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Lust In Space is an addicting new addition to Gwar’s ever expanding library of albums. Adding both to their old antics, charm and humor as well as improving their music as a whole, Lust In Space takes their metal into several new galaxies of mind blowing astonishment.

The Good : Continues the titular adventures of Gwar, vastly improved style of metal, good for a laugh; a good combination of raunchiness and depravity rolled into one, some songs are pretty addicting, great story/lyrics, some great riffs to be heard, displays some unique qualities not found in most other bands, notable songs include Metal Metal Land, Damnation Under God, and Lust In Space

The Bad: Some songs feel more spoken than sung, skipped tracks here and there, got bored at points, couldn’t get into a couple songs, music didn’t seem to mix well with vocals at points, songs feel either extremely well or poorly done i.e. no gray line, better listened to live in concert to get full effect

Gwar whose fictional biography is way too long to get into and spans over eleven studio albums, two EP’s, and two live albums. There’s a lot of history behind Gwar, and all of it fascinating and mainly comedic at the same time. For all intentional purposes for those who have not yet had the pleasure of being introduced to Gwar, let’s just say that they are a couple of interplanetary Gods who have been sentenced to life on Earth. They love to eat, drink, kill, rock and have sex, just like any other God out there and it serves as a main focal point for many of their songs and live performances.

Lust In Space continues the story where Beyond Hell left off where the band tries now to leave their prison that is the planet Earth and venture off into space where they shall once again resume their adventures. Many things end up hindering their escape from Earth including an impending attack by Cardinal Syn. They seek help from Zog who turns out to be useless in helping Gwar but in the end everything works out and they finally leave Earth to pursue greater things promising to stop back on Earth for tours. This is what I love about Gwar, they’re a band that takes their comedic styling to a whole new level by adding a new story to each of their albums that continues through to the next all the while keeping things fresh and memorable.

The album starts with an amazing intro song that prepares you for what’s to come later on, explaining Gwar’s current situation and what they strive for in doing by the end of the album. This intro song aka “Lust In Space” is also definitely one of the more notable songs on the album, it’s a very melodramatic yet oh so very addicting tune that feels something like a mix between Iron Maiden and Opeth. It makes for an amazing opener and pulls you right into listening in further to the rest that is in store.

Their music has also vastly improved over previous years especially if you compare this album with some of their earlier works. There is a definite change in everything from how they’ve changed up some of the pacing and timing all the way to certain lyrical content most notably if you take a song from this album such as “Metal Metal Land” and compare it to one of their earliest songs “I Hate Love Songs”. There have been a couple changes but it’s good to see the band getting back into the thrash metal scene. It’s a good fit for them and hopefully they stick with it in the long run since it’s a proven formula that seems to have worked with this album and a couple of their last albums to date.

What hasn’t really changed over all these years is their style of humor, it’s still as raunchy and taboo as ever hitting on everything from sexual taboo, to drinking, killing, and everything else in between. There’s never really a dull moment when it comes to Gwar, especially when seen live in concert. Their live performances take things to epic proportions. It’s like no other live performance you’ve ever seen, all I can say is that you have to go see it to actually believe it.

Where I just said that things never really get dull when it comes to Gwar, well that’s only half true concerning this album. There were just some songs I just couldn’t get into what so ever where it got to the point where I was listening through the album a couple times just skipping through to the tracks that I actually did like. Take for example “Where Is Zog?” it’s actually a pretty well done song after you get past the intro but just listening to the first twenty five seconds and hearing the same three words over and over again being droned on just didn’t cut it for me and I would almost immediately skip tracks.

Another thing that bothered me was that some songs felt more spoken than sung and felt monotonous at certain points. When sung the music just seemed to flow and was nothing but exciting and heart pounding. As soon as a track would start off spoken and kept like that for a good minute or so, it just felt mediocre and a total bore to be heard. In my opinion I found that most songs on the album were either really well done or really poorly done with no fine gray lining in between. There were even points on some tracks where the music and vocals didn’t really seem to mix and sync that well and would feel totally off and would ruin that certain track for myself.

For the most part though, the good definitely overshadows the bad. With notable tracks like “Metal Metal Land” and “Damnation Under God” it becomes really hard to truly hate this album. Lust In Space is an album with not only a good sense of humor but also rocks out to its fullest and for that I commend it. With another milestone surpassed by Gwar and now leading into their 25th anniversary, Lust In Space has proven to be one of their best works in their 25 years of thrashing, killing, drinking and the likes. Only time will tell where their next adventure will lead them, but knowing these guys it’s going to be out of this world.

