Monk’s latest choice sees these Philadelphia reggaa/ska punks taking heavy inspiration from the Epitaph and Fat Wreck bands of the 90s and early 2000s as they embark on an #EgoTrip, which in turn will lead us into a #LifeOfSin with the release of their latest album at the end of next month:
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Our latest audio-visual treat sees the Finnish symphonic metal veterans sharing the second single from their upcoming tenth studio album;
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The folk-punk poet/troubadour expounds how we are #WildInOurWays as he returns with his first new music in a decade, and the first taster of an album that has been nearly as long in the making.
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Music has two personalities, a duality frequently characterized by quiet introspection and power-driven proclamation. If you were a photographer, it would be light and dark. If you were a painter, it would be black and white. For a musician, it’s acoustic and electric. Veteran songwriter Michael McDermott has chosen to explore this duopoly via the simultaneous release of a diptych of two albums reflecting what he himself describes as a balancing act between his multiple musical personalities. It’s certainly not (as the PR blurb espouses) an innovative approach – Ricky Warwick, for one, did it to stunning effect back in 2016 with his magnificent ‘When Patsy Cline Was Crazy (And Guy Mitchell Sang The Blues)’/’Hearts On Trees’ double set – but it is an opportunity for an artist to present two compatible but different sides to his talent in a way which is complementary and homogenous but at the same time lets each stand alone and be considered as two sides of the same time.
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Terms such as “legacy” and “tribute” are terms often bandied about in rock ‘n’ roll circles, and often for all the wrong reasons, often employed to either, in the terms of the former, denigrate a band who were “big back in the day” and made their career out of living on their past glories without contributing something new to the pantheon, the latter relating to imitation artists riding (albeit sometimes more coherently) on the coat-tails of someone infinitely more famous (but not necessarily more talented) in order to eek out a meagre living… It is very rarely that both words could be applied to, or used in the context of, a debut album by an unknown band, but such is the case when it comes to this particular release. And most definitely not in any defamatory, denigrating or insulting way, as Monk shall now elaborate…
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