ben_patashnik has written the following articles:
Sod yer general notions of cool, this is simply about pure songwriting quality, and when these tunes course through your body it's natural to let your limbs jerk around. That's why so many people are starting to love FOTL»
In May 2000 a band from Milton Keynes called Capdown released their debut album, Civil Disobedients. It kick-started an invisible scene that, at its peak, resulted in dozens of bands being able to flourish»
Too many protest singers but not enough protest songs? DiS talks to Frank Turner and Sam Duckworth about being pigeonholed as artists with something to rally against»
Nine years ago this month, one of the most inspirational rock bands to have ever toured the toilet circuit called it quits. DiS looks at the legacy of Swedish quartet Refused and questions Dillinger Escape Plan's Ben Weinman on how the New Jersey outfit are carrying on their tradition for progress»
For his second album, David Bavas has mostly excised the traces of Americana that peppered his debut and steered his wagons in a more solid direction...»
With tickets priced at £20, it would appear that the cider punx of London town aren’t going to be descending en masse onto Tottenham Court Road to see one of the few remaining old-school punk bands around who haven’t turned into a hideous parody of themselves. But then again, Bad Brains’ return to the capital after more than a few years away – and with the original lineup – was always going to be an event...»
zZz ably prove that they’re not necessarily a bad band. They’ve just written some seriously sub-par songs and stuck them next to the good ones...»
Akala’s second album is approached with a certain level of trepidation, as it’s fair to say that he might be known to the casual listener for one of two reasons...»
Bloody Radio fails slightly because of its mediocrity but primarily because a good idea isn’t enough to sustain an entire record. Yeah, taking the less-mainstream route certainly makes for an album with a definite immediate impact, but had the execution been more fluent and had they taken even more of a dark route this could have been a real contender...»
Frank is sitting on a stool, guitar in one hand, whisky in the other, looking at a sold-out crowd. “I’m going to start with a new song tonight,” he says. ”Because I feel like it, and I can.” We clap, cheer and smile, because Frank can do whatever he wants, and we wouldn’t be here if he’d followed some other template of how to be a musician...»
Few things strike as much fear into the heart as the phrase “ex-Terror/Hatebreed guitarist’s new band”. For the uninitiated, Terror and Hatebreed are two of the most astonishingly stupid bands ever to have existed – they make Fred Durst look like Werner Herzog...»
Without even trying to, the Beastie Boys have managed to make a Tuesday night in South London into a seismic event...»
Is Kid Carpet taking the piss out of all of us? Is he taking the piss out of himself? Does he exist, or is he just some fictional construct designed to utterly fuck with the heads of anyone who realised Nathan Barley was a joke, in some kind of post-proto-spazz-pop way? Buggered if I know...»
It’s by no means a reinvention of the wheel, but as a simple reminder that sometimes the world isn’t purely gash, The Fragile Army is hard to beat. Hipsters need not apply, though...»
Whether you’ve ever heard of them or not, New York’s Mancino have their sights set on that regularly-pulsating muscle that just happens to be the epicentre of the physical human body and yet is continually said to have influence over the emotional side of life: the heart...»
If nothing else, The Tacticians are frustrating, because Some Kind of Urban Fulfilment represents a slightly missed opportunity...»
Try walking down the road listening to this and not breaking into a pimp strut. Impossible, I tell you...»
Let’s make no bones about it: Converge are brutal...»
It’s a testament to Curreri’s abilities with a blues scale or a country chord progression that this isn’t utterly forgettable. It’s quite good, but it could have been very good...»
What the world needs now, as Burt Bacharach didn’t sing, is another synth-based indie disco band. By rights, Drive By Argument should be crap, but somehow, almost inexplicably, they’re not...»
A very good friend of mine gets feverishly angry every time anyone describes music as ‘angular’. “What does that mean?” he wails. “It’s not sodding trigonometry! I’m not trying to find the hypotenuse of the chorus, am I?” No Sami, you’re not. But you know what it means, don’t you? And hidden beneath the glistening guitars of ‘Hurricanes’ is something undeniably… pointy...»
As part of the lavish reopening of the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank, someone with extremely good taste booked Frank Turner to play an acoustic set. Unfortunately, he’s playing in a hallway on the fifth floor...»
It’s a wonder Wiley’s been able to even make music recently, what with the continuing mountain of plaudits being heaped upon him. We should probably give him at least two gold stars, a slice of cake and a pat on the back for not disappearing up his own arsehole after being showered by superlatives by those in the know...»
The shrill beeps and beats that characterise The Whip's ‘Divebomb’ could easily be off-cuts from a Daft Punk single, and if those Gallic robotwats had released this then it’d no doubt have sold by the bucketload...»
Apparently Soulwax/2ManyDJs were a prime inspiration for Bonde Do Role’s formation – imagine the brothers Dewaele with nary an ounce of the magic, ideas or sheer balls (i.e. what makes them so special), and you’ve got this lot...»
The best thing about Rolo Tomassi, as Joe Fro from 65daysofstatic remarks to DiS as the Sheffield rapscallions commit aural genocide, is that they don’t make sense whatsoever...»
