Operation Ivy

QUICK BIO FROM WIKI

Operation Ivy was a ska punk band formed in Berkeley, California, often being credited as the founders of the 90s punk revival in California. They are also well-known as one of the earliest ska-core bands, a genre that fuses elements of hardcore with ska punk. The band consisted of Jesse Michaels (lead vocals), Tim Armstrong (credited as "Lint") (guitar, backing vocals), Matt Freeman (credited as Matt McCall) (bass, backing vocals), and Dave Mello (Drums, backing vocals). Although Operation Ivy had little mainstream success during their career, they had a large underground following and influenced many bands of the 90s punk revival. Their only studio album, Energy, has been cited as one of the greatest punk rock albums of all time. The band's name, previously abandoned by another Gilman band, Isocracy, was derived from the Operation Ivy series of nuclear tests.

Review of Energy coming soon!

The White Striples News January 2010

The White Stripes are set to release their first ever official live album.

The band will release the 16-song record on CD and vinyl on March 15 to accompany the regular DVD release of Canadian tour documentary Under Great White Northern Lights.

Following its deluxe release last year, the Emmett Malloy-directed film will be released on DVD on the same day.

The duo's first live album draws on recordings taken from the same 2007 tour as the documentary, which say Jack and Meg White play across Canada.

The album's tracklisting is as follows:

'Let's Shake Hands'
'Black Math'
'Little Ghost'
'Blue Orchid'
'The Union Forever'
'Ball And Biscuit'
'Icky Thump'
'I’m Slowly Turning Into You'
'Jolene'
'300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues'
'We Are Going to Be Friends'
'I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself'
'Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn'
'Fell In Love With A Girl'
'When I Hear My Name'
'Seven Nation Army'

AFI - Crash Love

Eighteen years into their career, AFI have made their first rock album. No fancy genre terms, no elctronics or maudlin' 'emo' lyricism, just hard-hitting, blood-rushing, guitar heavy rock. Frontman, the Morrisey-aping Dave Havok, is a vocal force with less screaming and greater alto depthh. The instrumentation has mutated since 2006's Decemberunderground; compressed drums squeeze out of End Transmission, matched with guitarist Jade Puget's complex yet irresistible riffs. Unimpressive lyrics of "the broken radio was playing suicide" aside, it's near pop perfection, only exceeded by Too Shy To Scream, which has an intro frighteningly similar to Adam & The Ants' Goody Two Shoes, being a clapalong rhythmfest with chugging guitars. Veronica Sawyer is a 90s inspired love letter paired to music made for driving around town with a broken heart.

Lyrically Havok has embraced a greater outward outlook as there's less introspection and louder speak of the world at large. Medicate is slick, catchy and polished for a shiny pop rock gleam, skimming the surface of finding solace in numbness, whether it is literal substance abuse or otherwise. I Am Trying Very Hard To Be Here is a comtemptuous dig at celebrity with "So lose your past/ I'm sure you'll find it's in the way all the time". Sacrilege touches on the death of religion in a dogmatic age, only to have its raging flow stiffed by the perfunctory balladeering of Darling, I Want To Destroy You.

Crash Love will surely cause a ruckus among the dedicated with cries of "SELL-OUT" or "Punk is Dead", but AFI have transitioned from punk to goth and now to rock seamlessly with appealing results.

8/10