Camper Van Beethoven - Key Lime Pie
Review by Gary Hill
Ethnic, alternative and art rock styles are combined on this album to create a very intriguing soundscape. The vocal work on the album is in a style which seems like a marriage of David Byrne and Fred Schneider vocal styles
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Captain Beyond - Captain Beyond
Review by Gary Hill
This 1972 release was the first of three albums by Captain Beyond, who was at the time Rod Evans (formerly of Deep Purple), Bobby Caldwell (who had played with Johnny Winter, among others), Rhino (Larry Rhinehart from Iron Butterfly), and Lee Dorman (also from Iron Butterfly) with several backing musicians. This one almost qualifies as progressive rock.
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Celldweller - Celldweller
Review by Mike Korn
For those who like plenty of electronic beats and bleeps mixed up with their rock and roll, Celldweller is a new name to conjure with. Looking like a cross between one of the Misfits, the Cure's Robert Smith and pro wrestler, the enigmatic maestro named Klayton is the mind behind the madness of Celldweller.
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Cheap Trick - At Budokan-The Complete Concert
Review by Gary Hill
This disc is the classic Cheap Trick album At Budokan with several tracks added to make it both representative of the whole performance and a two CD set. It is safe to say that Cheap Trick both defined and transcended the power pop genre. They combined (and continue to) catchy melodies, metallic leanings,
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James Christian - Meet the Man
Review by Greg Olma
Melodic rock has been maligned a lot in the press but I have always been a fan of this type of music. There is not much depth as far a lyrical content goes but what it lacks in lyrics, it makes up in good catchy melodies and flawless performances.
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Commander Cody - Live from the Island
Review by G. W. Hill
There aren’t any big surprises on this live recording from Commander Cody.
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Colin Spring and the Band That Murdered Silence - Cancion De Pollo
Review by Gary Hill
I have to give kudos to any band whose name has a literary origin, and this is one such outfit. Their moniker comes from a passage by Joseph Conrad where he says that the house band in a club was "not so much making music as murdering silence."
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Collective Soul - Dosage
Review by Lisa Palmeno
Collective Soul's Dosage is definitely "collective"; the sum of the the parts make a very cohesive, coherent, and unified artistic piece. The CD is percussively unique overall, with many different sounds that would appeal to gen x'ers, but loaded with influences from the '70s on up.
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Concrete Blonde - Bloodletting
Review by Gary Hill
This album is a very nice work, featuring many musical themes and textures. Although not all of the album`s lyrics fit the Halloween mode, the title track is firmly rooted there, and much of the music has tones that work well.
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Concrete Blonde - Live In Brazil
Review by Gary Hill
With Live In Brazil Concrete Blonde have given us a solid album showcasing their live performance. Those whose only introduction to the band are the singles might find this to be a bit raw, but truly that edge really adds something.
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Alice Cooper - The Eyes of Alice Cooper
Review by Gary Hill
Alice Cooper has never been the most consistent artist. When he has it right he is brilliant.
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Alice Cooper - Dragontown
Review by Gary Hill
Last year Cooper introduced to a world he called "Brutal Planet", and it was a brutal sounding very hard-edged release that had a strong concept to it. One would expect more of the same on his follow up, but that is not what he delivered.
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Alice Cooper - Dragontown (Special Edition)
Review by Gary Hill
This Special Edition version of Alice Cooper's Dragontown contains the entire original album as the first CD of this 2 CD set. A second CD has been added wiuch contains four previously unreleased songs and two videos.
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Alice Cooper - Brutal Planet
Review by Gary Hill
Quite probably Alice's strongest release in years, and possibly one of the best ever, this disc is a concept album that musically seems to take the classic Alice sound and bring it up to date with a hard (even brutal) edge. The album really seems to fully integrate those two types of sounds, which is something that he seems to have been struggling with in recent years.
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Alice Cooper - Welcome to My Nightmare
Review by Gary Hill
To many this classic album represents Alice Cooper at his theatric best. It is a loosely knit concept album that at times is a bit weak, at times a bit over the top, but in many ways a spooky masterpiece.
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Alice Cooper - The Last Temptation
Review by Gary Hill
This album is show biz from Cooper. It really feels like much of the high entertainment of `70`s era Cooper, while bringing a new intensity and power to them. This one has plenty of spooky moments along with humor.
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Alice Cooper - A Fistful of Alice
Review by Gary Hill
It has been said that this release is redundant because hard-core Alice Cooper fans already have a solid live album in The Alice Cooper Show. However, I find that this release is a a considerably better recording, and that the performance presented herein is superior to that one.
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Alice Cooper - Hey Stoopid
Review by Gary Hill
This album showcases a metal perpective on the classic Cooper sound and also shows prog tendencies in several places. Alice is joined on this album by many musicians, including several very notables guests (Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Ozzy Osbourne and others).
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Cracker - Garage D'Or
Review by Gary Hill
One of the bands that emerged when the great Camper Van Beethoven broke up, Cracker has always been an intriguing band that merges a poppy sort of mentality with a great alternative take on retro sounds. They are perhaps similar to what REM might be if Stipe and company didn't take themselves so seriously.
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Robert Cray - Twenty
Review by Gary Hill
Robert Cray has always been lumped into the blues category, but this disc (along with the rest of his catalog) really shows that while his music at times fits well within that genre, more often than not it is far more wide reaching than the compartmentalized pigeon hole that the moniker creates.
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