New Albums - Page 170

Level 42 is giving a nod to their past with a new EP entitled Sirens. The six-song album, mixed and produced by John Morales, is firmly rooted in the retro dance format. “Back in 1980 and 1981 when we started out, we were very much a club band,” bassist Mark King told the audience at a recent gig at Indigo2....

Kill Devil Hill has released their sophomore album, Revolution Rise. Following up on their self-titled debut, the effort dishes up a variety of groove metal with southern and grunge tinges. The record shows the band’s chemistry from touring, says bassist Rex Brown. “It’s collective, but there’s more diversity on this one than the last one within the same confines of...

When you play bass for more than one prominent metal band, you’re bound to make friends with some of the best heavy musicians out there. That’s precisely the case for bassist Jeff Hughell, who has recruited his friends to guest on his first full length solo album, Chaos Labyrinth. Hughell, who lays down the low end for death metal outfits...

The metal juggernauts of Motörhead have released their 21st studio album, Aftershock, a 14-track collection of hard-hitting, in-your-face rock that has been the staple of their sound for nearly 40 years. Led by bassist/vocalist Lemmy Kilmister, the trio’s latest effort offers up a healthy mix of punk and metal with songs like “Heartbreaker” and “End of Time” while also getting...

Seasick Steve is back with his sixth studio album, Hubcap Music. Steve named the album because “cus I play some songs on a guitar made out of two hubcaps and a garden hoe, and cus I couldn’t think of nothing else.” The new album was “recorded on a tape recorder, on old fashion tape, mixed on tape and the vinyl...

For Gov’t Mule’s tenth studio album, the band decided to do something never done before. Shout!, which is their debut on the Blue Note Label, is a two-disc set. Disc one includes the band’s eleven brand new songs, while disc two features an all-star lineup of vocalists performing their interpretations of the band’s new songs. The special guests on disc...

San Francisco-based bassist Aaron Germain has released Chance, a jazz album with influences from all over the world. Germain enlisted musicians from San Francisco and France to create songs ranging from Senegalese Mbalax to Vietnamese traditional folk. While each song’s style varies, the album is balanced between electric and acoustic compositions. Germain lays down the low end on his upright...

Paul McCartney has returned with his first album of all new material in six years, appropriately entitled New. While the title track actually carries Macca’s classic sound, the 71-year old bassist’s latest effort features textures and songs that are both familiar and foreign to his signature style. McCartney worked with four producers – Mark Ronson, Paul Epworth, Giles Martin and...

The surge of jazz fusion in the ’70s produced some incredible music, especially the work of the virtuosic Brecker Brothers. Led by trumpeter Randy Brecker and saxophonist Michael Brecker, their self-titled debut blew listeners away with an electric sound that melded genres and spawned the classic track “Some Skunk Funk.” “When the band started back in the day, the original...

Korn has released The Paradigm Shift, the band’s eleventh studio album and the first to feature guitarist Brian “Head” Welch since 2003. Blending elements of their old and new styles, bassist Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu says the mix is the best of both worlds. “The new record is everything we’ve wanted to be,” Fieldy shared. “Everybody is doing what they want...

King Crimson’s Tony Levin, the Aristocrats’ Marco Minneman and Dream Theater’s Jordan Rudess teamed up to make a prog rock album of epic proportions, appropriately entitled Levin Minnemann Rudess. The project started with producer Scott Schorr and Levin, who provides bass, Chapman Stick, and cello to the effort. “The producer of the album, Scott Schorr, was looking to do a...

Rush has released a 7-disc box set of their studio albums from Atlantic Records including a remixed version of their controversial 2002 album Vapor Trails. The Studio Albums 1989-2007 brings together Presto, Roll The Bones, Counterparts and Test For Echo, as well as their covers EP Feedback and 2007’s Snakes & Arrows. Each of the albums reproduces the original artwork...