Photo: Renate Winter Conventional isn’t really Ex-Cult’s thing. The Memphis punk outfit, which is set to perform Monday at The Conservatory, inked a deal with a hometown label within a remarkably short time frame and played its first show mere months after formation. In the time since, an unwavering deluge of momentum has hurled these […]
debut
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Mouthing off
Photo: Michael Raiden Wiley Merrell is a man of many names. The Moore rapper is billed as Wildcat, but he used another as the title to his solo debut, MTLMTH. “MTLMTH is one of my many nicknames. I used to have braces. Like, it looked crazy,” Merrell said, laughing. “When I got them off, we […]
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Chud — Chud
Well, it might, actually. But the band’s music sounds as non-damn-giving as can be — in the best way possible. The rising hardcore enthusiasts steadily have ascended the local ladder with their blistering live presence — a barrage of piercing guitar riffs, staccato rhythm section and singer-guitarist Alex Barnard’s slobbery howl. The impression left has […]
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Copperheads — Apocalyptic Behavior
Turns out they were just gently working out the kinks on their hellacious debut LP, Apocalyptic Behavior, on Okie Dope Records. This is just as strong as anything like-minded contemporaries Ty Segall or Thee Oh Sees are pumping out, only truer to the wellspring of ’70s punk that inspired the garage revival in the first […]
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Kendrick Lamar — good kid, m.A.A.d City
The album, which Lamar labeled as a “short film,” tells the story of his life as a good kid in the mad city of Compton, Calif. He raps about trying to avoid temptations, including women, drugs, alcohol, violence and revenge. However, even the good kids succumb to temptation from time to time. The disc twists […]
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Gone in 60 Seconds: Car Crash King Edition
Making its Blu-ray debut in a combo pack — albeit one saddled with the silly subtitle of Car Crash King Edition — the film features writer/director/producer Halicki as its protagonist, too: an insurance investigator named Pace (get it?) who makes better money heading an illegal car-theft ring and chop shop that’s more or less wallpapered […]
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Mind the Fox — Songs for the Needy
The 11-track effort has the feel of a product made for and formulated in a dingy basement with dusty floral couches, shag carpet and tacky wood wall paneling … and I mean that in the best of ways. It’s something of a time capsule uncovered from four or five decades back, neither updated nor refurbished […]
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Foreign Home — How Strange the Night
From the sounds of it, that’s a place where Tulsa outfit Foreign Home would like to call home. Its debut album, How Strange the Night, is big, layered, engrossing and just enough offbeat to not reside firmly in the mainstream. That can be a death trap for some bands who drown in that wall of […]
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The Black Jack Gypsys — 3:1
This is honest-to-God rock music for which revivalists home and afar have been clamoring — the type of music you imagine spilling out the door of some small, sweaty club on the Sunset Strip in the late ’60s. This is the Mad Max of debut EPs: hot, dangerous and tons of fun. The act opens […]
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Admirals — Admirals
Seconds into “Sirens,” one can tell that Radiohead and Muse register high on the band’s radar, yet more bound by convention than either. If that reads as a dig, it’s not necessarily meant to be; as much as Admirals obviously lust after that huge, space-rock sound, it also strives to be catchy and accessible. It’s […]