Core - May 15, 2013

Here’s a question. How many days post festival does one get to revel in their own excellence by continuing to wear their festival wristband? What if said wristband is soft to the touch and brightly...
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Core - May 8, 2013 Posted 8 May 2013 @ 12:59pm 100 views 0 comments I am delighted to report that I survived Belgium's Groezrock Festival 2013 with only a banging red wine hangover and a mild cold. First impression of the festival was that in comparison with our Australian punk rock festival de rigur Soundwave, Groezrock is significantly smaller. Not that this detracts from the experience of course. It's quite delightful to swan about the festival's ample grounds...
Core - May 1, 2013 Posted 2 May 2013 @ 7:20am 107 views 0 comments Have been in Amsterdam this week, readying my mind and soul for Groezrock2013. By which I mean visiting coffee shops and waxing intellectual about whether Iron Chic are more worthy of our afternoon than Flatliners. Friends and I believe we have coined the term "music tourism" (complex concept I know) to best describe the joy of choosing holiday destinations according to where the great gigs/bands...
Core - April 24, 2013 Posted 24 Apr 2013 @ 5:08pm 122 views 0 comments This week, my friends, I venture to the Northern Hemisphere to tackle the great unknown. For the first time ever I will experience the much famed Belgian punk rock music festival – the utterly unpronounceable GROEZROCK festival. I will stand in some vast field several hours out of Brussels and watch Bad Religion, Kid Dynamite and Bring Me The Horizon tear up the turf. I will also camp overnight...
Core - April 17, 2013 Posted 18 Apr 2013 @ 12:34pm 137 views 0 comments Seriously guys, seriously. You can now stream COACHELLA LIVE IN UNINTERRPTED HIGH DEFINITION VIDEO. My workday was pretty much rendered completely useless on Monday when I watched Wu-Tang and co. unleash a live show worthy of a Coachella headlining spot ON MY FUCKING LAPTOP. When you can watch such quality performances, as they happen, in such startling quality, I can’t help but wonder whether...
Core - April 10, 2013 Posted 11 Apr 2013 @ 12:02pm 156 views 0 comments I was having a friendly chat with a rather popular international act of whom I am quite fond of mere days ago when suddenly there was a unexpected lull in conversion, so I enquired about the setlist for their headlining set later that evening (what a zinger of a question. Perhaps I should have asked where they got their band name, or what their inspirations were. Fuck). They dutifully informed...
Core - March 27, 2013 Posted 28 Mar 2013 @ 10:18am 177 views 0 comments Byron Bay’s In Hearts Wake have announced the Survival Tour which will stretch across Australia in winter. They’re bringing The Storm Picturesque and Canada’s Counterparts with them when they hit The Workers Club on Saturday June 22 and Phoenix Youth Center on Sunday June 23. The latter is all ages, obvs. Tickets available from Thursday March 28.   Needing further incentive to dish out your...
Core - March 20, 2013 Posted 19 Mar 2013 @ 4:28pm 207 views 0 comments You know how there are all kinds of reality TV shows these days documenting the lives of messed up units, who have messed up habits, caused by deeply messed up psychological issues? You know, like Hoarders, or that Addiction show where people are compelled to eat coach cushions and hair? There needs to be a series exploring the reasons behind people leaking music to the public. So often it comes...
Core - March 13, 2013 Posted 13 Mar 2013 @ 1:12pm 187 views 0 comments Well Soundwave Festival is wrapped for another year. My hearing is gone, my liver is bruised, my back aches like an malnourished old lady and my insides are sufficiently scrambled from standing too close to too many speakers. I was finally privy to how the entire tour rolls out across the country this year and I must say, the sheer scale of it all is totally fucking mind-blowing. It really has...
Core - February 27, 2013 Posted 27 Feb 2013 @ 6:10am 236 views 0 comments Vans. Warped. Tour. IS BACK! I remember petitioning for this festival’s return when I was about 19-years-old. Being a general teenage fangirl I’m pretty sure I sent several emails to industry types demanding the festival return to satisfy all my punk/ska cravings. Vans Warped Tour returning to Australia was also a pretty prevalent April Fool’s Day joke there for a while. So I’m sure my enthusiasm...
Core - February 20, 2013 Posted 21 Feb 2013 @ 8:23am 188 views 0 comments So old mate Travis Barker has failed in his quest to overcome a fear of flying in time for Soundwave Festival. Apparently the plan was to drug him and smuggle him on the plane (I guess it beats catching a boat). Brooks Wackerman of Bad Religion fame will be filling in for Blink 182’s upcoming performances. Not a bad trade.   The Smith Street Band have added an extra Melbourne show to their...
