Billboard 200 charts, and still contains many set staples in NFG’s live performances due to its upbeat nature.

Read More “New Found Glory – Radiosurgery”
Remove