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Smashing Pumpkins, Oceania

2012 | Label: MARTHA'S MUSIC

By Bill Murphy eMusic Contributor

06.19.12 Love him or hate him, Billy Corgan is rarely at a loss for words, whether he’s excoriating his former bandmates in interviews, or rhapsodizing with pseudo-mystical grandeur over the Smashing Pumpkins’ ongoing 44-song suite Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, begun in 2009. Oceania is meant to be the latest phase of that project — an “album-within-an-album” that furthers the Tarot-inspired concept behind Teargarden — but peel away the pomp surrounding its release and you’re left with a torrential, seam-busting rock epic that stands entirely on its own.

While purists love to clamor… more »

Municipal Waste, The Fatal Feast

2012 | Label: Nuclear Blast / The Orchard

By Jon Wiederhorn eMusic Contributor

04.10.12 Back in 2001, Richmond, Virginia, crossover thrash band Municipal Waste entered the world with sloppy, speedy songs about headbanging, chugging beer and gory cartoon-horror. Ten years and five albums later and the band has learned…not much.

Adopting an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it attitude, Municipal Waste have followed 2009′s stupid, funny and obnoxious Massive Aggressive with the equally juvenile The Fatal Feast. The cover art of zombies in hazmat suits devouring freshly excised organs, and song titles like “Crushing Chest Wound,” “Residential Disaster” and “12 Step Program” say it all. Fortunately, improvements have come… more »

Skeletonwitch, Forever Abomination

Label: Prosthetic / The Orchard

By Phil Freeman eMusic Contributor

12.21.11 These Ohio headbangers synthesize a variety of sub-styles into a blend that’s uniquely their own: They play thrash with black-metal-ish vocals (Chance Garnette frequently recalls Arch Enemy’s Angela Gossow — and that’s a good thing), basically, but with extra bits of melody wedged in here and there. And while they’ve never changed their style radically over the course of three albums, they have refined it, and on the 11-track, 32-minute Forever Abomination, it’s honed to a razor’s edge. Not a moment is wasted; even the ’80s-Metallica-style clean guitar intro is… more »

Portugal. The Man, In the Mountain In the Cloud

2011 | Label: Atlantic Records

By Barry Walters eMusic Contributor

08.01.11 “You’re so American,” sneers Portugal. The Man guitarist and songwriter John Baldwin Gourley, a dude who looks a Fleet Foxes roadie but sings in a tenor/falsetto that’s steeped in the glitter of a thousand glam rock gods, as a bed of Ziggy-induced acoustic power chords, hand claps and strings rise around him like a forest of man-sized posies.

As suggested by its name and punctuation, Portugal. The Man specializes in shamelessly anthemic folderol, and on its sixth disc (and major label debut), the foursome embraces its inner Marc… more »