Paul Rogers

Credit: Rick Kosick

It's Casual Hate Stop-and-Go Traffic, So They Made An Album About It

Paul Rogers
Los Angeles' stop-start traffic has been boosting drivers' blood pressure for decades. Yet to our knowledge no band had addressed and channeled this almost universal Angeleno rage until local hardcore duo It's Casual dropped their album, The New Los Angeles Part 1: Through the Eyes of a Bus Rider, in......
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Mafia Rusa

Paul Rogers
This Anaheim outfit's organic, borderline-crude, Spanish-language skacore is all the more effective and endearing for being so under-produced and unadorned. The tempos are often frantic, with a hardcore-ish kick-snare snap rendered skank-able by burbling basslines and shimmering guitars. Omar's impassioned, gabbled vocals are decidedly street-level and mildly menacing in tone,......
Off!; Credit: PHOTO BY AARON FARLEY

Still a Malcontent

Paul Rogers
Three decades as a punk-rock icon has dulled Keith Morris' classic revenge-of-the-nerds wrath, but not much. "I have a little Napoleonic complex," admits t...
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Overkill

Paul Rogers
Since 1980, as thrash metal's fortunes have waxed and waned, Overkill has been there to reliably deliver the goods to the faithful and offer old-school authenticity to fair-weather fans. Over the course of 16 albums, these New Jersey surefires have diligently explored thrash's claustrophobic confines, embracing punk, hardcore, trad and......
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Dir En Grey

Paul Rogers
Dir En Grey might be one of the planet's biggest cult bands: almost unrecognized on Main Street, yet — despite singing in their native Japanese — able to sell out theater-size venues across continents. They long ago traded in their early alt-pop leanings for a riff-based, prog-metal approach, which has......
He's not African

African Rebel Soldiers and Their Eerie Obsession With Tupac Shakur

Paul Rogers
Editor's Note: Tomorrow, September 13, 2011, marks the 15th anniversary of Tupac Shakur's death. To commemorate, West Coast Sound will feature Tupac stories all week. See also: *Bruce Hornsby on Tupac: "The original 'Changes' was a lot dirtier, had a lot of the n-word." *Shock G and Smif-n-Wessun Talk Tupac's......
Credit: Craig Cameron Olsen

FYF Preview: The Descendents Attempt To Clone Themselves

Paul Rogers
See also: FYF Preview: Drinking Tequila With Tijuana Panthers FYF Preview: Keith Morris of OFF! Speaks on Friends and Foes Fuck Yeah! It's the FYF SAT Quiz! Milo Aukerman is a bespectacled, middle-aged research biochemist and devoted family man. On the rare occasions he's home alone in Newark, Del., Aukerman......
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Bring Me the Horizon

Paul Rogers
Ah, to be 18 again — if only for metalcore. The genre, that hardcore-informed (and deformed) heavy-metal mutant, makes its hard-rock and punk parentage sound positively polite. Brits Bring Me the Horizon are on the commercial end of the genre's inherently extreme sonic spectrum, meaning there are actual discernible refrains......