Two weeks ago, punk rock veterans Green Day released a documentary about their beginnings under the name “Green Day – The early days” and it set their fandom “The Idiot nation” into mayhem with a first ever look into the glorious trio’s beginnings. Not more than 5 days ago another formidable punk rock force Blink-182 released yet another single “6-8” from their upcoming deluxe version of ‘California’ and it was nothing like we’ve ever heard from them before. Now, the third member of the Punk rock triad SUM41 bestows upon us yet another blessing which is a new music video for their song ‘Goddamn I’m Dead Again’ and it’s without a doubt the most skate punk thing the Internet has seen this year.

In the music video they totally take us back to the roots, the skate punk scene. The video captures them throwing a kick ass party in a skate park with the same vibe of their iconic early 2000’s hit ‘Fat Lip’. It’s like they’re saying “Yeah we may be old, punk rock may not be relevant anymore, but it lives in us, and in every one of our fans”.

Edited by: Ahmed Khalil

“Heavily electronic, even heavier than usual” those were the first words that came to mind after listening to the track, and I think this is the reason behind the single’s release. The 1975 is simply experimenting exploring new grounds digging deeper into their musical character and testing their fans’ reactions.

Now let me be honest here, when it comes to electronic music, I am pretty sure you will find me last in line, but this right here is different somehow. Mathew’s voice is heavily auto-tuned in the track to the point it becomes nearly unrealisable, which is something I usually would consider a musical turn-off but it somehow potentiates the band’s usual lost/stoned/drunk vibe.

Finally, something that must be mentioned in this article that the song has a serious “Daft Punk” vibe in it that you just cannot miss nor ignore. The track made me excited for what’s to come from the British group and what they have to offer their fans in their upcoming musical products.

Edited by: Bishoy Nader

“A song written in the company of friends, torn apart and stitched back together several times over like all the best relationships… It’s about leaving the past where it belongs, and loving the people around you for not only their light, but their darkness too.” These were the words of the band’s frontman Alex Gaskarth, from an E-mail he sent to the band’s fans all over the world. He mentioned that in this album he took a step back and looked at his life from a third person view, evaluating the different versions of himself throughout the years, naming them and creating personas. The album then is a collection of these persona’s stories.

Now, it won’t be possible to review the track only without reviewing its music video, as I do believe they were meant to form one unit. The video gives that third dimension to the track; it basically is its soul, the thing that makes it whole, a breathing and a living being.

The music video features Alex, the band’s lead vocalist doing his laundry as he stares through the washing machine and gets lost in a thought, the exact thought he talked about in the previously mentioned E-mail. He stands in the center throughout the video as people pass by him and start affecting him one way or another, sometimes positively and sometimes the other way around.

The track reaches its climax after Alex’s band mate Jack Barakat dresses him a worn-out jacket with the album’s logo on its back. This is the time we finally see Alex reacting with the music screaming “Dirty laundry looks good on you” as a reference to the past and how it shapes what we are right now, that it’s nothing to be ashamed or afraid of.

Edited by: Bishoy Nader

Apart from the beautiful fact that it’s a Green Day song, the song gives an overwhelming “21st Century breakdown” vibe, as if it was written at that time, even Christian and Gloria – The boy and girl on 21st century breakdown album cover”- appear in the Lyric Video they just released on Facebook.

The song is heavily leaning towards punk rock, as part of Billie Joe’s New year’s resolution to “destroy the phrase pop-punk forever”. It has all the elements of a good ol’ punk rock song, the lyrical themes, the loud fast–paced music, the attitude in the vocal performance, everything. It’s your typical post “Warning” Green Day song. Just get 5 seconds of the song you will definitely know it’s a Green Day song.

So far, the two singles haven’t been able to meet the undoubtedly -totally reasonable- sky-high expectations of punk rock fans, some of them are even counting on this comeback to regain punk rock’s lost position in TV, Radio and music charts. The songs are just not that good of compensation to those last 4 years of total disappearance, but who knows? Maybe the album will be.

Finally, If you’re a Green Day fan, here’s a piece of advice, do not expect the song to completely overwhelm you the first time, give it time, it will take it’s time to grow on you then you’ll absolutely love it, just like what happened with ‘BANG BANG’.

Edited by: NJ Bakr

First time I listened to the track, I got bored by the repeated musical sentence in its beginning but then I understood its role; to emphasize the importance and to put the focus on the lyrics, although how generic, meaningless and repetitive, it was with nothing new or special in it. It should’ve been way more powerful specially when the music is used to shed the light on it, more powerful than “Life is here and we are all alone, sitting here don’t know where to go” and “It won’t be so easy this time”, you might as well start talking about swag, money and guns.

The vocals in the track are very poor as well, and heavily edited to the extent that destroys the original voice and produces a weird freak voice unsuitable for the track’s atmosphere.

As for the music video, it was poorly produced and directed, with no or very little effort put into it. The point of a music video is to add another dimension to the music, another aspect, when a track is enjoyed alone that when its video then the music video was a fail and waste of time and money.

Overall, I could say this is a failed application for a good concept, Urban Rock. 

Written by: Ahmed Hafez
Edited by: Bishoy Nader

“I feel that this song literally saved my life. I was at my absolute lowest point of what seemed like a never-ending recovery. When I was at a tipping point of falling back into drinking or straying the course of recovery, I grabbed a pencil and paper instead of a bottle and started writing,”. That was Deryck Whibley, band’s front man talking to Entertainment Tonight Canada about this song, and it really has battle scars, victories and struggles all over it. Whether musically, lyrically or vocal wise.