Core - February 13, 2013 Posted 13 Feb 2013 @ 1:01pm 227 views 0 comments Small Sydney hardcore band Vigilante have been signed to one of Australia’s finest heavy labels, Resist Records. Populated by members who’ve served time in hardcore bands including Right Idea, Urban Mayhem, Bad Blood and Last Nerve, Vigilante will release their 12” debut EP via the label on March 1. Preorders are available now.   The Bronx will come to Australia for their first headlining...
Core - February 6, 2013 Posted 6 Feb 2013 @ 3:25pm 282 views 0 comments So keen for the big Descendents show this weekend. (Despite the sad news that Frenzal Rhomb have withdrawn from the shows with promoters announcing rather suddenly that a member of the band has experienced an unexpected illness and has been hospitalised as a result. No word as to what’s happened but love and hugs to the legends in Frenzal’s camp.) To celebrate the appearance of Descendents,...
Core - January 30, 2013 Posted 31 Jan 2013 @ 6:09am 252 views 0 comments Watching Against Me at The Hi-Fi Bar last Tuesday, it was like nothing had changed. For all the hoopla about Laura Jane Grace and the unavoidable media circus that inevitably followed, it was apparent from the instant that she took the stage that really, nothing had changed. Of course we waited eagerly to see whether the vocals had varied, whether the passion had waned, but Against Me...
Core - January 23, 2013 Posted 23 Jan 2013 @ 12:41pm 294 views 0 comments Resist Records have announced that US outfit Black Breath will tour the country for the first time ever this April. They’re teaming up with Canberra’s I Exist and will arrive in Melbourne on Thursday April 11 to play at The Rev in Footscray.   Don’t forget, this weekend The Reverence celebrates Australia Day by hosting a swag of local talent and donating all the proceeds to charity! This...
Core - January 16, 2013 Posted 16 Jan 2013 @ 12:20pm 228 views 0 comments Silverstein have announced that they’ll be in our country shortly after the release of their seventh album This Is How The Wind Shifts which is released on February 8 via Roadrunner. You can see Silverstein play at The Corner Hotel on April 18 with special guests Issues. Tickets are on sale now.   More Soundwave sidewaves were announced last week. This February if you missed out on tickets...
Core - January 9, 2013 Posted 9 Jan 2013 @ 9:54pm 237 views 0 comments Happy New Year! In a supremely positive start to 2013, Nielsen recent reported that digital music now accounts for 55.9% of all music sales (in the US) of both singles and full albums. While CD sales decreased by more than 10%, music sales in general are up 3% overall which is a modest, but definite win after a decade of declining sales which many believed to be the death knell of the entire...
Core - December 26, 2012 Posted 27 Dec 2012 @ 5:10pm 273 views 0 comments End of year lists. Not buying it. Not participating in an official ranking of albums whose importance to me will shift throughout the next 12 months. Or even worse, forgetting to rank albums and then sulking in the realisation that I’ve done the artist a great injustice. It’s funny how you get an odd sense of importance when you rank other people’s art. Like they should be so lucky to have nabbed...
Core - December 19, 2012 Posted 19 Dec 2012 @ 5:16am 222 views 0 comments If you’re super psyched about seeing Converge and fancy a special show then I must recommend getting some cheap Tassie tickets and heading south to see them play in Hobart. Converge…in Hobart. Resist just announced the February 14 show last week and this will most definitely be a thing to behold. Tickets available now.   Mike Patton’s Tomahawk have revealed Soundwave sideshows for next...
Core - December 12, 2012 Posted 12 Dec 2012 @ 3:23pm 248 views 0 comments It was nice to see promoter Michael Gudinski in the press this week desperately trying to explain to our friends out West why they missed out on a Bruce Springsteen show. Maybe it’s because I’m a spoilt little Melburnian lass but boy is it exhausting to hear our relos over yonder screaming blue murder at promoters for not bringing tours to their beloved cities that – let’s be honest – often have...
Core - December 5, 2012 Posted 5 Dec 2012 @ 5:57am 276 views 0 comments I’ve been thinking a lot about the upcoming Alexisonfire shows this week, and wondering why it hasn’t been done more often (or perhaps it has and I’ve been totally oblivious to it?). I really appreciate that the band have decided to do a brief, but spectacular farewell tour and that it’s clearly going to culminate in one fitting final fling for the band. I love that they’re selling out Festival...
