Be warned, America: Fashionable guys in skinny ties are once again running amok in the musical landscape. “I wish I had an explanation for it,” shrugs mop-topped Steve Bays. In just three years of existence, the Hot Hot Heat frontman/pianist and his bandmates have transformed from obscure British Columbian synth-punkers…

Ever since Tommy Iommi invented doom rock, drugged-out bands all over the world have done their best to outsludge one another. Outfits like Godflesh, Eyehategod, and Sleep ruled the ’90s doom scene with drop-tuned guitars, shrieked vocals, and plodding tempos, leaving burnouts, metalheads, and ex-punkers drooling happily in their wake…

Piebald singer/guitarist Travis Shettel needs your help. After scream-singing through thousands of shows since his band’s inception in 1994, Shettel’s vocal cords developed blood blisters this past summer. Despite Piebald’s huge following, sizable record sales, and recent mention in Rolling Stone as “a band to watch,” Shettel’s September throat operation…

This past summer’s Warped Tour at Pompano Beach Amphitheatre was an educational opportunity for South Florida’s mall-punk horde. On the main stage stood Good Charlotte — a poppy schmaltz amalgam of wretched MTV punque lite. One hundred yards away on the amphitheater stage stood the Casualties, a tribe of Aquanet…

There’s nothing Brian Diaz hates more than a lazy, ignorant rock critic. “We just got slagged for making a video that doesn’t exist and wearing New Found Glory T-shirts we don’t own,” fumes Diaz, bassist for Long Island power-pop wizards the Reunion Show. But it’s not just web-jockey slackers who…

Ataris guitarist Kris Roe has lived the pop-punk dream. He escaped his shitburg Indiana hometown by passing along a demo to the Vandals’ Joe Escalante. Offered a record deal over the phone, Roe informed Escalante that he didn’t have a drummer. “No problem, kid; I know lots of drummers,” Joe…

For such an effective purveyor of paranoia, Your Enemies Friends singer/guitarist Ronnie Washburn is a sunny-side-of-the-street kinda guy. “It’s amazing that we’ve managed to accomplish everything we have on just a six-song EP,” he beams. Sure enough, critics have lauded generous praise upon Your Enemies Friends’ brand of quirky-yet-accessible, muscular-yet-danceable…

Billing themselves as providers of “the only rock from Siberia,” the Russian rockabilly vaudevillians in the Red Elvises have spent the past six years conquering the club circuit with an over-the-top stage show that features an Old Country interpretation of American trash culture. Surfing (“Surfing in Siberia”) and disco (“Closet…

“Are you ready to be liberated/On this sad side city street/Well the birds have been freed from their cages/I’ve got freedom and my youth! ” The whiskeyed snarl evokes Mia Zapata and Courtney Love. The anthemic guitar riff brings to mind Prison Bound-era Social Distortion. It’s the Distillers’ “The Young…

If you really know Squarepusher, you’re likely either (a) locked away in the loony bin or (b) in the middle of the drug binge that’s going to land you there. Do You Know Squarepusher is a mind-bending mélange of drum ‘n’ bass, jungle, and psychedelia that outfreaks any previously recorded…

When most people walk into Sidblu bassist Pablo Lopez’s West Palm Beach workplace, they see a corporate office for designing funeral home Websites. But in the top-of-the-line computers, laser printers, and CD-ROM burners, Lopez sees a no-dough promotional palace and compact-disc manufacturer. “Someone has to do it,” Lopez understates. After…

Yeah! The tail-dragger from Greenville, Mississippi!” bellows 80-year-old James “T-Model” Ford in the opening seconds of Bad Man, his fourth album on the blues song-catcher label Fat Possum. Just in case you stumbled onto Bad Man without prior knowledge of his greatness, T-Model continues: “Can’t read or write/Never been to…

You love cheesy pop songs. Don’t even try to deny it, Mr. and Mrs. Hipster-Doofus. We all know you keep your Supertramp’s Greatest Hits hidden in the Guided By Voices case. You aren’t fooling anyone. Luckily for you, Koufax has made it hip to be square. When the band released…

“Think back to what you missed,” commanded Quit on its landmark 1990 album, Earlier Thought. That order has haunted the Miami pop-punk trailblazers since the summer of 1993, when Quit singer/guitarist Addison Burns fell off a rooftop and pulverized his wrist, suspending for two years the career of one of…

If we could, we’d stay right where we are now and live it forever,” Thursday singer Geoff Rickly enthuses over the phone from Billings, Montana. With Thursday’s 2001 breakthrough album, Full Collapse, still moving 5000 copies a week (with more than 130,000 sold at press time) and a current headlining…

Growing up is hard to do, especially if you’re a rock band. It’s the same from Metallica to R.E.M. to the Replacements to Soul Asylum and all points in between. When cult acts abandon the underground sound that granted them status in favor of the slower tempos and quieter guitars…

Move over, James Brown — there’s a new hardest-working band in show business. With more than 600 shows played in its three years of toddlerhood, the rock ‘n’ roll experience known as River City High barely stops to fuel the van. Having squeezed out two EPs and one full-length CD…

The tribute record is the most abused marketing concept in the record biz. Generally, a huge band has its ego stroked by several similar but less successful outfits trying to siphon some of its juice. Last year’s Weezer tribute was particularly pointless: Why is it necessary to pay tribute to…

The “Do It Yourself ” ethic often espoused by rock-ready kids is too rarely put into practice. When given the choice between putting out their own music or hoping an A&R guy will eventually come around with contracts and cigars, 99 percent choose to wait. After waiting two years to…

Eight years ago, thinking man’s hardcore act Hot Water Music emerged from the swamps of Gainesville. With a name cribbed from a Charles Bukowski novel and an ever-evolving sound rooted in their love of AC/DC, Fugazi, and Avail, Hot Water Music appeals to indie rockers, musicians, and backpack-toting kids alike…

“We’re taking this on/and turning you on!” Recover guitarist/shouter Robert Mann screams on “Rodeo and Picasso,” the title track of the best debut album in years. This opening assault sends mosh pits all over the nation into an instant free-for-all as the four members of Recover hurl themselves about the…

“We’re getting the band back together!” Ever since the Blues Brothers uttered those accursed words 20 years ago, countless aging rockers have tried the world’s patience by demanding an extra 15 minutes and re-forming for one last paycheck. While the occasional reunion disc fires on all cylinders (like the Damned’s…