According to reports, Deryck lost his kidneys and liver to alcohol, some days he wasn’t even able to walk, Deryck says that that this song helped him through these hard times, and that him working on a record was crucial for his recovery, that he might have not won this battle if it wasn’t record.

One of the crystal clear signs that this song was indeed about this battle, that, towards the music video’s end we see him setting fire to a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, along with lots of stuff from his past, including a skateboard.

JadaL has gone through disturbances after their first album Arabic rocks when lead vocal Ramy Delshad left the band causing a drop in their music’s depth, which was one cut directed towards their second album, another cut was that they went from rock to pop rock, a place where many Arabic speaking groups gone and never returned.

As soon as they announced their album, everyone went crazy with excitement. Had to wait sometime until the hype was over so we can focus on this review we’re presenting you:

Now, they are finally back, still on the same track – I suppose -with a break up song named ‘Kanz’… He is the Kanz, she lost him, she will regret it, she is and ungrateful ***** who forgot about everything he has ever done for her and –seemingly- she is seducing other men. Despite all of this he is begging her to stay. The song really doesn’t quite make much sense but it has a catchy chorus and some sweet ass –JadaL branded- guitar solos, it’ll pass.

Musically it is not different much than El Makina songs; the song starts slow, builds up throughout the song to reach its peak towards the end, just like ‘I’m in love with walabint’, ‘Ana bkhafmn el commitment’ and ‘Ma Raddatish’ from last album.

The music video features – as always- lyrics of the songs infused into it and it mainly concentrates on Mahmoud playing the guitar in a dark atmospheric vibe.

Finally, to honest, and although of how much I am a fan of JadaL but the song is not much, not rewarding enough for the long wait but It most definitely is something for thirsty JadaL fans to feast their ears on.

Edited by: NJ Bakr

From the first instance playing this song I felt like I’m listening to a Rise Against track, and that – of course- was a brilliant thing, they gave me the same feeling, they have the same sound, the same style and attitude, you could put Tim McIlrath‘s (Rise Against’s vocalist) voice into the song and it would just make perfect sense, even more than it already does to be honest.

The vocalist in this song isn’t really doing as much of a great job as the music, which is just perfect and delivers the message and the spirit of the band to the listener but the the vocals are just the missing link in this track, as they’re just not strong and expressive enough.

Lyricwise, I honestly didn’t get a word of what was voiced. It’s okay to get angry all you want and voice this anger as loud you want. Artists compete at who’s better at letting this anger out artistically, but voicing it the wrong way makes it lose its meaning and you are left with nothing but vocal noise, perhaps it’s just me, but I honestly didn’t get a word of what was said after 0:20.

The band’s called Silhouette Cities and was founded in 2008, an American band headquartered in Washington DC, they “generize” themselves as Rock/Alternative, they say that their style combines elements of alternative, pop, metal and punk, they’ve released their first EP Objects in Motion in January 2012 and then followed it on August 2015 with their latest album – the one this song is from – No Worse for the Wear.

Listen to the track reviewed here, ‘Snakes and Vultures‘.

Edited by: Jailan El Rafie

When I read the “About” section on their Facebook page, – and being the hardcore punk rock fan myself – I really didn’t get the idea behind “Elegant Punk”. As you all might know, punk is all about anarchy, revolution, mess and complete chaos, so how could any of this be elegant?

But then after going through their music I got the feeling that they are like the “Vee” (from the movie V for vendetta) of music, remember how elegant he was and full of class during the whole thing? Setting the world on fire but remaining classy nonetheless. That’s what King Dean are, the “Vee” of music… The elegant punksters.

The song ‘Dance for me’ is a fun song. Lyrically, it’s basically meaningless but it’s a nice song to dance to, the vocalist Daniel Plančić does a great job with the vocal performance. It’s one of those songs you just can’t listen to just once, the tune is great and it’s very fitting to Plančić’s vocal range. There’s also a small bass solo, which I found very enjoyable. The track is medium-length, its pace of isn’t that fast for a punk dance song but it’s cool. They don’t wanna lose their elegance.

Written by: Ahmed Hafez
Edited by: Ahmed S. Khalil

Follow King Dean:

• Website: www.kingdean.ch
• Twitter: @KingDeanBand
• Instagram: @kingdeanband
• SoundCloud: @wearekingdean

They sing about stars, planets and space but they lack the ambient and progressive characters of Cosmic Rock, they have the repetitive riff- centered style of stoner rock but they have faster tempo than this subgenre, not fast enough to be considered as punk thoughspecially with lyrics in hand so I decided to stick with the description they have for themselves, “Avant Garden is an alternative rock band currently based in Central Finland, drawing influences from stoner rock, alternative and indie rock music,” after adding to this the fact that the band was formed in a bar in Helsinki, Finland after a Queens Of The Stone Age concert you will have a very good idea about what kind of music they produce, music influenced by bands like Queens Of The Stone Age, Kyuss, Melvins, De Staat and Arctic Monkeys, so it’s a mixture of several styles of music and you can sense the effect of every style on the music they finally produced, so basically if someone wants to make music similar to what they produce either listen to the same bands or just get seriously high and hold a guitar.

The track ‘16:18’ is 3 minutes and a half, holding the theme of the album it is incorporated in The Amazing Adventures Of Space Cadeta concept album telling the story of a space cadet’s trip to space starting by takeoff from planet earth in the second track ‘Apollo’ until he is lost in space in the fifth and last track ‘Voyager’.

Musically the track is not trippy despite of the space theme it has, the music actually serves to express the energy of the space cadet when he started his journey, his hopes and aspirations so the music is found to be kind of upbeat with repetitive guitar riffs, kind of like classic punk but not just yet.

You can find the band’s music here.

Written by: Ahmed Hafez
Edited by: NJ Bakr