The Poodles
Some of Sweden’s most experienced metal musicians have assembled to spread metal to the people. That’s the mission of the mighty Poodles from Sweden. “We want to make people feel great and powerful. In a world full of powerful people, cowardice and lies does not exist” says Jakob, lead singer of The Poodles.
The Poodles is more than just a normal rock act. During the years the members have worked in different contexts with international celebrities like Motörhead, Whitesnake, Alice Cooper, Thin Lizzy and Swedish colleagues like Europe and Candlemass.
In the fall of 2005 the current line-up was completed and in the spring of 2006 The Poodles competed in the Swedish version of the “Eurovision Song Contest“, which also marked their big break-through in their native Sweden.
The debut album “Metal Will Stand Tall” was released in Sweden & Finland in May 2006 and soon after in Japan by King Records, IROND in Russia and the CIS. It topped the Swedish sales charts, and the debut single “Night Of Passion” sold gold in Sweden after just three weeks.
Web: www.poodles.se
Day Eleven
Equal parts fun-loving clowns and deep thinkers, this group has over the years thinkers, this group has over the years found the way to be thought-provoking and deep with their music, without losing the all-important sweat, honesty and recklessness of true rock music. Day Eleven’s sophomore album Sleepwalkers was released to great reviews in Finland in March 2007. The album got major radio and TV airplay and the European release for Sleepwalkers came in September 2007 when the band toured in Germany supporting Negative.
Web: www.day-eleven.com
Listen to “The Absolute:”:
London After Midnight
London After Midnight (LAM) was formed in the 1990s by Sean Brennan. Unlike most music projects, LAM has retained and nurtured the political and socially aware element of the later punk scene that virtually vanished from the music scene in the early 90s, and has developed as a deep, passionate and political dark rock music entity. Live members have varied but include Sean Brennan, Randy Mathias, Joe S and Tamlyn. LAM has gained a large and loyal following all over the world, from the USA, Europe, Latin America (where LAM has toured extensively), and beyond, to Russia, Japan, China and elsewhere (appearing in major press and securing distribution deals with record labels).
London After Midnight has headlined and co-headlined concerts and major festivals with bands like The Cure, Green Day, HIM (HIM often cites LAM as a favorite artist), and countless other major artists. LAM has performed to crowds of over 30,000 people as headliner or co-headliner on major music festivals around the world.
Still, London After Midnight maintains a strong underground and independent “personality” despite being a top seller (charting in the top 10 European DAC charts with each of 3 CDs released) and a major draw at music festivals year after year.
http://www.londonaftermidnight.com
Listen: Nothing’s Sacred
Bad Religion
In a world ruled increasingly by superstition and intolerance, Bad Religion’s rousing wall-of-sound punk seems about as necessary now as ever before. It is the impassioned sound of reason, anthems of a bittersweet idealism and a guarded hope set to propulsive guitars and charging drumbeats. And while most groups with even half the artistic output have long ago morphed into stylistic self parody, Bad Religion is currently surging forward with a renewed creative intensity. Their fourteenth album, entitled New Maps of Hell, is both a nod to the band’s defiant past and an undeniable step forward in the evolution of a genre they helped to define. While many of the new songs are as brutally fast and unflinchingly heartfelt as anything the band has done before, the record is also filled with unexpected sounds, inventive rhythms and lush pop choruses.
Dommin
Dommin - an infatuation with melody, the palpable taint of loss, and an enduring faith in the power of dark romance. The band is fronted by a voice from the past declaring its yearning for the future. Singer/songwriter and guitarist Kristofer Dommin is backed by Billy James on bass, Konstantine on keyboards and Stephen on drums. The band formed in 2000.
Kristofer stands out as a singer reminiscent of Elvis and Jim Morrison with a deep tone and an unearthly quality. His singing bleeds of passion and the wisdom that comes only with experience. The songs are dark and melodic yet simple and catchy.
This goth ‘n’ roll band clearly has the potential to tap into the deep side of music yet remain totally accessible to the masses. It won’t be long until the entire music world is domminated by Dommin.
Listen: My Heart Your Hands
Visit: http://www.dommin.com/
Killola
Killola is an female-fronted band from Los Angeles, California. Their music includes elements of garage rock, new-wave punk, power pop and alternative. They began playing together in 2003. In early 2004, they recorded an EP and posted the songs onto lead singer Lisa Rieffel’s Myspace page (at that time Myspace was about 3 months old).
The band has played countless shows in LA and has put out several releases on their own, selling and distributing the album via their website.
In May 2007 Killola completed a self-booked UK tour (the band personally booked 13 shows in 13 days, all set-up through Myspace). At the end of that tour, they recorded a live-in-studio record (15 tracks mixed live to analog tape) in Suffolk, England (Bury St Edmunds).
In mid 2007, Killola lent some music to a webisodic series called “Girltrash!” (web-spinoff of “The L Word”) written and directed by Angela Robinson. After Robinson attended a Killola performance, she offered Rieffel a lead character role in the show itself. She plays a foul-mouthed lesbian crook called ‘Daisy Robson’.
http://www.girltrash.tv
Killola’s live show is high-energy and often provocative in nature. It is said that Lisa sometimes “blacks out by the middle of the first song, then wakes up about 30 minutes after the show ends”…. noted antics include jumping on fans, throwing up, groping the drummer, and laying on the floor in the middle of the crowd.
