outside The Box Week: Dillinger Four - Civil War (4of4)

 listen to A Jingle for the Product by Dillinger Four

What is commonly defined as pop-punk seems to change a lot frequently.and it’s like Anti-Flag blindly follows its trends. What are current popular pop-punk bands, make me want to refer to Dillinger Four as political punk rock, like Anti-Flag at their prime. Only Dillinger Four (website) kept aiming for the same basic sound throughout their different releases. And with good reason. When I started to get in tot hem I would have held this high as the perfect standard for poppy punkrock music. the perfect combination between good ethics and good sound. Catchy as hell, but with the preferable punk mentality and feel to it. Thought-provoking lyrics with occasional ironic lols interweaved, but alwaus making its valid point clear.

Last fm tags as punk, punk rock, pop punk, melodic punk, minnesota 

buy their latest cd's from Fat Wreck Chords. for the rest of their discography, check their website by clicking the image above.

outside The Box Week: Atom And His Package - Hair: Debatable (3of4)

LMFAO. This is still easily the most random music I enjoy THIS much.  Just one dude (who is now a teacher in chemistry and physics), with a guitar and sequencer. While the machine automates sketchy beats, bleeps and MIDI-drums, Atom plays awkwardly upbeat punk rock guitar tunes and blurts out random and geeky lyrics. About his mother’s disappreciation for his and his friends’ black metal lifestyle, a mousache stuck to a TV-screen, how his definition of anarchy is littering, a fictional person who consists of nothing but a head with arms attached etc etc, with song titles like “I am down right amazed at what I can destroy with just a hammer”. You get the picture. The vocals often remind one of The Simpson’s Dr Frink and the overall music of an over-the-top Blink 182 mock-song. these songs are crappy/fantastic live recordings from his last show ever. Atom was also a playable character in EMOGAME.
Last Fm tags as punk, indie, experimental, electronic, rock

buy his stuff from No Idea Records, here

Outside The Box Week: Big KIds – Phone Home (2of4)

Soundtrack to the summer of 2k11! Big Kids  (website) play a smooth transition between gritty and upbeat (pop)punk rock, with raspy vocals, gritty yet cheerful guitars and rousing up-tempo drums. The vocalist favors the (Hot Water Music’s) Chuck Ragan piraty voice, that clash with lyrics which hover somewhere in between optimistic and nostalgic sentimentality, like in references to childhood or loves lost, and everything that comes with that time in your life. The guitar compositions can effortlesly tumble into melodic sounding, which feels odd as the guitar’s overall sound is quite raw –almost lo fi (cassette quality), but in a positive way!

Last fm tags as punk, punk rock, pop punk, rad, wicked 

buy their stuff here, or here

Outside The Box Week: Hot Snakes - Audit In Progress (1of4)

This is probably THE most quirky punk rock music in punx-history. Hot Snakes (site) featured members from Drive Like Jehu, and those very members went on to form The Night Marchers. in this band, and especially this album even more than their previous, they delivered very peculiar post-punk (and maybe even noise rock) influenced structures into punk rock. It’s like punk for all the Liars or The Jesus Lizard fanboys and girls and a prime example or reminder how versatile punk music can be to any die hard (up the) punx. This band is long gone but dearly missed.
Last fm tags as  post-punk, post-hardcore, punk, indie, rock

buy their stuff from Swami Records, right here

Martyrdöd – In Extremis

 listen to In Extremis by Martyrdöd

Martyrdöd (myspace) a Swedish hardcore band with a broad spectrum of black metal -influences added to their crusty metal sound. ambient and haunting metallic melodies clashing with that  stenchore OOMPH! the pitch black darkness of atmospheric black metal compliments the dark hardcore brand of crust music as . making for the most interesting sound in the latest musically progressive waves in the anarcho scene. these swedes had released a self-titled record before this one, and the album 'Sekt', more recently.
Last fm tags as crust, blackened crust, d-beat, hardcore, black metal 

click the image above to order this album or some of their shirts.

