Soundwave Revolution Springs Some Surprises

While the Soundwave Festival usually has a lot of bands that readers of this website probably don’t know (cos the author of this website has no idea either!), it usually throws up a couple of rock legends that we will want to see.

Now there is a new Soundwave Festival, this time called Soundwave Revolution and it has also provided a few big names that will be of huge interest to “older punters”

Headlining Soundwave Revolution are Van Halen, Alice Cooper, Hole, Sisters Of Mercy, Danzig, Kevin Devine, Bad Religion, Machine Head and Alter Bridge.

There is a couple of remarkable announcements in there. Van Halen will be touring with David Lee Roth out front, the first time he has ever toured Australia with the band. Alice Cooper is in great form recently as his your from last year showed and Hole is always going to be of interest with Courtney Love being a compelling character at the very least. But the one that particularly interests me is Sisters of Mercy. I must admit that is one band that I simply assumed I’d never see live. They will definitely be worth the price of a ticket on curiosity value alone.

Those headliners join these already announced acts:

All Time Low | Attack! Attack! | Black Veil Brides | Cro-Mags | Dashboard Confessional | Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows | Devin Townsend | Every Time I Die | Face to Face | Four Year Strong | Framing Hanley | Funeral For a Friend | Gojira | Hatebreed | Hellogoodbye | Hellyeah | Hollywood Undead | Holy Grail | In This Moment | Kvelertak | Madina Lake | Make Do And Mend | Panic! at the Disco | Relient K | Set Your Goals | Skindred | Steel Panther | Story Of The Year | Street Dogs | Sum 41 | Terrible Things | The Acacia Strain | The Damned Things | The Dangerous Summer | The Swellers | The Used | The Word Alive | This Providence | Thrice | Thursday | Times of Grace | Unearth | Watain | We Are The In Crowd | We Are The Ocean | Whitechapel | Yellowcard | Young Guns | Zebrahead

The dates:

Brisbane – 24th September

Sydney – 25th September

Melbourne – 30th September

Adelaide – 1st October

Perth – 3rd October

 

Tickets are on sale June 2.

 

Out Of Our Minds – Melissa Auf der Maur (Roadrunner)

Given that Melissa Auf der Maur is best known at Courtney Love’s bass playing  sidekick in Hole, she probably has to work harder than most to establish an individual identity that accurately reflects her own aesthetic.

This album goes a long way to doing just that.

It’s an album that bewilders slightly on first listen but grows in stature with repeated listens.

It’s a little bit alternative (whatever that means) but it also gives a surprising sympathetic nod to the progressive rock type music characterised by the likes of Kansas, Rush and even Blue Oyster Cult.

Yes, really!

Somehow, almost miraculously, she gets the balance almost perfectly right. She’s a bass player and unapologetically a lot of the songs are built around rumbling bass lines and strong rhythmic beds.

At times like on Lead Horse and The One these spiral off into very accessible pop melodies and irresistible choruses whereas in other songs they veer into definite prog-rock style jams. On The Key she merges this bass driven concept with a very cool hook to build another memorable song.

She even treats us to a killer (sorry) murder ballad, Fathers Grave on which she duets with Glenn Danzig.

It’s actually a really interesting musical journey and old-fashioned in the sense that it constitutes a fully realised album rather than a bunch of single song downloads masquerading as an album.

MAdM (as she likes to be known, saving a number of keystrokes) is a genuinely intriguing artist, almost determinedly anti-fashion and in so doing becoming retro-cool. A song like 22 Below is so bombastic (in a Sisters of Mercy type way) that it almost becomes a parody but she gets away with it, partly through great musicianship and partly through sheer strength of will.

It would have taken significant commitment to make an album like this drawing as it does from oft-ridiculed genres but in the end it brings something new and substantial to the body of work it draws on.

I suspect this will be an album that its audience continues to return to long after it has discarded most of its contemporaries. Out Of Our Minds is a work of substance.

Celebrity Skin – Hole

This was the moment when we stopped and thought that maybe, just maybe Courtney Love was going to defy expectations and deliver something extraordinary. This song is simply spectacular.

Courtney Love – punk rocker, turned tabloid disaster-area turns on the celebrity culture that has so offended her and spits in its eye and kicks it in the nuts as she leaves. She takes aim at the culture of “hooker/waitress/model/actress” and the machine that sucks them in and spits them out. Of course nothing was achieved by her rant – the same machine still operates unabated today. It wasn’t gonna stop just cos Courtney Love decided to point out its obscenity.

The remarkable thing about this song is that is gets in spits its bile and is gone again in no more than 2.40, yet every time you hear it you feel like you’ve been dragged through a long and involved wringer. It feels like an epic rock track but in fact it’s a very punk rock styled single.

Billy Corgan clearly had a bit to do with the music and the big chords in the opening riff are very Pumpkins like but that’s hardly a drawback. This is probably the best vocal Courtney Love ever performs and alas she wasn’t destined to top this song for relevance or its ability to resonate in the moment.

It’s a cracking song though.