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The announcement that No Doubt is reforming is good news on two counts: 1) that we’ll be hearing some new music from one of my favorite bands, and 2) that Gwen will stop releasing her awful solo singles. Let’s face it, quality control was lacking on The Sweet Escape…

No Doubt are apparently working on their sixth album, which will be a follow-up to 2001’s Rock Steady. Yes, its been six years!

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Despite being a bit behind all the latest British Indie bands (there are so many of them!!!), I enjoyed Hard-Fi’s music when they hit the charts in 2005 with Cash Machine.

The fact of the matter is that Hard-Fi come across as more direct and less pretentious than their Indie-label bedfellows, and their music is always, well harder than them too.

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Chad Kroeger and his Nickelback chums are experiencing a bit of a backlash at the moment. Apparently they’ve been rumbled as being both boring and generic.

Funnily enough, I was listening to their Silver Side Up album during the week and I couldn’t help thinking that they weren’t as clever as we all imagined when How You Remind Me came out.

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I wonder what Steven Adler’s bandmates think of his constant assertions that he’d love to reunite the original Guns N’ Roses lineup.

Let’s face it, Adler’s Appetite would probably run out of steam pretty quickly, leaving the other members just an over-glorified tribute band. And I don’t understand where he’s getting the idea that the other Gunners are buying into the idea. None of them seem to have commented publicly so far.

Which - I think you’ll agree - leaves the most washed-up member of the classic Guns N’ Roses lineup craving a reunion. Hmmm. If you were Adler, would you rather be in a tribute band to GNR or be back in the drum stool behind your old compadres? Read more & comment »

Your Love Alone Is Not Enough is the first single to be released from the new Manics album, Send Away the Tigers. The song features a bizarre alliance with Nina Persson of The Cardigans.

Do you know, with the resurgence of 90’s bands at the moment, it’s like 90’s nostalgia has already started. The problem is, when you get a wave of nostalgia, you get bands reforming to cash in. In the case of the 90’s, most of the bands haven’t even broken up yet. It’s like they were hibernating or something….

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Sometimes when you’re listening to mainstream music, you get a craving for something a bit more aggressive. Something with a bit of kick. So, discovering Throw The Fight on Virb the other night was just the tonic.

Throw The Fight are a 5-piece from Minneapolis, and they produce a brutal but melodic brand of metal that I really enjoyed from listening to their Virb page.

The songs the feature on Virb (and MySpace) are taken from their EP The Fire Within. Endless Struggle takes a Maidenesque twin guitar attack and mixes it with a driving metal track. Sort of Sum 41 on steroids. If this type of metal is your thing, you should also check out These Apologies and Our Horizons, both fantastic tracks.

From what I hear, Throw The Fight are gaining popularity in the US:

selling over 5,000 copies of their first self-recorded e.p. Current stats for the band include over 100,000 plays and over 24,000 friends on Myspace.com, 54,000 plays on Purevolume.com

These guys are definitely worth keeping an eye on!Throw The Fight are

• Paul Kreuger - lead vocal
• Aaron Huppert - bass
• Joey Ulrich - guitar / vocals
• Cory Huppert - drums
• Ryan Baustert - guitar / vocals

As the first chorus to U + UR Hand starts, Pink starts skipping in a tight top. Simultaneously she’s singing “I’m not here for your entertainment”. I disagree. As a guy I find Pink skipping fairly entertaining ;)

*cough*

Seriously though, when was the last time Pink released a duff record? She’s had one of the strongest runs of chart success in recent memory, despite a potential career breaking switch from hip-hop to angsty rock.

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I’ll save the rant about Paolo Nutini’s name for another day. (Is it a stage name? It must be.)

Bizarrely, New Shoes seems to be the kind of song you either love or hate. It’s certainly attracting a lot of negative reaction.

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Continuing my obsessive Exteme fanboy thing, I looked up Gary Cherone on MySpace this evening.

After Gary left Extreme, he joined Van Halen for a short while, although I think he joined the band at a bad time in their career and wasn’t particularly well received as frontman.

He’s done some solo recording, and been involved with his brother in a The Who tribute band. (He’s not the only rocker to do the cover tribute band thing - Joe Elliott from Def Leppard had a side project called Cybernauts)

Recently, Gary seems to be involved with a band called hurtsmile, a group which also features his brother Markus. I listened to a few of their tunes on MySpace, and it’s great to hear Gary’s distinctive voice again. It seems to be more straight rock than his solo material, I’ll be interested to see how they develop. I think it’s seriously early days for the band, because they don’t have any group shots, logos or identity yet.

Ah, the beauty of the Internet - looking up your teenage favourite bands and discovering they’re still making music!

I’ve written quite a bit about Extreme in the past - they were one of my favourite bands of the 90’s, and Nuno Bettencourt was my idol as a guitarist. I knew he was still performing, so I discovered his new band Dramagods and managed to get my hands on a copy of their album, Love.

It seems that the focal point of Dramagods is Nuno. But although he’s recognised as a guitar god, Nuno also fronts the group and he’s a surprisingly good vocalist. He carries off a range of material on this album, from hard-edged rock to more sensitive material.

Another surprising aspect of this album is that it isn’t filled with extended guitar solos. Instead, the guitar solos only appear where they’re suitable - they’re not the focus of the songs as I sometimes felt they were in Nuno’s earlier work.

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