Strikeforce Diablo - S/T EP

Release Date: 1999

★★★★★ Tracks:

All Four, Pussies

More great hardcore from Gainesville. When will the hard stuff be hip enough to listen to again? Until then no one’s going to pursue it seriously. Age has made us soft. But no matter, while we wait for the music industry to grow a pair we’ve got four tracks and ten minutes worth of pure, power-chord driven, crash symbol pounding, say it aloud with me; “SCREAMO”. Now scream for joy as I post a free download link for the EP.

Download Free EP (Download winrar or unrar (Mac) if you don’t have an uncompressor)

I promise you this shit will rock your socks off, even those thick wool ones you’ve got ready for the winter. Twelve years after its release and this is still my go to record when I need that extra shot of adrenaline right to my veins. Seriously, queue this up on your headphones and take a stroll around town: NO ONE WILL FUCK WITH YOU.

The Strokes - Angles

Release Date: 18.03.2011

★★★★★ Tracks:

Taken For a Fool
Life is Simple in the Moonlight

First Impressions of Earth was a spectacular letdown, but because the first two Strokes records are so great I'll continue to give them chances. Most of us were amped for the first single we would hear in five years, and in some ways it shares commonalities with our favorite Strokes songs; the distorted vocals are back, the chorus is great and Fab is drumming with the same purpose he always has. But, where at one point the intricate weaving of duel guitars was the group's strength, they've developed a habit of trying to fit too many ideas into 3-minute pop tracks. The riffs throughout the intro and verse for "Under Cover of Darkness" are so exaggerated they undermine the overall quality of what could be a great song.

A few weeks after hearing that first single, but before the release of Angles, the Strokes performed on Saturday Night Live. They opened with a performance of the single they had been pushing for the past month, but the highlight was their closer. Always saving the best for last, the Strokes played the album's last track, “Life is Simple in the Moonlight.” It's one of their most unique song since Is This It. A ballad by Strokes standards, the melody flows naturally, and the restrained solo by Valensi hearkens to the discipline they harnessed in their prime. It surprises me in the least it’s one of two Casablancas solo compositions on Angles.

So there was hope again.

Unfortunately, after countless times streaming Angles upon its release, nothing matched the quality of “Life is Simple in the Moonlight.” One of the few highlights is “Taken For a Fool,” the closest thing you’ll find to Is This It or Room on Fire. The Tom Petty influenced “Two Kinds of Happiness” is surprisingly enjoyable but loses focus during its course. And for the few solid songs there are equal duds. “You’re So Right” follows the awful “Juicebox” approach to mechanical rock’n’roll, “Games” is something between a New Order and Madonna mash-up, with awful execution, and then there’s “Metabolism”, some sort of waltzy-gothy-indie concoction. The rest fall into comfortable mediocrity

The Strokes have gathered a lot of great ideas for an EP’s worth of material, but when stretched unnaturally over ten songs, Angles is disjointed, lacking a clear trajectory. By choosing "Under Cover of Darkness" as the album's first single The Strokes can't say they didn't prepare us adequately.

The Strokes - Room on Fire

Release Date: 28.10.2003

★★★★★ Tracks:

Most of Them

Room on Fire is the perfect follow-up record to Is This It as far as I’m concerned. Why fix something that ain’t broke? Fuck all that noise about evolving and maturing -- the second time around should simply be about the continuation of writing great songs. And we get another collection of brilliant guitar-rock here; some of the riffs are even more intricate than anything on Is This It. A perfect example is the album’s second single, “Reptilia,” and The Strokes highlight as much with long camera shots on the fret work by both Albert Hammond, Jr. and Nick Valensi in the music video.

A few of my favorite Strokes songs are here. “12:51" is where were first introduced to the keyboard-effect Valensi implements throughout Room on Fire. One of my favorite traits about Casablancas as a lyricist is the humor and sarcasm he often includes in his songs, but he might even be fooling himself when he sings “Never needed anybody / Never needed nobody” on “Thin Line Between Love and Hate,” even if the bright two-chord progression suggests happiness. “Automatic Stop” features Hammond, Jr. pitching into the songwriting process for the first time. And as with Is This It The Strokes save the best for last in “I Can’t Win,” a simple little track about accepting failure.

Mila Kunis and Eva Mendes either trying to get their careers off the ground or fans of good music. Or both.

The Strokes - Is This It

Release Date: 30.07.2001

★★★★★ Tracks:

All of Them

In 2001 my record collection was running on fumes. Most of that great music I had collected from the 90’s had been destroyed or stolen. All that was left was a tattered lot of punk and emo records, most of which were perpetuating my frequent foul moods. The mainstream landscape, being inundated by shitty “bling”-rap, bubblegum pop and agro hard-rock, was even worse. MTV was dying, the radio had been dead for years -- my one true hobby was becoming warily dull.

