// Category Archive for: Post-Punk

Music Review: Peeling, Rats In Paradise

By Tim Murr

Singer/guitarist Annabelle Lee (ex-Mexican Slang) describes Peeling’s debut EP, Rats In Paradise, as being “about shedding past traumas, transcending pain and finding a way out,” she says. “It’s too easy to become disillusioned; I want to create catharsis and release.” Well, congratulations on succeeding. Rats In Paradise is a wonderfully realized collection. The four tracks, “Magic Eye,” “Leisure Life,” “In The Sun,” and “Wet Nurse” feel very similar to Las Vegas Story-era Gun Club. Even Lee’s vocals remind me of Jeffery Lee Pierce at his most reserved.
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Music Review: The Black Black, Adjusted I

By Tim Murr

When the song “Meticulous” exploded from my speakers, I said “Shit!” and stopped the song, turned the volume up, backed the track up to the beginning, and let it fly. Because, shit, you gotta play something like this loud! The Black Black debuted in 2014 with their LP Boogie Nights. Now they’ve returned with a fantastic EP that will blow your doors off.
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Music Review: Various Artists, Close To The Noise Floor

By Less Lee Moore

Cherry Red Records has done it again. This time, their triumph comes in the form of Close to the Noise Floor, a four-disc set which gives music junkies a taste of the “quiet electronic revolution that took place across the UK in the late 1970s and early 1980s.” The contents are staggeringly impressive and endlessly fascinating, with each disc flawlessly sequenced and boasting its own unique essence.

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Concert Review: Odonis Odonis At Velvet Underground

By Less Lee Moore

Post Plague Record Release Show
June 24, 2016
Toronto, ON

At last year’s NXNE, Odonis Odonis played a show with A Place To Bury Strangers and Iceage and despite both of those bands having huge reputations of being incredible live, the Toronto trio more than held their own. This past Friday’s show was even better. The band has an impressive light show to accompany their newer material and this time, they weren’t plagued with the technical issues that threatened to overpower last year’s Opera House performance. In fact, they almost literally blew me away. But more on that in a minute.

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Music Review: Vallens, Consent

By Less Lee Moore

After several years paying her dues in various Toronto bands, Robyn Phillips was visited by a vision. Adopting the name of Isabella Rossellini’s character from Blue Velvet, Phillips began writing songs informed by this persona, eventually gathering other musicians to complete a full band. Vallens’ first album Consent is out today and it reveals that Phillips’ commitment paid off: it’s a stunning debut.

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Music Review: Bloody Knives, I Will Cut Your Heart Out For This

By Less Lee Moore

I heard a voice, a whisper in the dark
And I followed it until I couldn’t see anything anymore.
–Bloody Knives, “Poison Halo”

When your band is named Bloody Knives, you’d better have the tunes to back it up. Fortunately, the Austin four-piece deliver the gory goods on their latest release, the viscerally titled I Will Cut Your Heart Out For This.

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Music Review: Odonis Odonis, Post Plague

By Less Lee Moore

Has there ever been a greater musical misnomer than “industrial”? Initially coined as a response to the music being released by Genesis P-Orridge’s Industrial Records and the phrase “industrial music for industrial people” on the first Throbbing Gristle album (at least according to Wikipedia), it’s become a catch-all for any dissonant music that uses drum machines. What is great about drum machines, though, is that they provide such a perfectly sterile template for compelling melodies, the kind that you can either thrash or dance to.

While Odonis Odonis’s latest album, Post Plague, was inspired by industrial bands like Nitzer Ebb and Front 242, it also owes a debt to films like Ex Machina and Beyond The Black Rainbow, as well as of-the-minute ideas about transhumanism and virtual reality.

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Music Review: Dark Palms, Hoxbar Ghost Town

By Tim Murr

I have waited months to write this review. Why? Because I’ve had access to Dark Palms’ debut album, Hoxbar Ghost Town, since last year. I fell in love with this beast right away, but I couldn’t share it with anyone! No one could know the joy and energy I was devouring while waiting for it to officially drop. Now, friends, the time is yours, to join me on this journey into the weird, dark heart of this post-punk, Americana-goth adventure!

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Music Review: Grindmother, Age Of Destruction

By Tim Murr

Last year Windsor, Ontario’s Corrupt Leaders unleashed a sick grindcore EP called Grindmother, named for vocalist Rain Forest’s mom who provided guest vocals on the album. A video of this wonderful 67-year-old woman singing grind core went viral, leading the Grindmother to record a single and now her debut album, with guitars provided by her son and Tyson Apex on drums.

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Exclusive: Listen To A Stream Of Bloody Knives’ I Will Cut Your Heart Out For This

By Less Lee Moore

I Will Cut Your Heart Out For This, the latest release from Austin, TX’s brilliantly and appropriately named Bloody Knives, will be released on April 15 from Saint Marie Records. But you don’t have to wait until then to hear it, because here at Popshifter, we’ve got an exclusive album stream just for you.

And if that weren’t enough, we’ve also got track-by-track notes on the album from the band.

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