Rush are the latest legendary rock band to get their own pinball machine. Stern Pinball announced that their first machine of 2022 will be themed around the iconic prog act, sharing a short teaser video featuring a list of featured songs. Although a mockup design for the machine and play field have yet to be revealed, the teaser does depict an impressive CGI rendering of the Fly By Night owl — the kind of graphics one would expect to see on a modern pinball machine as you’re racking up points. Most importantly, the video reveals at least 17 songs that will be featured in the new game — a large playlist compared to other band-themed pinball machines. Fans and players will hear classic tracks such as “Tom Sawyer,” “Spirit of the Radio,” and “Limelight” alongside deeper cuts like “Subdiv...
Listen via Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Pocket Casts | Radio Public | RSS STYX’s James “JY” Young catches up with Kyle Meredith to talk about Crash of the Crown, a socially reflective new LP from the Chicago-born rock band. Advertisement Related Video The guitarist takes us through an album that musically resonates with every era of the band, and Tommy Shaw’s lyrics that show a responsibility to lead listeners in a positive direction while singing about some of the atrocities of the past few years. Young also reflects on his own playing, how his guitar furthers the songs’ stories, and his early fandom for Jimi Hendrix. The two also discuss this year being the 40th anniversary of Paradise Theatre and how it still speak...
<span class="localtime" data-ltformat="F j, Y | g:ia" data-lttime="2021-04-23T04:00:11+00:00“>April 23, 2021 | 12:00am ET The Mars Volta have unearthed Landscape Tantrums, which contains unreleased material from the sessions for their 2003 debut album, De-Loused in the Comatorium. Stream it below via Apple Music or Spotify. The eight-track collection is part of La Realidad De Los Sueños, an 18-LP vinyl box set containing the Texas prog-rock band’s remastered discography that sold out immediately after its announcement in early March. De-Loused in the Comatorium was produced by the renowned Rick Rubin with guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López, who formed The Mars Volta with singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala after they both quit At the Drive-In in 2001. The...
<span class="localtime" data-ltformat="F j, Y | g:ia" data-lttime="2021-04-20T18:45:52+00:00“>April 20, 2021 | 2:45pm ET As cliché as it sounds to say, The Mars Volta were truly a one-of-a-kind band. Formed by vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala and guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López after the break-up of their previous outfit — Texas post-hardcore/art-punk troupe At the Drive-In (of “One Armed Scissor” fame) — the ensemble quickly and consistently built upon those foundations to incorporate wildly bizarre and wholly idiosyncratic fusions of progressive rock, free jazz, Spanish rock, psychedelia, avant-rock, ambient, and more. While influences like King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Can, Fela Kuti, Miles Davis, Mr. Bungle, and Frank Zappa were apparent, The Mars Volta suc...
After an eight-year hiatus, an impressive new archival release from The Mars Volta is on the horizon. La Realidad De Los Sueños is a staggering 18-LP box set that arrives April 23rd and contains the experimental rockers’ entire studio discography alongside unreleased material. After breaking up in 2013, guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala focused on their other project At the Drive-In. But earlier today, the band teased a mysterious something-or-other with altered artwork from De-Loused in the Comatorium. This unleashed a frenzy of speculation among fans in places like Reddit, but few imagined anything as robust as an 18-disc deluxe drop. Translating to “the reality of dreams,” La Realidad De Los Sueños takes is name from lyrics in “Concertina...
There’s little left that needs to be said about Pink Floyd’s astronomical run in the 1970s. Undeniably, the creative, commercial, and critical prosperity achieved by their final four LPs of the decade — The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), and The Wall (1979) — have rarely, if ever, been matched by any other rock band. Likewise, their musical and cultural influence were just as expansive and enduring, so it’s no wonder they remain almost as prevalent and adored today. (Of course, their output in the 1980s and beyond is also worthwhile, but those ’70s LPs are easily their most significant.) However, the process of getting to that point was far from quick or easy, as their earliest years were filled with crises of artistic identity and potential. Due m...
King Crimson’s Robert Fripp and his singer wife, Toyah Willcox, have stayed busy in recent weeks with eccentric interpretations of classic heavy songs by Nirvana, Alice Cooper, Guns N’ Roses, and Sex Pistols. They’re the latest additions to the couple’s “Sunday Lunch” pandemic performance series. You may remember the couple’s utterly bizarre Halloween rendition of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”, which saw Fripp playing the song on guitar while Willcox sang and danced in what appeared to be a prison cell. Although the new covers aren’t quite as unconventional as the Sabbath performance, they still showcase the idiosyncratic talents of each artist. Fripp tends to handle most of the music, while Willcox sings and supplies interpretative dances, including a one-person mosh for Nirvana’s “Smells Li...
Crate Digging is a recurring feature in which we take a deep dive into a genre and turn up several albums or bands that all music fans should know about. As classic gaming series Guitar Hero turns 15 this week, we look at 10 bands a generation of fans likely learned about through gaming rather than crate digging. In the mid-to-late 2000s, the Guitar Hero series was the party game to own. Initially a partnership between publisher/hardware manufacturer RedOctane and developer Harmonix, the brand built upon the latter’s prior music-based projects — such as Frequency, Karaoke Revolution, and Amplitude — and other genre titans like Dance Dance Revolution, GuitarFreaks, Gitaroo Man, and PaRappa the Rapper. Essentially, players had to match button combinations and rhythmic cues to the arrangement...
Five years after the release of their last album, Money Shot, Puscifer are back with their fourth LP, Existential Reckoning. As with the band’s previous releases, the album comes with an abundance of intrigue and mystique. Puscifer — featuring core members of Maynard James Keenan (Tool), Mat Mitchell, and Carina Round — have crafted a 12-song album that is both experimental and cinematic in quality. The songs range from the dance-y “Apocalyptical” to the angry “Fake Affront”. The album also continues the story of the fictional characters Billy D and his wife, Hilda Berger, who’ve been portrayed by Keenan and Laura Milligan, respectively, in promotion of the band’s previous LPs. Along with the announcement of Existential Reckoning came a classified document that reported on an alien abducti...