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Zakk Sabbath, the Black Sabbath cover band featuring guitarist/vocalist Zakk Wylde ( Ozzy Osbourne), bassist Blasko (Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Zombie) and drummer Joey Castillo (Danzig, Queens Of The Stone Age)
“Greatest Riffs” features selected songs from the ZAKK SABBATH albums “Vertigo” (2020) and “Doomed Forever Forever Doomed” (2024). Originally, the tribute band elected to release these albums in physical formats only to hearken back to the originals. Yet their fans kept asking for an official digital release, so at long last the band has agreed to publish a hand-picked collection assembled in homage to one of Black Sabbaths most ubiquitous releases, “We Sold Our Soul for Rock ‘n Roll”, the ultimate greatest hits album!.
released September 17th, 2024
2024, 2024 Magnetic Eye Records
VAN HALEN – ” For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge ” (Expanded Edition)
Posted: September 16, 2024 in MUSIC
Van Halen’s third straight No. 1 album with singer Sammy Hagar, and the bands ninth LP overall, gets a two-CD remaster with a disc of rarities and live tracks. The previously unreleased show recordings, from Dallas in 1991, the year of the album’s release, are also included in a Blu-ray along with video clips for the singles “Poundcake,” “Right Now” and two others. Instrumental versions and single mixes round out the expanded set.
In the summer of 1991, Van Halen’s “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” debuted at #1 on release. This summer, you can hear it better than ever! The Triple-Platinum album is getting remastered and reissued.
The Expanded Edition includes previously unreleased alternate versions of “Right Now” and “The Dream Is Over.” The main attraction, however, has to be the previously unreleased concert footage from Van Halen’s December 4th, 1991, performance in Dallas. Captured during the “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge Tour,” this electrifying show is a powerful example of Van Halen’s unparalleled stage presence.
The show’s setlist mixes new songs “Judgement Day” and “Poundcake” with songs from “5150” and “OU812“ “(“Best Of Both Worlds” and “Finish What Ya Started”). The band also played “Panama,” a hit from its time with singer David Lee Roth, plus two of Hagar’s hits, “I Can’t Drive 55” and “There’s Only One Way To Rock.”
In addition, the BLU-RAY includes the official music videos for “Poundcake,” “Runaround,” “Right Now,” and “Top Of The World.” Finally, the remastered album is included in the set as a double LP, featuring an etching of the Van Halen logo on the fourth side.
Includes an exclusive BOOKLET loaded with never-before-seen band photos, rare memorabilia, and ephemera. It’s truly incredible and well done. 32-pages, measuring 12″ x 12″.
Released on July 12th
“King of America” became Rhino’s penultimate reissue Of Elvis Costello in 2005, With a front cover sticker cheekily hailed it as “the album that fans, critics and Elvis Costello all agree on.” Perhaps that’s why it’ll be the next of his classic albums to receive a deluxe box set later this year. Elvis Costello will release a sprawling new box set on November 1st, titled “King of America & Other Realms. As its name suggests, the six-disc set includes a newly remastered edition of Costello’s 1986 album “King of America”, originally co-produced with T Bone Burnett. The remastered 1986 album is paired with a disc of demos and outtakes (six of them previously unreleased), The deluxe release follows the super deluxe, vinyl-and-digital-only of The Complete Armed Forces box set.
Additionally, it features a previously unreleased live concert recorded at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1987, plus more unreleased demos, outtakes and live recordings, a 35-page essay by Costello himself and rare photographs. As a press release succinctly puts it, the set “celebrates and explores the songwriter’s lifelong love, fascination and influence of American music.”
There will also be a two-disc CD version containing the remastered “King of America” and a second disc of highlights from the collection.
Costello’s 10th studio album was a marked departure from his last two records: “Punch the Clock” (1983) and “Goodbye Cruel World” (1984) were slick pop affairs overseen by producers Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley. “Congratulations! You’ve just purchased our worst album.” Undaunted, the singer/songwriter embarked on a tour with American musician T-Bone Burnett under the moniker “The Coward Brothers,” releasing a single, “The People’s Limousine,” in 1985. (Both sides of the single bookend the box’s second disc, “Le Roi Sans Sabots – Demos, Outtakes & Other Realms.”) The album’s sole worldwide single, a cover of Nina Simone’s “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” was a minor U.K. Top 40 hit, though album cuts “Brilliant Mistake” and “Indoor Fireworks” remain among the most-beloved (and most-played) selections from the album.
