The third time proved to be the charm for Uriah Heep: on Look at Yourself, the group perfects its fusion of heavy metal power and prog rock majesty, and the result is one of the best albums in the Heep catalog.
The gauntlet is thrown down on the title track, a powerful rocker that layers its relentless hard rock attack with ornate vocal harmonies and quicksilver organ runs before climaxing with a tribal-sounding drum jam. The remainder of Look at Yourself presents an effective blend of gutsy guitar rock and organ-fueled prog excursions. In the rock arena, the gems are “Tears in My Eyes,” a powerful rocker driven by an almost rockabilly-style riff that stops midway for a surprising vocal harmony break supported by smooth wah-wah guitar, and “Love Machine,” a short, punchy slice of hard rock…
Category: rock
On their second album, Uriah Heep jettisons the experiments that weighed down Very ‘Eavy Very ‘Umble and works toward perfecting their blend of heavy metal power and prog rock complexity.
Salisbury tips the band’s style in the prog direction, containing one side of songs and one side dominated by a lengthy and ornate epic-length composition. Highlights on the song-oriented side include “Bird of Prey,” a soaring rocker that blends furious, power chord-fuelled verses with spacy, keyboard-drenched instrumental breaks, and “Lady in Black,” a stylishly arranged tune that builds from a folk-styled acoustic tune into a throbbing rocker full of ghostly harmonies and crunching guitar riffs. The big surprise on this side is “The Park,” a ballad-style song built on a light blend of acoustic…
If a band has been around long enough, they inevitably release a concept album. Fewer, though, are like The Protomen, who for the past two decades have been creating a three-part rock opera saga. The band utilizes characters from the Megaman video game universe to craft an epic story with ’80s-inspired synthwave mixed with guitar rock. It’s been a long time since their last 2009 release, Act II: The Father of Death, so the hype is real. And let’s be clear — we mean tremendously real, so much so that Act III: This City Made Us became one of the highest pre-ordered albums on Bandcamp by the end of 2025. If a high-octane, thrilling ride set to ‘80s rock music with Capcom video game characters doesn’t excite you, it’s reasonable to feel ambivalent…
Following a 2025 Record Store Day Black Friday release, Linda Ronstadt’s The Early Years compilation comes to general retail on 2LP vinyl and single CD. The set from Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists label brings together 15 songs from Ronstadt’s 1967-1974 Capitol Records period (with some surprising omissions, such as “Desperado”). Selections include “Different Drum,” “Faithless Love,” “You’re No Good,” “Long, Long Time,” and “When Will I Be Loved.”
The Early Years is a stunning new compilation that celebrates the formative era of one of music’s most powerful and pioneering voices — Linda Ronstadt.
Featuring breakout hits like “Different Drum” and the Grammy-nominated “Long, Long Time,” The Early Years traces Ronstadt’s artistic…
A stark surprise arrives midway through Not Here Not Gone, the fourth album from ethereal doom quartet Blackwater Holylight. Soon after the guitar feedback of “Heavy, Why?” fades into silence, a distorted techno beat wobbles into that void, like some industrial band’s approximation of dub. The rhythm is a guest spot from Dave Sitek, the TV on the Radio multi-instrumentalist who has made something of a second home at Sonic Ranch, the Texas studio where Blackwater Holylight cut this record. A tide of noise steadily surrounds the beat, two very different forces competing briefly for the same space.
That track, “Giraffe,” may feel like a goof or even a gimmick, a convenient break amid 45 minutes of brawny riffs and martial drums.
The follow-up to Terrapath, the band’s debut album, Flare finds prog-, math, and jazz-rock-injected indie rockers Plantoid pushing their shape-shifting sound in even more directions. It was again produced by sometimes live member Nathan Ridley, who helped them both stretch their stylistic palette and settle down their tendency toward abrupt changes, instead staying with moods for a little while longer.
This has resulted in some lengthier track times, with four of the nine songs here passing the six-minute mark. It has also contributed to spacey, atmospheric entries like the daydreamy “Slow Moving,” whose elongated, sustain-suffused design doesn’t feel the need to burst into a more uptempo jam. A song like “The Weaver” is…
The ’90s revival is in full swing, and it’s in no small part thanks to Oasis. The Gallaghers’ long awaited reunion last summer was a huge success, and it was notable that their songs seemed to appeal across the generations. It was a regular sight at those gigs to see children born long after the group’s initial split, singing along word-perfect with their parents.
The gigs also served to introduce this new generation to Cast, who acted as support on the UK and Ireland leg of the Oasis tour. For those of us who remember the tail-end of Britpop, it’s curious to see John Power’s band undergoing a revival; while they had some decent songs such as ‘Fine Time’ and ‘Walkaway’, they never really seemed to seize the public imagination as…
The A’s, The B’s and The Monkees, at long last, brings together on 2 CDs all of the band’s commercial singles originally released between 1966 and 1970, from “Last Train to Clarksville” b/w “Take a Giant Step” through “Oh My My” b/w “I Love You Better.”
The A’s from Messrs. Jones, Dolenz, Nesmith, and Tork include songs from Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, Neil Diamond, John Stewart, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, and Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller: the chart-topping “Last Train to Clarksville,” “I’m a Believer,” and “Daydream Believer,” along with the hits “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You” (No. 2), “Pleasant Valley Sunday” (No. 3), “Valleri” (No. 3), and “D.W. Washburn” (No. 19).
