While Kvelertak shares with their Norwegian black metal compatriots a taste for the dark side and for moody music supporting the deep Nordic growl, they also stand out from them in that they put rocking before image or philosophy. This self-titled debut (actually a reissue of last year's debut...

Thrice appear to be getting better and better with every album released. Major/Minor is their seventh studio album and certainly follows that upwards trend: the follow-up to 2009’s Beggars may well be the Californian quartet’s best yet. The thing that strikes you immediately is how remarkably honest-sounding this...

In March of last year Mariachi el Bronx were invited to take part in an evening of Mariachi music staged at London’s Barbican centre. The leading practitioners of the form were also invited to appear â€" but, and at least to the casual ear, the group reviewed here stood...

S.C.U.M. â€" or to give them their full originally-invented-by-would-be-Warhol-assassin Valerie-Solanas name, Society For Cutting Up Men: essentially a cheery manifesto about how all men are a bit rubbish, basically â€" hark back to the clattering industrial sounds of yore, managing to evade the ham-fisted attempts of lesser acts who’ve looked...

Whenever a new, fashionably-attired boy/girl duo appears on the UK music scene, especially one as handsome as Big Deal’s Alice Costelloe and Kacey Underwood, certain Ting Tings-shaped nightmares are inescapable. It’s an involuntary style-over-substance association, just one of the unfortunate by-products of that pair’s 15 minutes of ubiquity. Luckily...

Proof positive that not all punks mellow with age, this 16-track outburst from grizzled hardcore supergroup OFF! does what it says on the tin, compiling the band’s first four limited-edition singles within a typically stark Raymond Pettibon sleeve.

Star of the show and main draw for those in the know is...

It's a golden period for hardcore at the moment, although many bands remain who simply follow the usual formula, there are bands who are doing new, refreshing and downright exciting things with this area of music, one of those such bands is California's Touche Amore, who's new album 'Parting The...

Rise To Remain have always been an intriguing if not altogether convincing prospect, their 2010 "Bridges Will Burn" EP was ample yet nothing special with only a couple of tracks, the huge single 'Nothing Left' for example, properly standing out as something worth one's time. Indeed this had led to...

The Welsh post-hardcore titans have been around for almost ten years now and in the process have become an undeniably seminal band in the shaping of what the rock scene has become today, with most younger bands here this weekend, even as high up the bill as We Are The...

Continuing the sunny good-time vibes of Man Overboard, New York's Polar Bear Club play an equally great set, full of power, excitement and great songs. With 2009's fantastic 'Chasing Hamburg' album putting them firmly on the map, the band are certainly in good stead and with their forthcoming third album...