The 12″ x 11.5″ package, produced by Costello and Steve Berkowitz, includes 57 pages of liner notes, including a lengthy essay by Costello on the making of the album plus rare and unseen photos. (A 2CD cut-down will be issued as well.
A complete track listening for the deluxe edition is available along with the newly remastered 2024 version of “Indoor Fireworks.”
GENESIS – ” The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway ” Classic Albums
Posted: September 13, 2024 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSICTags: Classic Album, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
With an overarching narrative concept, input from Brian Eno and an album cover by groundbreaking designers Hipgnosis, Genesis released “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” in November 1974. Fittingly, the live show that they took on the road was as much theatre as it was rock concert, bringing the story of the album’s protagonist, Rael, to life on stage. Closing out this period in Genesis’ history, album characters such as the Lamia and a Slipperman made up part of Gabriel’s visual arsenal, while the group themselves were firing on all cylinders, performing their new album in its entirety every night.
But by the time the tour came to a close, the band felt they had progressed as far as they could in this direction. Gabriel left the fold, issuing a press statement entitled ‘Out, Angels Out’ in August 1975.
Genesis would undergo yet another transformation in the months that followed, and by the time A Trick Of The Tail was released, in 1976, the baton had been passed to Phil Collins.
The album that’s seen by many fans of the classic 1970s Genesis line-up as their finest hour — or hour and a half, to be precise. The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway was released as a double LP on 18th November 1974. It played a huge part in making the group the progressive rock legends they became.
With only six weeks on the UK chart and a No. 10 peak, The Lamb, as admirers everywhere know it, was rather short-lived in strictly commercial terms. But it’s the earliest album in the Genesis catalogue that’s certified gold in the UK, and gave them their highest-charting release to that point at No. 41 in America, adding to the band’s growing reputation there.
With its complex tale of redemption focused on the subterranean character Rael, widely seen as the alter ego of frontman Peter Gabriel, the album established itself as one of the key concept albums of the initial “prog” heyday — even if devotees, to this day, continue to debate its possible meanings.
In making such an ambitious piece, Gabriel himself knew that Genesis were opening themselves up for vilification from the music press. “We’re easy to put down,” he admitted to the NME soon after the album’s release. You can say the characters are far fetched, the music over ornate, that we’re riding on my costume success. There – I’ve done it for you.
“However,” Gabriel went on, “in maybe ten years a group will emerge to take what we do a lot further. I look upon us as an early, clumsy prototype.”
Mike Rutherford, talking about The Lamb later in Hugh Fielder’s The Book Of Genesis, was quite matter-of-fact. “It was about a greasy Puerto Rican kid!” he said. “For once, we were writing about subject matter which was neither airy-fairy, nor romantic. We finally managed to get away from writing about unearthly things, which I think helped the album
Genesis had been building toward their sixth album since their formation, so it’s no surprise that their sprawling double-LP concept record is their masterpiece. Like most prog epics, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense storywise, but the music and performances are among the genre’s all-time best. Singer Peter Gabriel left after its release, and the rest of the band eventually headed in a new, more lucrative direction.
Adding to the recent string of indie pop songs that the Death Cab for Cutie frontman has been featured in, this brooding and grungy track from Seattle’s Sea Lemon—aka Natalie Lew—is a meeting point for both musician’s distinct indie rock eras. Ben Gibbard’s trademark low, whispery vocals fuel the song’s darkness, and Lew’s voice is shrouded in an airy mystique as she sings of using manifestation and looking for signs in nature as a way of coping. But while Lew’s verses are more lighthearted and abstract, Gibbard balances the optimism out with a stark dose of a straightforward, traditionally emo mentality—“It seems that all I wanna do is sleep these days / And wake up in about a year and not feel this way.” This meeting of the minds makes for a dreamy and fuzzy blend of the greatest parts of the genre, both new and old.
