Osmosis Tones

By Tommy Delone For those that have followed my writings thus far on Osmosis Tones, it’s no secret that I am a BIG fan of The 1975. So naturally, with the release of their fourth studio album, Notes On A Conditional Form , I needed to both write about it, and celebrate like it was Christmas Morning. I put on my mask, grabbed my wired headphones (what am I, made of money??) and went for a nice long walk around beautiful Allston, Massachusetts to give this album the millennial flair it needed to sink in - what better way to honor a defining band of our time than with the topical social distancing walk? Full disclosure: while flawed, I love this album. It’s an incredible display of the band’s growth since their 2013 debut, as well as a great album that’s essentially about the power of being young in the year 2020. The band allows Notes to showcase their experimental side, giving us more genres than we’ve ever seen prior from them. The variety on this album is like nothing Matty Healy a

Introducing Across The Atlantic , Zach's latest column recommending albums new and old from around the globe. In this addition, you'll find everything from Japanese afro-funk and Latin psychedelia to Greek entechno and French jazz.

By Greg Wiacek So here’s the thing: a supergroup consisting of members from Denver’s best metal bands - Blood Incantation, Spectral Voice, Khemmis and Primitive Man - made some of the most disgusting and foul black-death-doom metal to come out this year, yet no one seems to be talking about it. More often than not, “supergroups” end up becoming less than the sum of their parts, but this group comes in raging, spewing the most vile filth they can conjure. The resulting sound combines the best elements of aggression, composition and darkness from their respective bands to wonderful effect.  I’m going to try to refrain just repeating “oh man, this riff fucks” over and over again, but man, this album is such a well-balanced riff salad, combining exactly what I want to hear from the best of fast and s l o w extreme metal. The band knows the perfect amount of time to milk a riff before switching tempos, a huge factor in what makes this album flow so well for its 38 minute runti

By Luke Robinson Ulcerate is a force to be fucking reckoned with. The Auckland, New Zealand based outfit has garnered a formidable reputation by releasing some of the most cutting edge technical death metal of the past two decades. Rather than taking the sterile, masturbatory approach of most tech-death bands (looking at you, Rings of Saturn), Ulcerate are more cavernously dark in their approach. They take a few recipes from the Gorguts cookbook to create hellish, anxiety-ridden landscapes. Their songs constantly weave like labyrinths, sucking you into tempo change after tempo change. They have always been a challenging band to listen to, as there has been little in the way of dynamic change or major scale melody. But for an absolute anxious wreck like me, I find myself at the edge of my seat for any Ulcerate tune.  When Ulcerate announced their new album with their self-titled first single, “Stare Into Death and Be Still,” I was blown away. Like, “I have never heard anything quite lik

By Eleni Haberis Hayley Williams. Hayley from Paramore. A Capricorn Queen. What introduction could I even give this woman? Her voice is so powerful and charismatic that there was a time when any female-led pop punk band was described as a knock-off Paramore. But beyond that, Paramore did what Fall Out Boy and many other popular bands of their time have struggled to do: stay relevant AND cool beyond feelings of nostalgia.  Hayley and Paramore allowed us to grow with them: lyrics about angst, struggling with pain, friends, pretty much anything heavy about life. They were honest and easy to relate to, just like Hayley herself. She was only about 17 when Paramore really started to take off, and to be so young and vulnerable with millions of people watching is something we’ve seen destroy artists, especially such emotionally connected ones. Hayley instead took this opportunity to be real with us and learn together, and I think that's what has kept her so grounded and allowed us to cont

By Kenny Cox At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when life began screeching to a halt as quarantine became reality around the world, many cited Shakespeare as a sign that artistic expression could triumph in isolation. In his period of lockdown during the 1606 plague in London he created King Lear , a work that would go on to be hailed and studied centuries later. The reality is that many of us haven’t made our King Lear in quarantine, opting to bake sourdough bread and binge TikTok videos instead. But one such artist has risen to the challenge of the Bard — Charli XCX. Just over one month ago she announced her latest LP h ow i’m feeling now , writing, recording, creating visuals, promoting, and finally dropping the record in the span of a few weeks. As a result, it might just be the King Lear of our era, a work of artistic genius made during chaotic, life-changing times.  While her latest LP, 2019’s Charli , attempted to bring Charli’s sound to the mainstream, h ow i’m feeling no

Photo credited to Cole Saladino/Thrillist Luke, one of Osmosis Tones' resident bubbleheads, went to work on finding the definitive musical pairings for Polar Seltzer, Massachusetts' finest beverage company. Without further ado, here are the songs that match best with each flavor in their catalogue. 

  By Zach Zollo My Bloody Valentine, the definitive shoegaze act, left an incalculable impact on indie rock with their brand of distorted dream pop and studio trickery. Their sound and direction may be indebted to mastermind Kevin Shields, but vocalist/guitarist Bilinda Butcher was equally as important in defining how vocals in the genre would be sung. But beyond her voice and guitar work, she would prove influential in an entirely different aspect: her name. The Bilinda Butchers are a New York-via-San Francisco dream pop band that fuse an eclectic mix of electronics into their sound. Perhaps best known for their 2011 EP regrets, love, guilt, dreams — a release one could consider an underground classic — their latest record, Night and Blur , is their first new material in five years. While not a grand reinvention or particularly innovative in their approach to their established style, Night and Blur is commendable for its pleasant accessibility, tonal consistency, and shift in lyrica

By Greg Wiacek If you listen to indie rock, you’ve likely heard of Car Seat Headrest. They make catchy rock music with attitude, displaying a good ear for pop melodies influenced by the best of the Strokes, Guided By Voices and Daniel Johnston. The lyrics are painstakingly earnest, detailing anxiety, depression and self-doubt with self-deprecating humor that puts you directly in Will Toledo’s shockingly relatable point of view. They employ imaginative and daring songwriting arrangements with a penchant for exploring epic lengths as driven by shifting tempos, dynamics and layers of harmonies - despite the extremely limited resources and recording equipment at hand. They even mastered the art of crafting those meaningless-yet-cathartic mantras you can shamelessly yell at the top of your lungs as anthems – “THE OCEAN WASHED OPEN YOUR GRAVE”; “IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS”; “DRUGS ARE BETTER, DRUGS ARE BETTER WITH FRIENDS ARE BETTER WITH FRIENDS ARE BETTER WITH” – you get it.  Their 201

By Luke Robinson With this feature, I thought I would take the opportunity to shine a light on some awesome artists bubbling up in the electronica sphere. These projects provide the perfect soundtrack to these dystopian times we are experiencing.  SubWolf is a Knoxville-based electronic project that utilizes live instrumentation, featuring kinetic drum and bass playing set to icy synth grooves and ambient textures.  Gray Heron is a one man electronic project based in Asheville, NC (a little over 100 miles from SubWolf, you all should link up or something). The project takes influence from hip hop grooves and bubbly 90’s ambient and trance with some psychedelic elements.  But enough chit chat, lemme get to some mini-reviewing... Floor 7 EP - SubWolf SubWolf dropped their debut EP, Floor 7 , this past March. It immediately zooms out the gate with an insanely manipulated Tom Nook sample, which segues into the spacious and funky “Red Flag.” The song is a trip, with its angular, bouncy syn