There is something about a cold snap that brings out the positive vibes in South Floridians. When the heat relents, the area seems to share in a unison sigh of relief that brings out the best in locals. The weather, in conjunction with its inherent good vibes, makes the perfect…
Better Than: This Billy Joel is an American institution. For many, Joel’s music is passed down through generations like a father’s advice on delivering a left hook or grandma’s silverware. In South Florida — also known as the balmy refuge favored by droves of self-exiled former New Yorkers and New…
Spend enough time tracing modern music to its roots and you will undoubtedly find yourself at a blues crossroads. In the same way that science can trace the evolution of every pup from yapping yorkies to massive great danes to the bloodline of wolves, most modern, Western music has a…
We here at New Times think you should get an early start on your New Year’s resolutions. Take the Gorilla Biscuits approach and start today! We’ll show you how. Our first resolution (after shaking this nasty cough-syrup addiction we developed over the fall) is to stop hanging out at the…
Last Friday night, the Talent Farm of Pembroke Pines hosted a celebration of the new guard of thrash metal. A virulent display of chugging guitars, screaming vocals, and hectic mosh that served as much as a barometer of the strength of South Florida’s own metal and hardcore scene as it…
In our first look at the top metal releases of 2013, we checked out oddities from rock-infused sludge mongers to groundbreaking shoegazing black metal. We enjoyed a comforting reminder that Motörhead will always be Motörhead, and weighed down our souls with the sonic violence of Nails and Exhumed. If 2013’s…
Every graduating class of South Florida’s hardcore-punk community has provided at least a band or two that manages to break into the consciousness of the national hardcore scene. Broward-based hardcore group Losin’ It was one such act. It has flown South Florida’s flag on a national scale in recent years,…
Was 2013 a banner year for heavy metal? Not exactly. Relative to the incredible bounty 2012 yielded — in terms of high caliber and high profile heavy releases — 2013 was quiet and produced a small crop of remarkable headbangers that rise above the din of mediocrity. While the year…
The holiday season gets a little hectic for everyone. Maybe you’ve got people visiting, or you’re traveling to see family and friends. Perhaps you’re utterly alone in this world and have to spend time lamenting your absolute and unending aloneness. Or it’s possible you work in retail, and are so…
As Miami’s reigning lords of volume, Holly Hunt spent most of 2013 bludgeoning, crushing, and rearranging the molecules of people and places at home and across the country. The band, comprising guitarist/fuzz-wrangler Gavin Perry and drummer/human-sledgehammer Beatriz Monteavaro, has had its sound analyzed and extolled by plenty of high-profile metal…
Johnny Marr Culture Room, Fort Lauderdale Tuesday, November 26, 2013 Better than: Whatever you’ll be doing on that night when Morrissey cancels his show because he has a tummy ache. It is a rare air indeed that has filled the lungs of Mr. Johnny Marr over the course of an…
As the rest of the country copes with increasingly frigid temperatures and the threats of a nor’easter, we’re here in South Florida enjoying the heat. Coupled with a nice breeze, our winter weather allows us to potentially enjoy Thanksgiving meals by poolside (jealous?). South Florida’s lack of seasonal variance is…
The excess that characterized the 1980s has since been decried, extolled, and examined ad nauseam. The musical landscape that developed during that decade was one of the most compelling in history, not necessarily based on the content that flowed through the mainstream (which was unique in its own right) but…
The excess that characterized the 1980s has since been, decried, extolled, and examined ad nauseam. The musical landscape that developed during that decade was one of the most compelling in history, not necessarily based on the content that flowed through the mainstream (which was unique in its own right), but…
Better than: A Van Halen reunion with Diamond Dave failing to sing his own parts and Eddie’s son playing bass. No one is having a better time than Sammy Hagar. Period. The singer-songwriter, guitarist, alcohol tycoon, good-guy-to-know has managed to turn his career of late into an excuse for a…
All right, we get it: Van Hagar was not Van Halen, nor will the band’s work with Sammy Hagar ever hold a candle to the groundbreaking canon the David Roth era produced. However, Sammy Hagar is, in his own right, a real-deal rock star, and while we have to agree…
Sammy Hagar might be the nicest guy in rock ‘n’ roll. As a musician, he’s been the voice of Montrose, one of the most underrated rock bands of all time, enjoyed a strong solo career, and led Van Halen during one of the band’s most successful periods. Most recently, he…
All right, we get it: Van Hagar was not Van Halen, nor will the band’s work with Sammy Hagar ever hold a candle to the groundbreaking canon the David Roth era produced. However, Sammy Hagar is, in his own right, a real-deal rock star, and while we have to agree…
Better than: Literally and absolutely anything else you might have been doing. Trent Reznor shelved Nine Inch Nails in 2009 and, for a while, it appeared as though the future lacked any recorded output or live performances from the sonic heretic — at least any under the moniker with which…
Alice Cooper Hard Rock Live, Hollywood October 27, 2013 Better than: Anything else you were doing on a Sunday night. Supposedly, Alice Cooper is 65 years old. However, for those present last night at the Godfather of Shock Rock’s show at Hollywood’s Seminole Hard Rock Live, Cooper appeared a duality,…
Shai Hulud The Talent Farm, Pembroke Pines Thursday, October 24, 2013 Since the band’s inception in 1995, Shai Hulud has seen more than its fair share of members come and go since it helped define a specific metallic hardcore sound. Over the years, that sound has been consumed, adapted, and…
Since 1988, Trent Reznor has produced a bludgeoning body of work under the Nine Inch Nails flag, rife with imaginative sonic concepts, sullen lyrical content, and stark aesthetics that are uniquely his own. An artist in the truest sense of the word, perhaps Reznor’s greatest accomplishment is his ability to…
