tired of waiting for shiv to post after...

Hailing from the famous punk rock town of, er, Portland, ME, the Leftovers released their debut full-length after touring regionally with the likes of the Mopes and Teenage Bottlerocket and putting in their compilation-and-splits dues. "Full-length" is something of an exaggeration (On the Move clocks in at under 30 minutes), but that's part of the charm of bands like this -- there's no time wasted on intros or outros, no stupid "sketches" or "interludes" to weigh things down, just short, sharp, hook-laden tunes all featuring heart-on-sleeve vocals and buzzsaw guitars. There's pure bubblegum lurking underneath the crunchy veneer of "Dance with Me," and the handclaps that you keep expecting throughout that compact gem of a song appear on the next and equally hooky track, "She She She." "Mind Off You" and "See You Tonight" are the band's twin masterpieces, a pair of punk-pop classics that last almost exactly two minutes each (and the second of which, if you listen carefully, evokes Elvis Costello circa Get Happy!). On a few of these songs the hooks could be just a bit sharper and more memorable, but it seems likely that the band is going to progress in just that direction. Highly recommended.

Cathedral- The Guessing Game.

Cathedral's ninth studio album, their first since 2005's The Garden of Unearthly Delights, is a double disc, and it features some of the most psychedelic, progressive material in the band's entire catalog. Originally formed out of vocalist Lee Dorrian's distaste for the burgeoning death metal sound of his previous band, grindcore pioneers/stalwarts Napalm Death, Cathedral sounded like a pure throwback to the doom of the early '70s on their first few releases, but over the course of their long career, their albums have displayed rock & roll swagger and lysergic experimentation. The Guessing Game is in many ways a magnum opus, offering examples of everything Cathedral does well. "Casket Chasers" is a roaring stoner metal anthem worthy of modern doomsters like Down or any of Scott "Wino" Weinrich's bands, while the eight-minute "Funeral of Dreams" is a multifaceted, retro-psychedelic excursion reminiscent of Uriah Heep. "Requiem for the Voiceless" is pure, creeping Sabbathian horror, while "Cats, Incense, Candles & Wine" shifts from acoustic strumming to a jazz-funk groove. Retro instrumentation (flutes and Mellotron in particular) and production techniques abound. This album lives up to its title in spades; it's impossible to predict, listening to one song, what the next one will sound like, except for the general surety that it'll sound like it could have been recorded (on tape, not into a hard drive) anytime between 1969 and today.

Whee!

Slipknot || Iowa