Antagonist A.D. - Old Bones Make New Blooms

 listen to ANTAGONIST AD's song Homesick

Straight edge vegan must be as awesome as metalcore, today, can possibly get. Much like Maroon and Heaven Shall Burn, Aussie band Antagonistt A.D. (myspace) blends these ideological influences with the melodic Gothenburg metal approach slapped on top of 90’s metalcore, to make an McAwesome  Delight burger. No one can deny this has been done over and over to the point of oversaturation already, even a long time ago, but good music is good music, no matter what. And this is. Give it a chance.

Last fm tags as hardcore, metalcore, new zealand, straight edge, vegan

click the image above to buy this band's merch or records

Hessian - Hessian 2011

 listen to Torch by Hessian

Another addition to the streak of belgian bands pushing the envelope! Hessian (facebook) is a metalpunk/crust-influenced hardcore band (not unlike all pigs must die, trap them, cursed, black breath or rise and fall). The band features the drummer from The Black Heart Rebellion/Kingdom and the vocalist from Losing Streak (RIP), for as far as I can link the members to other musical projects. Strangely, it’s the vocals that first kept me at bay. They worked very well in Losing Streak, which was an oldschool hardcore band, because of their angry and raspy sound, but I felt that made them fall through the cracks of this crafty music. Now that I’ve seen them a few times and listened to the entire record, I feel they’re just as much an essential part of the music as the thoight drums (DAJ-JUM)  and eclectic metal guitars. I became a fan! Give it a few spins before you decide you’d never be.
Last fm tags as metallic hardcore, real metalcore, hardcore, metal, punk

click the image above to buy their merch!

out of the box on sunday XIII

(right click to save as...)

 listen to Aesop Rock's Big Bang to get an idea of his sound. or the music video at the bottom of this post...

Aesop Rock (myspace) is Ian Matthias Bavitz. both the most inspiring musician as the most inspiring lyricist. hip-hop with symbolism pouring out of it, which makes it sound like every verse has got an entire album-worth of subject matter in it.  I often wonder if he, himself, has any idea what he's saying, at the precise moment he's uttering the words. the foundation of electronic music or usually very peculiar and the random spoken word samples scattered all around. The Ghosts Of Barbary Coast is a project made in support for Jeremy Fish's artwork-series (Mr Fish also made the artwork for the 2007 album None Shall Pass and the music video below). the name of the song is Tomorrow Morning, but the correct tag for it is the name for the song on cooperation with the art.
Last fm tags as hip-hop, underground hip-hop, hip hop, rap,underground hip hop

buy his stuff right here

Alpinist - Lichtlærm

 listen to AIDT by Alpinist

German band Alpinist (Myspace) is the pinnacle of all melodic crust music. With influences from dark hardcore and screamo, this release will have all kinds of  sentiments soaring right past you from every direction, sometimes within a single song, each so vividly represented that barely any will leave you uncompelled. Angry as hell, pitch black desperation, reflective skepticism, .... This record is an emotional battlefield which eventually results in a bloody massacre.

Last fm tags as neocrust, crust, screamo, hardcore, dark hardcore

click the image above to e-mail the band about buying merch and/or records!

Departures - When Losing Everything Is Everything You’ve Ever Wanted

Departures (facebook page/old post) is back with a brand new release! Where they displayed a fresh mix, between the passionate and melodic hardcore blended with up-tempo hardcore punk, on their previous record, they continu to only scratch the surface of those two (almost contradictory) styles and dig deeper into a self-sculpted compromise inbetween them. No introverted ambient yet instrumentally minimalistic intermezzo’s, while the vocalist yells something whiny and catchy, to build up into a climax of the already conspicuous emotion that this musictrend is soaking in, like other bands would. But a more straight-forward punk rock approach. Beautifully crafted, without beating around the bush.

Last fm tags as glasgow,hardcore,punk rock scotland,ukhc

click the image above, for your chance to buy the band's stuff