Subscribe
Heavy Metal isn’t usually my go-to genre of music when I turn on my iPod — you have to be in a certain mood for metal. When I do feel the urge for the heavy stuff The Charred Walls of The Damned is at the top of my playlist. The band consists of Steve DiGiorgio, Tim “Ripper” Owens, Jason Suecof and Richard Christy (yes, the same Richard Christy of from The Howard Stern Show). Christy explained on The Howard Stern Show that the band’s name derived from a series of radio prank calls he and Sal Governale made to a Tradio show on a Christian radio station. In mentioning the pranks they had been receiving, the host describes how he prays for the pranksters and will “save their soul” and to be “saved by God’s grace and not in the devil’s hell where you’d be put in your nails in the charred walls of the damned”.
Music Pick: Charred Walls of The Damned
Everlast – Love, War & the Ghost of Whitey Ford
Erik Schrody, better known by his stage name Everlast, is an Irish-American rapper and singer-songwriter, best known for his hit “What It’s Like“, and for his unique genre-crossing mix of hip-hop and acoustic-based rock music. Love, War and the Ghost of Whitey Ford is the fifth solo album released by Everlast. The album was released on September 23, 2008. So why am I reviewing it now?
The album went fairly un-noticed or reviewed by the mainstream media, which is unfortunate because it may be Everlast’s greatest work. With the exception of opening track “Kill The Emperor,” the album largely abandons any hip-hop influence one might expect, instead delivering dark tales and gritty personal musings all threaded together by Everlast’s baritone crooning and a gang of live instruments.
Asher Roth – Asleep In The Bread Aisle
One look and listen to Asher Roth and it’s easy to agree that he is not your average cookie-cutter hip-hop artist. Don’t expect Asher Roth to rhyme about guns, ghettos and brag about how rich he is. He’s just a 23 year old college kid who grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, who admits the first album he ever bought was a Dave Matthews Band cd.
Roth finally discovered hip-hop in 1998 “When I heard the Annie sample with Jay-Z….When I wrote my ‘A Milli’ freestyle, that was me listening to 10 years of hip hop and not relating to it at all. Like, Damn I don’t sell coke. Damn, I don’t have cars or 25-inch rims. I don’t have guns. I finally got to a point where I had the confidence to do this thing myself, and I was making music for me. And it turns out, a lot of people feel the same way I do.“
Royksopp – Junior
Junior is the 3rd studio album from Norwegian electronic music duo Röyksopp. The word Röyksopp is a stylized version of the Norwegian word for the puffball mushroom, “røyksopp” or literally, “smoke mushroom”. This is their first album release for the year. The group plans to follow up “Junior” with “Senior” which is slated for release in the latter-half of 2009.
I first discovered Röyksopp when the HBO series Entourage featured a remixed version of their song “What Else Is There”
