Music

Album Review: Checking Out Seether’s Holding Onto Strings Better Left to Fray

Published

13 years ago

May 20, 2011

Being the big grunge fan that I am, I don’t have much rock music that I can really get behind these days. Seether, the post-grunge trio from South Africa, has given me some reasons to turn my radio on the past decade, so I decided to check out their latest effort, Holding Onto Strings Better Left to Fray. Let’s just say I was very pleased with this decision.

The album kicks off with one of my favorites, “Fur Cue“, this song sets a great tone for the album with its thick, heavy riffs and prominent bass lines. Shaun Morgan’s great blend of clean and guttural vocals really shine through on this album. This blend of agonizing screams and crisp vocals has always made Shaun one of my favorite vocalists on the rock scene today. “Country Song, the radio jingle many of you probably know by now, is a very fun track and seems like a sequel to “Fake It“.

There are a couple short comings on the album. Songs such as “Here and Now” and “No Resolution” just seem to get boring and really just have a basic filler track feel to them. “Desire For Need” is my personal favorite on the album. Its classic, heavy, and seethed with some vicious lyrics. I had that one on repeat for a while.

The Final Word: This is a solid album that I would definitely recommend picking up. It isn’t their best work, but in twelve years of rock, Seether has yet to disappoint me. Pick this one up people.

Bill-Frye

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Music

“He Walks By Night” – Listen to a Brand New John Carpenter Song NOW!

Published

2 weeks ago

April 9, 2024

John Squires

It’s a new day, and you’ve got new John Carpenter to listen to. John Carpenter, Daniel Davies and Cody Carpenter have released the new track He Walks By Night this morning, the second single off their upcoming album Lost Themes IV: Noir, out May 3 on Sacred Bones Records.

Lost Themes IV: Noir is the latest installment in a series that sees Carpenter releasing new music for John Carpenter movies that don’t actually exist. The first Lost Themes was released in 2015, followed by Lost Themes II in 2016 and Lost Themes III: Alive After Death in 2021.

Sacred Bones previews, “It’s been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that would become Lost Themes, his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood’s great second acts. Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. With Lost Themes IV: Noir, they’ve struck gold again, this time mining the rich history of the film noir genre for inspiration.

“Since the first Lost Themes, John has referred to these compositions as “soundtracks for the movies in your mind.” On the fourth installment in the series, those movies are noirs. Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes these songs “noirish” is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone.

“The trio’s free-flowing chemistry means Lost Themes IV: Noir runs like a well-oiled machine—the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John’s own Christine. It’s a chemistry that’s helped power one of the most productive stretches of John’s creative life, and Noir proves that it’s nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.”

You can pre-save Lost Themes IV: Noir right now! And listen to the new track below…