Seattle-based Natalie Lew has always had a creative mind, whether through designing, writing short fiction or, most recently, the dream-pop concoctions she records as Sea Lemon. Lew’s deceptively luminescent sonic world often hints at darker textures beneath the surface, and debut 2023 EP ‘Stop At Nothing’ balanced a cinematic clarity of vision with undertones of fear and longing. For driving new single “Crystals,” her first of 2024, Lew tapped Death Cab For Cutie frontman Benjamin Gibbard, a preexisting fan of Lew’s who had previously reached out to duet at a benefit show in Seattle both artists were playing. The resulting collaboration sounds both weightier and more exhilarating than anything Lew has released before: in a rousing arc, the duo’s complementary verses are a perfect pairing alongside a whirlwind of shimmering guitar and the joy felt with finally letting go.
Sea Lemon’s new single “Crystals (feat. Benjamin Gibbard)” is out now on Luminelle Recordings.
For the last, but certainly not least, in a string of excellent singles from their 4th LP “VIVA HINDS”, the Spanish duo have teamed up with Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten on “Stranger,” a track that taps both artists’ most whimsical inclinations. A head-in-the-clouds indie pop rock ballad that rides on a heart-skipping beat, “Stranger” is cute without ever becoming cloying. Listening to the final chorus, you can almost picture Ana Perrote, Carlotta Cosials and Chatten singing to themselves on a screen split in thirds, each lost in their own heads, finding unexpected joy in loneliness and giving their daydreams room to breathe.
As the sixth Half Waif album, “See You at the Maypole”, is set to arrive next month, Nandi Rose has unveiled the project’s latest single: “The Museum.” As is custom for a Half Waif tune, it’s a sombre four minutes aimed at the passing of time and the sentimentality we all hold for what’s been lost. “The Museum” is a nostalgic song that doesn’t wash the past with inauthentic remembering. Rose is far more interested in a kind of recollection that comes from sharing “give it another year” with a loved one.
Our perpetual forward-motion does not cease its direction; drama and laughter are both habits, but it’s up to us to decide which one to kick. “I still go to the movies, and I think that it’s beautiful,” Rose sings. “Fake lights making everything look like glitter. And when I go to my high school, I see that the view has changed. All the apple trees they planted have finally grown up.”
the upcoming album ‘See You At The Maypole’, out on October 4, 2024
Produced with Mark Ralph, who previously worked with them on their 2013 album “Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action”, the album showcases Franz at their most immediate, upbeat and life-affirming, unashamedly going for the pop-jugular in classic Franz style.
The Scottish alt-rockers are returning with a new album, “The Human Fear”, and lead single “Audacious” is a triumphant call-to-action for both the listener and the band itself. It’s noisy and guitar-driven with a slight twee angle, calling back to the more theatrical and bold acts (think The Hives) of the 2000s indie era that Franz first found a home in. There’s a montage of sounds that play out in the track’s several arcs—from surfy and jangle guitar moments to a surprising piano ballad—and new drummer Audrey Tait brings a quick, peppy tempo to the song’s fast-paced stylistic shifts. “Audacious” is unflinching and brave—“There’s no one to save us, so just carry on,” singer Alex Kapranos declares, as the band steps into a new era filled with adrenaline and bravado.
Recorded at AYR studios in Scotland, the 11-songs on “The Human Fear” all allude to some deep-set human fears and how overcoming and accepting these fears drives and defines our lives.
releases January 10th, 2025
2025, Domino Recording Co Ltd
Former member of Stanley Marsh 3′s Dynamite Museum, born and raised in The Children of God, Christopher Owens is an American song writer born in 1979.
On “This is My Guitar,” the third single from his forthcoming solo album “I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair,” The ex-Girls songwriter Christopher Owens talks of turning to his instrument during times of strife and isolation. As he continues to establish his newest era as a solo artist through shreds of airy jangle-pop, he finds solace and release in the music he’s creating. The chorus is a whispered wail, as Owens repeatedly begs: “Help me please.” Yet, the hopeful curve of “This is My Guitar” hints that this is one of the first steps in moving forward, telling the story of a musician piecing themselves back together by picking up the instrument they love, and using it as a baton that connects them to the rest of the world again.
releases October 18th, 2024
Written and Performed by Christopher Owens
The Fat Angel Sings 