Category Archives: reviews

When I hear that a group of musicians first got together in a Yes tribute band, the last thing I expect is anything heavy.  The first ten seconds of the new ARZ album, Solomon’s Key, completely changed that opinion for … Continue reading →

My first thought when I heard Queensryche was releasing another compilation album was “christ, didn’t they just do this fifteen minutes ago?” Okay, it was more like four years earlier, but the Capitol Records 12-track Classic Masters contained no new … Continue reading →

A fractal is a geometric shape that has a fine structure at arbitrarily small scales, and is too irregular to be easily described in traditional Euclidean geometric language. That’s also a decent description of the latest release from the Bay-area … Continue reading →

The first single from Queensryche’s Here in the Now Frontier album was the first song on the album, “Sign of the Times”, the somewhat political/societal rocker written by Chris DeGarmo. (This is not to be confused with the 2007 greatest … Continue reading →

The CD-single for the song “Hollow Years” came out to support the album Falling Into Infinity, and contains two versions of the song “Hollow Years”, the album version and a radio edit. That’s not what interests me about this CD, … Continue reading →

Well, here’s a tough sell. How do you compile a greatest hits album for a band that only has one arguable “hit”? And furthermore, how do you sell a compilation album when a band’s core demographic are fanatic completists who … Continue reading →

When an album is in the making for almost two decades, and the band goes through an almost 100% lineup change, serious questions emerge about the final product. And this means that most reviews of said product aren’t about the … Continue reading →

Ugh. For Rush’s sophomore effort on Atlantic records, they slid further into mediocrity with more standard hard rock numbers, an unusually bright and bland production, and a general lack of noteworthiness that got them an album that somehow peaked at … Continue reading →

MARS stands for MacAlpine Aldridge Rock Sarzo, and it’s a fine little example of only-in-the-Eighties guitar rock, courtesy of Shrapnel records. They’re best known as the small indie label that put out guitar super-genius Tony MacAlpine’s first album out to … Continue reading →

It was all the rage at the time. It was what made Winger into a hit-producing machine. It was simple: take a couple of total shredmaster ultra wizards on guitar and bass, slap an obscure drummer behind them, and put … Continue reading →