SPOD
Superfrenz
(Valve/MGM)
7.5/10
Sydney electro hip-hop nerd Spod hasn’t let losing most of this album to hard-drive suicide get him down. His titular ‘super friends’, who organised a fundraiser to reconstruct the entire album from scratch, have made this follow-up to ‘Taste The Radness’ possible. And thank Zeus they did, because ‘Superfrenz’ contains some Spodly messages that are just too important to go unheeded.
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SKIPPING GIRL VINEGAR
Sift The Noise
(Popboomerang/MGM)
7/10
Remember that song ‘Happy Birthday Helen’ by Things of Stone & Wood? Well, Skipping Girl Vinegar, with their earthy, pleasantly Australian sound, remind me a bit of that band. Not surprising then that former TOSAW frontman Greg Arnold had a hand in producing ‘Sift The Noise’, the debut album from these Melbournites.
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JACKSON JACKSON
Tools For Survival
(Virgin/EMI)
4/10
My biggest criticism of Jackson Jackson is that their albums always appear patchy. It was noticeable on their first album, ‘The Fire Is on the Bird’; a few great songs (‘Eliza’) were clouded with others that simply weren’t that enjoyable.
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KEANE
Perfect Symmetry
(Universal)
7/10
Apprehension filled the room as ‘Perfect Symmetry’ was swallowed by the CD player. Please don’t let this be shit, I begged silently. There is nothing more disappointing than absolutely loving a song, as I do with ‘Spiralling’, only to find the album that spawned it is a dud. It’s like meeting a sexy, charming, hilarious boy only to find out his friends are paedophiles - it somehow diminishes the love for the opening act.
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ENSLAVED
Vertebrae
(Nuclear Blast/Riot)
9/10
It’s been an interesting journey watching Norway’s Enslaved slowly transform from the traditional black metal band that shared a split EP with Emperor way back in 1993 to the progressive black metal equivalent of Opeth that they are today.
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THE AMITY AFFLICTION
Severed Ties
(Boomtown/Staple)
8.5/10
Hardcore and metalcore are genres that have gone from strength to strength in recent times. But in an ever-growing genre, it is hard to find music that is unique and different. Every now and then though, there is a record that blows your mind.
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