On top of making music for years, Killola is a highly fan-accessible band. The band members host online interactive video-chat shows every Friday night, and on Monday nights Johnny and Lisa host a radio show on Dave Navarro’s web-radio station SPREAD RADIO LIVE. The band personally mails out several pounds of postage every week to fans through their “You Take Time, We Take Time” campaign… details at www.killola.com/youtaketime
Killola encourages fans to tattoo themselves with band-related artwork and/or lyrics. The band’s website devotes a section to Killola fan-tattoos showcasing photos of several fan-tatoos from around the world. The band states that a Killola tattoo gets you free entry into performances for life.
Listen to this:
Visit:
http://www.killola.com
http://www.virb.com/killola (several free mp3 downloads)
The Turn
Teaming up with producer Frank Gryner (Rob Zombie, A Perfect Circle) theTURN have carved out ten epic songs to be released early 2008. After winning the 99.3 cfox seeds contest in 05/06, a radio contest that has launched the career’s of international recording artists Nickleback, Default, and Mathew Good, theTURN has kept themselves sharp with a steady diet of live shows over 150 in the last year and a half. They have opened for acts such as Faber Drive, Mariana’s Trench, Lilix, the Trews, Ill Scarlet, and the Armchair Cynics. When it came time to record their first record they caught the attention of Frank Gryner and started crafting the album. “Recording in Vancouver at the Factory Studios and mixing in Hollywood at the Chop Shop was a great experience for us” says the band “we had a chance to really explore without limitations, we didn’t have to worry about the quality of the equipment or the tones we were getting it was all about capturing the right performance”. Hitting the road in spring 2008 theTURN is ready to set a new standard of west coast rock and bring it to the rest of Canada.
Listen to this:
Art Of Dying
In 2005, Vancouver’s vibrant rock scene brought together five talented musicians with the knack for producing hard rocking anthems and undeniably catchy melodies. Hard work, determination, focus and a relentless do-it-yourself attitude have now placed this band as one of the top independent acts not just in their home country, but across globe.
Art Of Dying has torn up stages all over the UK and has just released their debut album to Canadian audiences via their own label, Thorny Bleeder Records. They have shared the stage with some of the world’s biggest artists including: Tool, Deftones, My Chemical Romance, Staind, Our Lady Peace, Hinder, Papa Roach and AFI. In the past year they have been the main support act for Seether on their UK tour, and for both Econoline Crush and Saliva on their Canadian tours.
Since the band’s inception in Vancouver two years ago, Art of Dying has quietly become Canada’s number one rock band to watch. Their song “Get Through This” has attracted well over 75,000 fans to their MySpace page and has battled it out in the Top 10 charts on many US radio stations. The song has been licensed to two international video games (Stuntman: Ignition and Flatout: Ultimate Carnage), has been featured on ABC’s Falcon Beach, and is the theme song for both Movie Central’s “Stuntdawgs” and Global TV’s hockey reality series, “Making the Cut”. After winning a Vancouver radio contest in May 2005, Art of Dying’s live show stole the award for “Best Live Performance” at the 2006 Music West Festival. In January 2007 Classic Rock Magazine in the UK handpicked Art of Dying as one of the “Top 15 Bands To Watch”, worldwide. But the accolades don’t stop there. Kerrang! Magazine recently reviewed the band and hailed them as “heavy crowd pleasers”. Vancouver’s Georgia Straight entertainment weekly has just crowned Art Of Dying as “2007’s Best Local Band, Unsigned”, as voted by their readers.
With Canadian and international tours in the works, and song placements in major games and TV shows, Art Of Dying are on their way to becoming Canada’s next big rock export.
Listen to This:
Visit: www.artofdyingmusic.com
Lourds
LOURDS, spelled all in capital letters, is a band of four talented and charismatic personalities, Lourds Lane, Sarah Vasil, GeneBlank and Joey Sagarese. At age 6, lead singer, multi-instrumentalist and namesake, Lourds wailed on her violin and dazzled audiences at Carnegie Hall. Since then, this New York City native continues to mesmerize audiences, singing with venom and distorting her electric violin and mandolin alongside her superstar powerhouse bandmates. With a glowing album review in Billboard and dominating the front cover of the entertainment section of the NY DAILY NEWS, LOURDS is a band rapidly on the rise. They convert new fans instantly with their hook-laden songs, their cutting-edge sound, and their explosive stage show. They are presently touring in support of their eponymous debut produced by Ed Stasium, Grammy Award winning producer of the Ramones, Living Colour, The Smithereens and Biohazard. Listen for fan-favorite single, “ASTROPOP,” rising up the radio charts across the country!
Visit: http://myspace.com/lourds or http://lourds.com
Listen to This:
Hello Tokyo
Hello Tokyo is a three-piece, female fronted, power-pop/rock group from Brooklyn, NY. Originally formed in Washington D.C. after finding a forgotten 4-track recorder, Kat and John wrote a handful of songs and soon found themselves developing a great foundation of fans. While maintaining these D.C. relationships, Hello Tokyo branched out and began performing in NYC and Philadelphia, doing so regularly for the past 1∏ years. During their trips north, Hello Tokyo fell in love with NYC, and decided to move there to pursue the band full-time. So they quit their jobs, loaded the van, moved to Brooklyn, NY and since then have been consistently performing live and writing new material.
Listen To This:
Visit: http://www.hellotokyomusic.com
http://www.myspace.com/hellotokyo
