Most Popular
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Sexual Healing
Sad stories and otherwise freaky tales from Florida's last sexual surrogate
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To Hug a Porcupine
Three little boys set out to destroy the parents who loved them. This isn't how adoption is supposed to work.
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Cookie Monsters
It's the old diet doc versus the marketing gun in the great war of the tasty appetite suppressors
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Smoked Tuna in the Can
He was the first big bust of the War on Drugs. That and two bits won't get you a cup of coffee.
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Shark Huggers
Tourists can't wait to get next to them – even if they are eating machines
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Recent Articles
Recent Articles by Jason Ferguson
National Features >
Broward-Palm Beach New Times
For Florida's sole remaining sex surrogate, love is a many splintered thing.
By Michael J. Mooney
City Pages
It's not just giant companies cashing in on America's defense industry.
By Jeff Severns Guntzel
The Pitch
How a throwaway idea at the Barkley ad agency became the "Sonic Guys."
By Justin Kendall
Houston Press
A diner's guide to Texas's oldest Mexican restaurants.
By Robb Walsh
Pelican
Published on April 24, 2008
The dense, crushing expansiveness of Pelican's four-song debut EP was an incisive slice through heavy metal's bloated corpse, with its pinnacle track — the appropriately titled "Mammoth" — being little more than a plunging meditation on a single bruising riff. Following that release with 2003's Australasia album, Pelican proved they could be as imaginative as they could be punishing, delivering six epic instrumental numbers, three of which broke the ten-minute mark. Since then, though, something has happened. The no-vocals-just-riffs scene has expanded considerably, with many bands far smarter and more elegant than Pelican stepping in to give the band a run for their money in the "epic metal instrumental" stakes. Thus, we find our boys living in Los Angeles (instead of their hometown Chicago), touring with Circa Survive and Thrice (rather than, say, Red Sparowes) and delivering albums of five-minute songs (that still don't manage to be as powerful as the brief "Mammoth"). Hanging around post-hardcore bands may mean that Pelican is still the smartest bunch of kids in the room, but they're also starting to look a bit like the guy who graduated high school a few years ago and still likes hitting on 10th-grade girls.