Dweezil Zappa is on a mission, and it’s a pretty personal one. Since 2006, the son of the late guitarist/composer/bandleader Frank Zappa has toured the world, playing his father’s music in an effort to attract and educate a new generation of listeners. In leading the Zappa Plays Zappa project, Dweezil…
Great Divide Brewing has been distributing its beers to Sweden for years via Great Brands — a craft-beer-focused Swedish distributor that carries a handful of American brews, including those from Avery, Left Hand, Oskar Blues and Ska. The Denver brewery has garnered many fans in Scandinavia since, one of whom…
Probably one of the only things in punk that’s lasted as long and remained as perennially as popular as NOFX is the mohawk. And while it’s obvioiusly no where near as radical as it was in the Reagan era, it’s still an eye-grabbing representation of the counter-culture that once was…
Lamb of God started in 1990 as an instrumental metal band called Burn the Priest. But it wasn’t until 1995, after recording a few demos and playing countless house parties, that the band recruited singer Randy Blythe and started developing into the band you would recognize today as Lamb of…
Although he left Denver as a mere mortal eight years ago, Mitch Pond has returned as Man Mantis, a human-insect-hybrid alter ego that produces glitchy, futuristic, hip-hop-centric beats. If the end of the Mayan calendar does in fact bring about the end of the world, it will be a bummer…
With 1998’s A Go Go, guitarist John Scofield tapped into a whole new demographic by enlisting Medeski, Martin & Wood to play on the disc. While Scofield, who played with Miles Davis, was a respected jazz artist and had delved into fusion previously, with A Go Go he fully embraced…
NOFX was started in Los Angeles in 1983 by Michael “Fat Mike” Burkett and Eric Melvin. The band was born of the same West Coast scene that produced some of the most important punk bands of all time, from Black Flag and the Circle Jerks to the Minutemen and the…
It’s not that tough to get Todd Snider to tell a story. The folksinger/guitarist is all about the power of a good narrative, and it’s no wonder, considering his influences. Even before issuing his 1994 debut album, Songs for the Daily Planet, Snider followed the path of legendary folkies like…
Kreayshawn (aka Natassia Zolot) got a video camera at age ten and started making and editing her own videos for several years before formally trying her hand at music. Although she’s a high-school dropout, Kreayshawn landed a scholarship to study film at the Berkeley Digital Film Institute. During that time,…
Formed nearly a decade ago in Austin, Texas, the Sword, with its sludgy guitar work and the fantastical themes of its lyrics, is often assigned the stoner rock designation, and understandably so. But while the band certainly bears the clear influence of bands like Black Sabbath, Sleep and Led Zeppelin,…
The Uncertain Sea somehow managed to bring together a touch of math rock or prog with splintery post-punk and ’90s emo and made it compelling — think something like Mission of Burma with a country bent, written by people who grew up hearing stuff like Sunny Day Real Estate with…
It’s almost a shame when people as talented as Epoch When (aka Alex Koutsoukos) make an album as unflinchingly introspective as GRIM because it’s almost certain to not get as much attention as it deserves, which is a lot. His lyrics, which tend to be dense and challenging, are consistently…
After first emerging in 2008 and releasing a pair of mixtapes, Dom Kennedy made major waves in the rap scene with his acclaimed mixtape from 2010, From the Westside with Love. In addition to earning high praise from hip-hop’s elite, Westside garnered Kennedy a massive online following. Still staunchly independent,…
Before he gained notoriety as an MC with his 2011 studio debut Dr. Lecter, he was well respected as a New York chef (his lyrics are still garnished with references to foods of all sorts). But while he shares a profession with Raekown, another well known New York Chef, the…
Suicide Silence was supposed to take part in the Monster Energy Outbreak Tour alongside Asking Alexandria and others. But just before the tour was set to begin, Suicide Silence frontman Mitch Lucker passed away, leaving the remaining bands with a difficult and unenviable prospect of having to decide how to…
Paul Banks is best known as the charismatic frontman of Interpol, an outfit at the center of the so-called “post-punk revival” of the early 2000s. Banks’s rich and resonant voice was the perfect match for the dark atmospheres and urgency of Interpol’s music. While on tour with the band, Banks…
Death Grips was in town this past weekend at the Larimer Lounge and delivered one of the more stirring sets that Tom Murphy, who’s seen and covered more than his fair share of shows over the years, has seen recently. Tom summed up the experience thusly: “More than most bands,…
There is no one in hip hop — or any genre for that matter — who has had career ups and downs like MC/Producer extraordinaire Danny! (aka Danny Swain). He was on a Grammy Award shortlist in 2006 for Charm, critically praised for 2008’s And I Love H.E.R., he was…
The Coup is a hip-hop group that makes no bones in its critique of the system, with song titles like the now infamous and powerful, “Five Million Ways to Kill a CEO,” from its classic 2001 album, Party Music — the artwork of which originally featured members Boots Riley and…
Collin and Brandon Bordeaux have been making music together since they were kids. The two brothers, better known in local hip-hop circles as H*Wood and Kid Vegas, act as each other’s business partners, musical critics, marketing team and confidants. The former, who has returned home after four years in Los…
Earth was one of the first bands to explore the inner spaces of drone and doom metal. In its earlier phase, Earth made creative use of distortion to create dense and crushing atmospheres. Since the band regrouped close to a decade ago, the focus has been more on a textured…
Dethklok may be a virtual band, but it has somehow put out the best-selling death metal record of all time. Everyone who’s familiar with Dethklok knows that it’s the live band cognate of the popular Adult Swim series Metalocalypse. In the show, the band is the world’s seventh biggest economy…
