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Showing posts from June, 2018

Nine Inch Nails Deliver Frenetics on "Bad Witch"

     (Ed's note: I'm a huge Nine Inch Nails fan, so my biases will be rather amplified in all Nails related posts. Thank you for understanding.)      Nine Inch Nails return with Bad Witch, the third in a trilogy of releases that began with 2016’s Not the Actual Events and continued in 2017 with Add Violence. A terse, dizzying, jarring and frenetic work, Bad Witch is partly inspired by Trump-era politics and social climates (band leader Trent Reznor has been openly vocal about his disgust toward The Don as he was with George W. Bush.) Clocking in at just 30 minutes, the six songs that make up the album (originally an EP but for practical marketing and artistic reasons is an LP) show signs of impending cultural collapse that began with 2007’s heavily electronic Year Zero, which was very much a commentary on Bush’s policies taking the country into a dystopian state if things continued as they did. In keeping with angsty political charge, Bad Witch mixes discordant aggro-pu

Depeche Mode, Peter Hook and The Light, A Place To Bury Strangers: Reviewed

     Depeche Mode brought their music to the masses and gave us a black celebration (whatever, sue me.) On the road promoting their 14 th studio album, Spirit , the iconic British electronic band presented their mega successful Global Spirit Tour May 27 one last time to American audiences with a sold-out appearance at the AT&T Center, flawlessly banging out their biggest hits and album-oriented material to an enthusiastic crowd of 15,000. The band, comprised of vocalist Dave Gahan, guitarist Martin Gore, keyboardists Andy Fletcher and Peter Gordeno and drummer Christian Eigner impeccably delivered song after song as they cataloged their entire career into an energetic two-hour set, proving why four decades after their debut they remain a vital presence. With deep running roots in San Antonio’s music scene, audiences excitedly sang and danced through the night. If their show and fan response was any strong indicator, they surely have another album and one final world tour left unde