7.6/10

Damnation Under God by Gwar
Lust In Space by Gwar
Metal Metal Land by Gwar

Welcome to the island of misfit ideas. Welcome to a land dominated by the id and the ego. This is Puscifer. Deep within the recesses of Maynard James Keenan’s mind lives a world that just does not fit his other projects. What is Puscifer? The opportune question should be how do you describe it? It’s best understood as you blast the music on a car stereo driving on a desert road. Its best felt at a time when you just couldn’t care less about anyone but yourself and with this EP iteration: “C” is for (Please Insert Sophomoric Genitalia Reference HERE), Keenan ups the vibe of his inner meme.

The first single released on the album entitled “The Mission (M is for Milla mix)” is an extremely smooth collaboration between Keenan and Milla Jovovich. The beat remains smooth and clean throughout with the echoing vocals “whatta you know?” The standout track from this EP by far is “Polar Bear”. The emotion and vibe you get while listening just gives off the feeling of nefariousness and treachery. This fits well in line with the entire ballsy feel of Puscifer’s music. The two tracks live from Club Nokia come from the first album “V is for Vagina” Like most of their live songs; they sound completely fresh and different. Unfortunately the audio can’t reproduce the amazing caricatures and cabaret of their live show. If you like the sound of the inner workings of an interesting mind, give this album a shot.

MP3:

The Mission (M Is for Milla Mix)

Buy at:

iTunes

More info:

Puscifer.com / Myspace

Girls, a band out of San Francisco, California is a band that benefitted from a significant Pitchfork review with a 9.1 score out of 10. That’s put them in top 5 album of the year company. That score alone did induce me to check out the album but of course I’m doing an album review almost two months after the fact.

Much has been talked about with Christopher Owen’s childhood which involved the Children of God cult or namely called The Family International. While it was an interesting read (as much as I feel bad for the guy)… he’s probably enjoying life right now as an indie rock star. Their Toronto show is currently sold out (playing November 10th)

From a musical perspective, I don’t think it’s a 9.1 but that’s just me however there are some decent pop elements with Owen’s complaints and honesty. I will say there’s a lot to like and while I can see why other critics are digging it, at the same time I feel like I have different measurements. It’s no way fantastic, OMG best of the year (The XX too) but it has a real nice quality to it. It leaves me in a position not necessarily wanting more but when I just take things at face value, it’s hard to deny that Girls is good.

Maybe you’ll like them more then me, maybe not. I don’t really have to much to say either way. Comparisons to the Beach Boys do hold in some instances, it almost seems like Girls are blatantly trying to be them in a fun way at times. Other times, they are their own band. No particular sound you could peg them to and I guess that’s what some people like. I have a hard time myself digging through the album fully from top to bottom. Only because they try different things and the start is very different from the end.

Rating: 4 out of 5
Still a solid album. I’m not on their bandwagon but I guess it’s okay if you are.

Lust For Life by Girls
Laura by Girls

I think this is a first for me. I have heard, and seen, many, many, many different musical instruments in performance but this may be the first time I’ve heard a musical saw being used. Will Hanson uses it liberally in this collection of nine, um, unique (?) songs. I’m hesitant to say unique because I’m sure somewhere someone else has written a song about a serial killer who dismembers his female victims in an attempt to create the perfect girlfriend (Girlfriend Materials) but I can’t think of one off hand. Hanson can only be called one-of-a-kind, a singer/songwriter who sounds like he would be more suited to writing songs for Marilyn Manson if Manson was a folk singer. That being said, it’s really hard to pigeon-hole Hanson into neat little categories, I’ve read him described as a Goth/folk/horror/indie songwriter but I don’t think that’s fair. I mean, I don’t think Goth is a term I would ever use to describe these songs. They have dark themes, at least some do, but the arrangements aren’t dark, in fact songs like This New World, We Don’t Live In Sitcoms, Black Lungs or the instrumental Home have more in common with Death Cab For Cutie, or traditional folk than with anything from the Goth world.

The album opener, Home, is steeped in traditional folk with what can only be described as his signature sound of the musical saw and glockenspiel filling the background. It is both poignant and eerie, the saw adding an almost theremin sounding echo juxtaposed with the innocence and almost childlike quality of the glockenspiel. Watching You Fade starts off sweetly enough with an accordion introducing the lyrics, “Forgotten what you look like, I’ve forgotten how you sound” but don’t let this sweet sorrow fool you because by the end of the song he’s ranting “That group that you call friends, yeah, and I hate them with my life, my hate for them transcends (can’t hear the next word), so hurry give me a knife”. The aforementioned, Girlfriend Materials, isn’t as macabre as you would think, it really is a love song to his reassembled amore, Phoebe (“Phoebe, do you hear me, Phoebe, do you hear me call?”). “Timeball” reminded me, somewhat, of the acoustic version of “Polly” by Nirvana although I don’t remember hearing Kurt Cobain singing about “a life that you once knew as 20 tons of goo”. And the final song, Black Lungs is a soothing night-cap to the scary movie that is this album, or so you would think, but Hanson doesn’t let you off the hook that easy. Even though it is like a lullaby, the lyrics deal with the break-up of his relationship and the freedom he feels. “…so leave now, to your house, and think of, what you’ve lost, not much, to speak of, I’m (back from), of trapness, now I’m breathing”.