The B’s are no less filled with fan favorites…
While Rossi’s previous solo albums explored his love for acoustic ballads, vocal harmonies, and the blend of British rock with country influences, this album, Francis Rossi’s first in seven years, marks a true return to the energetic, guitar-driven sound that made him a legend with Status Quo.
The Accidental sees Francis Rossi playing to his strengths, but taking risks, cutting loose, and exploring new territory – this album is all about old bones and fresh blood.
The fresh blood in question comes largely from Hiran Ilangantilike, a guitarist who was originally a school friend of one of Francis’ children, and co-producer Andy Brook. What became the sessions for ‘The Accidental’ was initially born of just plugging in and making some serious noise…
There’s a delicious irony to an album called Wormslayer planting relentless earworms in the mind that tunnel through it for days on end. Listeners fond of hook-laden, grand-scale sonic storytelling will find that English rock band Kula Shaker’s eighth effort delivers mystic folk rock every bit as adventuresome as Frank Herbert’s Dune — (ear)worms included.
Wormslayer sees a band beloved for its spiritual sensitivity stitching threads of observation into a familiar tapestry: an image of worldly evil alongside glimpses of what the heart longs for most. On a planet that “weeps beneath a mantle of shadows” (per the 2006 game The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess), Kula Shaker advocate for mobilizing the “poets of light”, finding…
There are times, listening to Richard Bishop do his thing with Sun City Girls, when this reviewer thinks, “Everyone else can stop playing their guitars now.” A few of those moments occur at points during the 92 minutes of music included on Three Lobed’s reissue of tracks from two of the Sun City Girls’ late-1980s Cloaven Cassettes: Famous Asthma (1987) and Tibetan Jazz 666 (1988). For listeners not tuned in to the vagaries of the Sun City Girls’ prolific output, the Cloaven Cassettes were self-released tapes, often composed of performances of the band at its loosest and weirdest, and the Sun City Girls could get very, very weird. Most of what you’ll hear on this reissue is the Bishop brothers and Charles Gocher in improvisation, working a blend of mutant jazz,…
Pastor Chris Congregation – West Virginia Snake Handler Revival “They Shall Take Up Serpents” (2025)
High in the mountains of West Virginia lies McDowell County. Formerly a hotspot for American coal mining, technological advancements and outsourced labour crept through Appalachia in the mid-twentieth century, leaving communities like McDowell destitute. From 1950 to 2020, the county saw its population fall by over 80%, and by 2015 it had the highest number of drug-related deaths of any county in the United States.
Alongside abandoned buildings and burnt-out cars, McDowell County is dense with churches. Typically Pentecostal, these have become a refuge for a community on the fringes of a zombified American dream clinging to bygone prosperity. One is The House of the Lord Jesus, also known as the last remaining snake-handling…
For last year’s Record Store Day Black Friday lineup, Rhino puts The Doors front and center with Live in Copenhagen, a previously unreleased 1968 performance finally pulled from the vault. Live in Copenhagen captures the band’s full early show from September 17th at the Falkoner Centret during their European tour. It’s a substantial RSD Exclusive — one that highlights The Doors at a pivotal moment, delivering a raw, unpolished document that adds real value to the band’s live catalog rather than reworking material fans already know by heart.
The set begins with “When the Music’s Over,” and the performance immediately shows a band working with precision rather than chaos. Morrison keeps his delivery steady…
…features two bonus tracks not on the original album. The bonus tracks, “My Lover” and “I Love(d) New York”, were originally left off the initial release due to vinyl space constraints.
Seven albums in, White Lies continue to evolve while keeping their signature mix of shadowy synth-pop and widescreen emotion intact. Night Light finds the London trio leaning deeper into electronic textures than ever before, with the guitars now playing a supporting role to shimmering synths, pulsing basslines, and Harry McVeigh’s commanding baritone.
It’s a sleek, modern evolution that keeps the band’s DNA intact while exploring new sonic territory. The album bursts to life with ‘Nothing On Me’, a quickfire opener that clocks in at just…
Sony Music Japan has continued its popular series of 7-inch SACD reissues with a 50th anniversary edition of Bruce Springsteen’s seminal Born to Run. The 3CD set features a new DSD remaster of the original album on stereo hybrid SACD (playable on all CD players) along with The Boss’ Greenvale, New York concert of December 12, 1975 on 2 Blu-spec CDs. The CW Post College Post Dome concert featured most of the songs from Born to Run including “Thunder Road,” “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” “Backstreets,” “She’s the One,” “Jungleland,” and, of course, the title track. (The concert also yielded Springsteen’s now-classic take on “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” which was released as a single nearly a decade later, in 1985.) The concert was issued in 2021 on…
…’Growing Pains (Deluxe)’ features six added tracks, including “Heavy Heart,” and “Tumbleweed,” and four acoustic tracks that were recorded at Second Nature Vintage in Nashville.
Closing in on their 20-year anniversary, LA’s blues and hip-hop-infused indie pop/rock band Andy Frasco & The U.N. continue to mix sharp humor with often weighty issues on Growing Pains, their 10th studio album.
Though the band has always been willing to wade into the occasional deep lyrical waters in the past (though admittedly with plenty of sly humor and subtlety), this new record finds Frasco and company reflecting on growing up and mortality. That is apparent on the album’s first single, the undeniably catchy “Try Not to Die,” ticking…