So I know that someone telling you to check out this ‘am-ah-zing’ new band they saw at South By Southwest Festival in Texas is akin to someone kicking your kitten and recording the entire event and posting it to Instagram with the Valencia filter and tagging you, BUT I have a great new band that I would like you to look into. Austin locals American Sharks performed almost every day over the course of the festival this year and got more and more rough and raucous with each gig. Close friends of The Sword but smacking more of The Bronx, they look like mad stoners but not the crimson-eyed, vagued out variety. The kind that have a wicked sense of humour, outrageous taste in movies and stay up well past the rest of your crew. Their debut album is available for your listening pleasure and their website is sharkspartyhard.com which is kind of more incentive to suss them out, as if I hadn’t provided you with enough smug, self-assured reasons already.
Awesome Adelaide band Hightime are celebrating their fifth birthday in April and they’ll hit the road and headline a bunch of shows to celebrate. They’re currently writing their new album so this will be their last batch of east coast shows until the new band finish the writing process and release the damn thing. Make sure you catch them at The Old Bar on Saturday April 19 with Anchors, Foxtrot and Summer Blood.
After Melbourne’s Hits and Pits Festival sold out last week, the organisers have kindly gone and announced a second night on Wednesday May 14. It’s a slightly different lineup. Strung Out will play their finest album Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues in full, Unwritten Law will once again feature their self-titled album, and Face To Face, Ten Foot Pole, Death By Stereo and Masked Intruder will join. Tickets are available now.
The Dandy Warhols are coming back to Australia. I kind of wish they’d jumped on the bandwagon and picked a classic album to play in full but hopefully we’ll get some of their best tunes out of them when they play the Corner Hotel on Tuesday August 26. It’s a pretty modest venue for the once massive band. Tickets WILL sell out.
There seems to be a lot of unrest in some of Australia’s finest young hardcore and metal bands these days. House Vs Hurricane seemed to split up really prematurely last year, just as they were reaching their peak. Now mere moments before heavily backed Perth band Saviour announced their last WA shows before splitting up (the band just got signed to UNFD locally), Sydney metalcore band Caulfield have revealed that their vocalist Mahan Shishineh will be leaving the band: “My journey ends here due to my desire to explore life outside music and being in a band,” he posted recently.
La Dispute have just released their new album Rooms Of The House to extremely complimentary reviews and the fire still burns bright for their fans who’ve gone and eaten up all the tickets for the upcoming Thursday June 12 show at the Corner. A second show is now on sale for Friday June 13. Tickets are available now.
