Thirty years since their initial explorations happened upon a sound that would change a generation’s expectations of music irrevocably, The Smiths’ legacy continues to delight their longtime devotees and surprise new generations. With that in mind, Eoghan Lyng takes us on a brief crash-course through The Smiths history Twenty-five years ago, one of the…
UK trio Muse were always going to be a band in danger of veering over the line of taste into self-parody, and their mainstream appeal becoming commercial domination has done them no favours lately, either. But no-one could have foreseen this, reckons Music Editor and longtime Muse fan Mike McGrath-Bryan. In 2010, Muse confirmed…
As usual (Marketer’s Day) provided us with some amazing acts like Fat Boy Slim and Ellie Goulding as well as some lesser known acts. Meadhbh Crowley caught up with the Dublin band The Shoos’ lead singer Tex, who’s just spent the past 5 years recording their new album “Panic Slowly”, an amazing album and proof…
A trip to the record shop may seem quaint to casual music consumers today, especially youngsters now weaned on downloads, but, as Music Ed. Mike McGrath-Bryan finds, a ramble to PLUGD reveals a revered journey of discovery that now, more than ever, is necessary to appreciate and understand music, regardless of taste… A long-standing…
It’s been forty years since the release of perhaps the defining moment in the defining metal band’s discography. Long the subject of debate among Black Sabbath fans, Volume Four has lasted the test of time, and is an important milestone in the genre’s evolution. Eoghan Lyng take’s a look at why it matters. For an…
From the opening feedback through to the final jagged notes, Wound Upon Wound’s crushing debut clocks in at just over 50 minutes of uncompromising bleakness and brutality. All the necessary ingredients are on hand for a solid dose of black/doom metal: guttural vocals with a range from the near subsonic to a harrowing wail, a…
Mike McGrath-Bryan looks at Irish metal’s latest offering Irish metal is brilliant. You know this. Oftentimes, however, it can get lost in its obsession with tradition and orthodoxy, and every so often a release comes along that takes that oeuvre and gives it a good shake. Dublin black-metal outfit (don’t call them punks!) Sodb (pronounced…
In the latest in a series of formulaic ramblings about local music, Music Editor Mike McGrath-Bryan takes a look both at what we have to be proud of in our city’s independent music community, and the challenges that face it in the immediate future. Involvement in the local music scene lends one the opportunity to…