Valient Thorr (with Early Man & Architects)
July 18th, 2008
Triple Rock Social Club, Minneapolis, MN

Valient Thorr are from Venus. They’re quite insistent upon this fact. I guess they must have a lot of early Megadeth albums on Venus because VT have those riffs in their bones. Somehow they took the crunchy, thrashy licks of old-school Iron […]

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Raleigh’s experimental indie rock band Annuals took the Varsity Theater’s stage at 7:30 p.m. Friday night to a crowd of about 40 people who hopefully cared less about the Air Guitar Championships Regional Finals being held at that same venue later in the evening. Unfortunately, the “real musicians” of the night played to a […]

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R.E.M. has been around for nearly 30 years. Maybe that explains all the Baby Boomers and gray hairs who packed the Xcel Energy Center last night for what proved to be a stirring, random and satisfying show.

I didn’t discover R.E.M. until 1992’s Automatic For the People, loved the grungey Monster and liked New Adventures […]

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Minneapolis’ own The Hawaii Show led off the evening with a “set” of pre-recorded music set to skits. Or maybe it’s the other way around?
Led by Steve Dude (er, Barone, formerly of Lifter Puller), the rock comedy act “plays” inflatable guitars and features a keyboardist wearing a Condoleezza Rice mask. The best song they have […]

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Cloud Cult

The Forms

Recaps: City Pages, doodledee, Higher Than Highlights.
photos by Alison

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Grammy and Dove award-winning band Casting Crowns took the stage at St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center Saturday night and rocked our innocent Christian souls.
Baytown, Texas group Leeland opened, showing off lead singer and child prodigy Leeland Mooring’s first tenor choirboy vocals and 3 of the 5 band members wearing snappy vests.
Their best song […]

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Modern prog rock legends The Mars Volta, took the stage at Saint Paul’s Roy Wilkins Auditorium Monday night knowing the venue wasn’t close to capacity.
Thought by some to be this generation’s King Crimson, TMV may be so far ahead of their time they simply can’t sell out a Monday night Roy show. Yet, the underrated, […]

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Theory of a Deadman occupies the space somewhere between Seether and 3 Doors Down. They’re a straight-ahead rock band, as they showed Sunday night at the Rock in Maplewood.

Playing to a capacity crowd the BC foursome whipped through a quick set of short, pop-laden rock songs without too much aggro or weepiness.

Sunday was the […]

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Kansas, the heartland’s favorite classic prog-rock group, played a spirited 90 minutes at Mystic Lake Casino tonight to a near-sold out crowd.
It was my fourth time seeing the 38 year-old band in the last 10 years, and it was definitely one of their better performances.
First off, the new Mystic Lake Showroom seats 2,100 and features […]

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Tapes ‘n Tapes played a home show at legendary First Avenue last night. Here are mini-reviews from a couple show-goers…
I don’t think you can go wrong when the band you came to see is giving Minnesota Wild shout-outs.
As expected, Walk it Off was the focus last night. The sound of the new album definitely carried […]

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