EVERY AVENUE are one of the many young pop-rock bands that Fearless Records has added to its roster in the past year. While a majority of these bands know how to write catchy songs rather well, they’ve often taken a beating due to the fact that all of their competition is on the same label. [...]

Matt caught up with EIGHTEEN VISIONS earlier this Spring for a brief chat. The band is on the verge of releasing their brand new, self-titled full-length, which is posed to be the group’s most melodic, arena-rockin’ affair yet. If you’re a sucker for great choruses, then I’m sure you already know what makes EIGHTEEN VISIONS [...]

KILLING CALIFORNIA – Bones & Sand (Basement): SoCal’s KILLING CALIFORNIA treat their guitars like liquid fire, spraying a revved up sound in all directions on this six song EP. Fast and grizzled, these guys love old-school hardcore punk like their labelmates BULLET TREATMENT and VULTURES UNITED. The vocals could use some more punch, but maybe that’s because the fierce guitars steal all the spotlight.

TRENCHES – The Tide Will Swallow Us Whole (Solid State): boomCRASH. BOOMcrash. TRENCHES’ epic mid-tempo progressive metal/hardcore sound hits with the weight of a mile-long concrete slab falling on a singular grape. The DEFTONES wish they could record music with this much pressure. When then prog element to this band takes over, songs wander and churn with deliberation, and the smothering presence declines. That’s expected, and probably a relief, since it allows lead vocalist Jimmy Ryan (ex-HASTE THE DAY) to shine. Rare is the modern record worthy of being called intimidating.

FASTER FASTER – Hopes & Dreams (Oort): There’s a description of this release on Interpunk that goes “clean, clever pop/punk,” and it couldn’t be more dead-on. Georgia’s FASTER FASTER are as contemporary as it gets in sound – a mixture of FALL OUT BOY, MAYDAY PARADE, THE ACADEMY IS, and so forth, where every song is seemingly about the opposite sex, and in a smug, disarming kind of way. No doubt, the musicianship is solid, and the recording quality is superb, but memorability comes in short supply.

Members of A LIFE ONCE LOST and MOTHER OF MERCY have turned up in a new metal/hardcore band named LAYIN’ WASTE. Three ultra-heavy songs can be streamed on their MySpace page.

- Kinda reminds me of ADAMANTIUM. Oh the brutality.

It looks like State of Mind might have jumped the gun on announcing a purported split between Long Island bands CRIME IN STEREO and THE BACK UP PLAN. The label clarified the situation today with the following:

“Instead of doing the Back Pp Plan / Crime in Stereo split, we’ll be releasing a Back Up Plan Old Ghosts record [...]

Right before The Back Up plan called it quits in 2004 they had just short of a full-length written and recorded in Jeff’s basement for pre-production towards their next record. A lot of the songs never had vocals added to them or written for them at all for that matter. But they are now in the process of finishing these songs so we can get this record out by early next year as planned. Tentatively we’re looking at seven songs that never saw the light of day, two b-sides from Dearest Whomever, and the original demo to complete this release.”

Featuring dudes who have played in DISBAND, WE VERSUS THE SHARK, THE ARROGANT SONS OF BITCHES, CINEMECHANICA, and BOMB THE MUSIC INDUSTRY!, PEGASUSES-XL truly represent a cornucopia of musical influences. The band’s music is sometimes based in synthetic electro-punk, sometimes based in frantic post-punk, and most of the times just plain weird. The Antiphon is [...]

There has always been a communal aspect of music and at Pastepunk we don’t see why interviews should be any different. That is why we enlisted a writer, Mark Jourdian, and contributor, Virgil Dickerson [Suburban Home Records & Distribution] to team up and interview the band NADA SURF. Jourdian is a new fan, but Dickerson [...]

1. Last week I posted a link to an interview with Alex Dunne of CRIME IN STEREO that was done for Alternative Press. In the interview, Dunne has some not-so-nice words for Bill Wilson, owner of Blackout! Records. Wilson responded to some of the accusations, and Altpress amended the original version of the story to include his rebuttal, which you can now see here. So much drama.

2. In less serious news, I bought a new external hard drive that I think is trying to lull me to sleep. It’s a Maxtor One Touch model that has a pearl white glowing light in the front that expands and contracts like an ocean wave. if I stare at it for too long, my mouth gets droopy and my eyes fixate on the glow.

3. Last election cycle, I mused about the misfortune about not living in a battleground state. I take back the use of the word misfortune. Any day now I’m going to hear an ad that’s going to say “Congressional liberals want to bring the VAT to the United States from Europe, just because they can.” Barf.

4. Hot Topic this week launched their online music store/portal Shockhound.com. The logo features a dog with an open mouth and a lightning bolt coming towards it (or is it away from the mouth, as if the dog was spitting electricity?). Yep.

5. There’s some chatter that CAVE IN has recorded a new four song EP. Let’s hope that’s a go.