I really liked this CD, it’s been getting a lot of play by all family members. I like the way Hanson uses the musical saw and glockenspiel and even harmonica to set an eerie atmosphere that carries throughout the album, linking the songs into a cohesive B-horror movie whole. It’s nice to have an album where the flow from song to song is consistent and almost seamless. A lot of albums now-a-days just seem to jump from single to single with a bunch of filler in between. These songs are all tied together and work individually as well as a whole. And even though the subject matter is more suited to the Gothic Archies than to Bob Dylan, it’s nice to hear traditional folk reworked in untraditional ways. And, really, how can you not like a glockenspiel? I mean, really. The only complaint I have is that, at times, Hanson’s accent makes it difficult to understand some words, that and the fact that the orchestration sometimes gets in the way. Otherwise, this is a really good, solid album.

You can find Will Hanson on MySpace, Last.FM, iTunes, or you can buy selected tracks from Indiestore.

Will Hanson – Girlfriend Materials
Will Hanson – Black Lungs
Will Hanson – We Don’t Live In Sitcoms

I’m tired of hearing about shit that “sounds like Panda Bear” too, which is what makes New Zealand’s Signer such a damned impressive find. I wouldn’t even necessarily say that Signer sounds that much like Panda Bear, but I can understand why it would make sense to use Noah Lennox as a reference point for Signer’s music. However, though presumably employing similar means, Signer uses them to a very different – and to me, much more enjoyable – end.

When someone uses the word “lush” to describe music, there is the connotation of the organic, the lushness that accompanies a sweeping vista of verdant, virgin forest. This is not Signer. The music is extremely colorful, colorful like melted down Skittles smeared across the innards of a computer motherboard still operating, blinking lights shooting vaguely forth beneath the thinly-coated areas. Many musicians attempt to mimic the “living and breathing” idiom of natural symbols – Next We Bring You The Fire plays like the similarly romanticized Artificial Intelligence attempting to cybernetically emulate living and breathing, and is bathed in the disconnectedness of a computer wishing it could feel. The sounds are beautiful and utterly unique – the soundscapes are hypnotic in the way that Tron’s computer environments must have been to moviegoers in the 1980s. Much like the way in which our society becomes continually more integrated with technology, the music’s pixelated beauty fully absorbs you, each trip through its wireframe landscapes offering new surprises.

Next We Bring You The Fire is available on vinyl and as a digital download from Signer’s label, Carpark, also home to Dan Deacon and Keith Fullerton Whitman.

Signer MySpace
Carpark Records

+Kicks and Kicks by Signer
We Should Touch Teeth by Signer

“I don’t remember you looking any better, but then again I don’t remember you.”

On the list of musical artists able to change people’s lives, John Mayer is number one. From Room for Squares to Where the Light Is, John Mayer has stolen my entire soul. Lyrically, he is smart, and philosophical. Skill wise, he is beast mode at guitar. Musically, he can make your bad days awesome and your awesome days awesomer. Before the release of his new album, Battle Studies, John Mayer has released his new single, “Who Says.”

Automatically, I hear a hint of “Stop This Train” in the background. And surprisingly, the song begins with a declaration of his right to get stoned. Not a subject choice I would have expected, or feel necessary. Although some of his audience may indeed get stoned, other less controversial and more relatable topics can be used to declare his ability to do whatever he pleases. Redemption, however, is slightly gained with Mayer’s explanations of the locations of his long nights and the people he meets. It’s quite the touching verse actually. However, the background beat remains repetitive, and the lyrics too persistent.

“Who Says” is a song I’m glad can be a single, so I won’t over-anticipate the soon-to-be-released Battle Studies. Hopefully it’s not my already intense bias for John Mayer’s music that makes me deny that this song is an accurate representation of the album to come.

John Mayer – Who Says
John Mayer – Stop This Train
John Mayer – 3 x 5

Note from the editor Allan Cheng: I’m not a big John Mayer fan. In fact I do want take his guitar and smash it over his head. But I digress, he does have a decent voice that I find boring but he does seem appealing to the opposite sex. John Mayer clearly doesn’t care what I think.