Core - November 28, 2012 Posted 28 Nov 2012 @ 5:12am 326 views 0 comments I was in Wellington, New Zealand this weekend and I thought it best if I track down a local gig and see how the Kiwis do their thing. As always, it was nothing short of fascinating to see how things rolled out. Even in New Zealand (a place whose cultural proximity I once assumed matched its geographical) things are a little different. For once, the lack of a massive scene, complete with dozens of...
Core - November 21, 2012 Posted 21 Nov 2012 @ 10:16am 283 views 0 comments It seems like the promoter gods (I dare you to disagree that those with the power, persuasion and money to bring excellent bands to our shores are anything less than mystical deities) are pleased with us this month, as just as crowds were departing Refused's final Melbourne show, satisfied and sweaty with an almost post-coital glow about them, they picked up flyers informing them of Descendents'...
Core - November 14, 2012 Posted 14 Nov 2012 @ 2:42pm 341 views 0 comments I gave Thrice’s new Anthlogy album a listen yesterday and realised, quite sheepishly, that I’d probably been a bit rough on the ol’ Californian melodic punkers. Listening to their extensive back catalogue from Phoenix Ignition right through to more mellowed Beggars and Alchemy Index, they’ve got a fairly flawless run of music going on. In fact, there’s something to be admired in the progression...
Core - November 7, 2012 Posted 8 Nov 2012 @ 9:32am 346 views 0 comments The most shocking news item of the week (aside from the terrible loss of Mitch Lucker – as below) might actually come from Pennywise’s camp. In a move no one saw coming, the band rather nonchalantly announced that former vocalist Jim Linberg would return to the band after quitting rather ceremoniously over three years ago. As you’ll recall, Lindberg was replaced by Ignite signer Zoli Teglas who...
Core - October 31, 2012 Posted 31 Oct 2012 @ 6:14am 333 views 0 comments While venues around Melbourne open and shut, ebb and flow, (or get ‘firebombed’, in the case of The Tote on the weekend), it seems that for those of us nonplussed about the formalities or aesthetics involved in live music, there’ll always be a place to find good live music in Melbourne. Last weekend, that place was THE Place, a little known rehearsal room buried deep within Preston’s unsuspecting...
Core - October 24, 2012 Posted 24 Oct 2012 @ 11:12am 404 views 0 comments Californian pop punkers The Story So Far will tour Australia for the first time this summer with Anchors. They’re currently in the studio with New Found Glory’s Steve Klein (apparently the go-to-guy for pop punk albums now) but they’ll be at the Corner Hotel on Tuesday January 15.   Trusty Chords and Bombshell will combine the talents of Austin Lucas, PJ Bond...
Core - October 17, 2012 Posted 17 Oct 2012 @ 1:28pm 383 views 0 comments If you haven’t watched the footage of The Ataris’ Kris Roe cracking the shits with his drummer mid-set at a recent US show, then I strongly suggest you seek it out and giggle in glee as he picks up his bandmate’s drum gear and throws it at his head. Then watch as he very courteously returns to the mic to apologise and play some lovely solo acoustic tunes for his befuddled audience. It’s...
Core - October 10, 2012 Posted 12 Oct 2012 @ 9:55am 409 views 0 comments ARIA announced their official nominees for the Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal release last week. Frenzal Rhomb, Buried In Verona, House Vs Hurricane and Sleepmakeswaves are all in contention to take out the coveted award. Said Frenzal on Twitter, “Never heard of half the bands in our category. Can’t lose surely”.  They then thanked ARIA by saying “Can’t wait to do bulbs and...
Core - October 3, 2012 Posted 3 Oct 2012 @ 9:15pm 521 views 0 comments Melbourne hardcore band Outright introduced a pretty excellent concept for their current Dedication tour. In order to celebrate the “music, ideas and DIY community spirit” that the Melbourne scene shares, they’re setting up a Mix Tape Lucky Dip at their merch desk each night. They’re encouraging punters to put together a mixtape, add it to the box, then take another one in return. Said the band...
Core - September 26, 2012 Posted 25 Sep 2012 @ 9:11pm 484 views 0 comments Sydney-based music journalist Andrew P Street submitted what he called music journalism’s obituary to popular blog Pan Magazine last week. He had just had his role as Music Editor at a magazine downgraded to that of ‘Contributing Editor’ and he announced the death of the print media music journalist as we know it, suggesting the realm of writing about music had been passed on to “barely literate...