But then, in one of MTV’s last redeeming moments, a buzzworthy video unlike anything they had played in over a decade was aired. The quintet, ragged and dirty and appearing on a stage resembling classic bandstands or Ed Sullivan shows, seem a bit aloof, a bit distracted, some might even say a bit lifeless. But they looked cool as shit. And once Julian Casablancas begins with his distorted voice and nonchalant cadence, you realized rock’n’roll hadn’t been this danceable in decades. Nodding your head as Albert Hammond, Jr. throws us back with a great solo and Casblancas comes in with one last chorus -- “Last Nite” was a reminder music is supposed to be fun. In songs like “The Modern Age” and “Someday” Casablancas tells tales of heartbreak similarly to most of the sappy shit I was listening to, but he does it with sincerity instead of superficial earnestness, attitude instead of whiny self-pity. Perhaps The Strokes' strongest trait, the guitar interplay between Hammond, Jr. and Nick Valensi isn't necessarily masterful, but it's incredibly melodic and expertly written, my favorites of which can be heard on “Soma” and “Take It or Leave It.”

A whole new realm of music opened for me with the release of Is This It. I rediscovered a lot of great 70’s rock they had borrowed from. It turned out music didn’t need constant drum beats, hard rock breakdowns, or electronic blips and beats after all. Although, as Chavez stated in his Albert Hammond, Jr. solo post, The Strokes aren’t one of the most original bands, they completely reinvigorated the sound they pay homage to. I hadn't had that much fun listening to a record since being a teenager. I think most everyone felt the same way, and perhaps it wasn’t pretentious himpsterism that set The Strokes and indie revivalism in New York City in motion, but a conjuring of excitement for good music again.

Easily one of the best records of the past twenty years.

(Guided by Voices appearance in this video for extra hip points)

Strung Out - Twisted by Design

Release Date: 05.05.1998

★★★★★ Tracks:

Deville
Paperwalls

After Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues it would take two years for Strung Out to release another full length album, and I was about out the door and on my way to college when it arrived. The 90's punk rock I spent a lot of my teenage years listening to was left behind, but nostalgia still found me shelling out $15 for the occasional Fat Wreck-chords release. Twisted by Design further emancipates Strung Out from the Bad Religion/NOFX copycat moniker by the group's continuing slide towards pop-punk. That I still carry this with me some thirteen years later must say it still holds up decently, or maybe I'm just a punk-rocker at heart... as I type this in slacks and collared shirt on my lunch break. “Exhumation of Virginia Madison” and “Deville” are the best representations of the album as a whole, songs which might call to mind early Blink-182, but the highlight is “Paperwalls.” Take a song about relationship struggles and put it in the hands of sophomoric Fat Wreck-chords punk-rockers, you are begging for a piece of shit, but Strung Out defies the odds as they do with most of Twisted by Design.

Strung Out - Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues

Release Date: 23.04.1996

★★★★★ Tracks:

Solitaire

I think Strung Out was my favorite band for about two weeks in my first year of high school. This was probably only because all of the other Fat Wreck-Chords bands like NOFX, Lagwagon, Face to Face, were claimed by my other friends, naturally forcing me to pick a group no one else had. Truth is Strung Out’s first album wasn’t very good, but when Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues came out the group added some pop sensibilities to the trashy, metallic punk-rock they ripped from their influences (Circle Jerks, Husker Du, Bad Religion). Poppier, catcher, crisper, the group that some ancient months ago was my favorite group had a legitmate record, at least as far as underground skate-punk was concerned. There are some songs that surprisingly hold up very well, one of which I still regularly stuff in my playlists -- “Solitaire,” I had always though to be a simple little love song, might actually be a somewhat cryptic account of first-hand struggles with drug addiction.

The Stryder - Jungle City Twitch

Release Date: 23.07.2002

★★★★★ Tracks:
Summer Coat
This Is the Time

The Stryder was in heavy rotation when I first met my wife. And she must have found it more silly than stupid as I half-sang/half-rapped along to the ultra-cheesy lyrics sung on songs like “Crook” (Let me pat you down / Are you wired? / Don’t you make a sound / Were you hired?), or “Billy” (And you’ve been trying way too hard and got too much to prove / When all you gotta do is do the things you gotta do), or “Summer Coat” (It’s the first day of summer and I’ve already worn my winter coat) because she's still with me today. As I sit here now and play Jungle City Twitch I can’t help but feel embarrassed knowing the few readers here will laugh their asses off listening to this clip, all the while still helplessly digging the thrashy punk rock, amateur rap and boy band fusion The Stryder attempts to hilariously mash together.