Album Review: Muscle & Bone- "Peace & Light"

 

     2014 seems to be the year that 90's emo is making a huge comeback.  This is partially due to awesome young bands making new music reminiscent of the sound that started the genre some 20 years ago.  Muscle & Bone's debut LP Peace & Light is yet another stellar emo album released this year that combines both new and old influences, giving a fresh take on an older sound. 

Album Review: Old Gray / Tiny Moving Parts Split 7" EP

     From looking at each band's discography separately, it would be naive to think the Old Gray/Tiny Moving Parts split would be anything but devastating.  In the past year, both bands have made great strides in popularity.  Although that brings along tons of anticipation for new material, it also has critics examining such material under a microscope, determining if new releases are a step in the right or wrong direction.  Even with that pressure, this split further secures Old Gray's and Tiny Moving Parts' spots in the genre.  The bands combined their talent and promise into one release that is one of the best splits we've heard all year.  With an underlying theme of anxiety and death running through these four tracks, the bands address similar situations from different perspectives, both sonically and emotionally.  Even so, the subtleties in each track compliment each other impressively well. Let's look at the split track-by-track.

Show Review: Skate and Surf Festival 2014

When the landmark pop-punk and hardcore festival Skate and Surf announced that it would take place for the first time in almost ten years last year, the announcement was met with overwhelming support. That support turned to jeers, however, as the even was marred by a location change that proved to be both a logistical and organizational nightmare, a weekend forecast that simply didn’t co-operate with an outdoor festival, and a rumors of heavy merch cut percentages causing several bands to refuse to sell merchandise at the festival. I was fairly critical of last year’s Skate and Surf, saying that the one saving grace was that I also was able to go to Six Flags each morning before the festival grounds opened (and Fall Out Boy playing an awesome set in the pouring rain didn’t hurt).

So when the festival was announced as returning in 2014, I made a promise to myself. Despite having gone to every New Jersey area Bamboozle/Skate and Surf since 2008, I would only go to Skate and Surf 2014 if Midtown reunited. Well, it turns out festival organizer John D’Esposito got Gabe and the gang back together for not one but two sets on the weekend. As a result, I decided to make the trek to Asbury Park for the second day of the two-day festival. The festival suffered yet another location change this year, moving from Middletown to Asbury Park, but yet again the location change ended up benefiting the festival in the long run. Moving the festival back to Asbury Park allowed Skate and Surf to go back to its roots and allowed the fans to appreciate the festival’s legacy. 

Keep Calm Presents: An Interview with The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die

Roughly two months ago (late March 2014), Keep Calm sat down with The World is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die.  What started as the usual interview turned into a half hour long conversation, addressing everything from preparing for their European tour (which just ended), new material in the works, to how they feel about being the term "emo revival." Huge thanks to Greg Horbel and Chris Zizzamia for taking some time to talk to Keep Calm and making this one of the most entertaining interviews I've been a part of.

~Madison

Emo Hall of Fame Inductees

Longtime listeners of the radio show that accompanies this blog may know that in the second ever Keep Calm and Carry On broadcast, Donald Wagenblast inducted twenty songs into the Emo Hall of Fame. This concept was created as a way to showcase some of the songs that have shaped the emo genre.

Here is his first class of twenty inductees from the fall of 2011: