critique
Modern Drummer is the world’s most widely read drum magazine, is dedicated entirely to the art of drumming and caters to the needs of amateur, semi-pro, and professional drummers.
Album Review: Nerve Live in Europe
Following a series of studio EPs that continued to expand and refine an electronic style executed by humans, Jojo Mayer and Nerve return with a much-anticipated album of performances captured during a 2014 European tour. The music is beautifully recorded,…
Billy Joel A Matter of Trust: The Bridge to Russia
Essentially an expanded rerelease of Billy Joel’s 1987 live album, Концерт, the double-CD/Blu-ray/DVD package A Matter of Trust: The Bridge to Russia delivers unreleased audio and a more complete performance of the album’s companion concert film, Live in Leningrad. It…
Nels Cline Singers Macroscope
Genre-hopping has been Wilco guitarist Nels Cline’s method of operation across his solo efforts, and that sense of adventure surely permeates the proceedings on the fifth album by this trio, which also features bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Scott Amendola.…
Robert Wyatt ’68
The tracks on this collection were recorded shortly after Wyatt’s band Soft Machine had broken up—temporarily, it would turn out—following a tour of the States with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In fact, Wyatt worked on the tunes while staying at…
Kneebody The Line
In its sputtering rhythms and swirling melodies, Kneebody is a freely roaming polyglot touching on Live-Evil-era Miles Davis, Rudder (particularly the contemporary art-funk band’s drummer, Keith Carlock), the British prog band Gentle Giant, various aggregates of hip-hop, and jam-band hypnosis.…
Rush Clockwork Angels Tour
DVD (2) or BLU-RAY LEVEL: ALL $24.98 Next year will mark Rush’s fortieth anniversary. Judging by the energy the band puts forth on its latest live release, another forty doesn’t seem out of the question. Okay, maybe another ten—the point…
Rival Sons Head Down
CD The L.A. band Rival Sons derives its inspiration from the era when rock was the sole playground of mannish boys with big-ol’ bell bottoms and bigger Afros. On their second long-player, drummer Michael Miley and crew continue to…
Metal Drumming Concepts: Vital Beats, Exercises, Fills, Tips & Techniques by Andols Herrick
BOOK/DVD LEVEL: ALL $16.99 Andols Herrick, who spent many years behind the kit for the metal band Chimaira, covers the ground that drummers who play heavy music must tread, including double bass creativity and developing blast beats. Along with…
Mice Parade Candela
CD/ALBUM Drummer/multi-instrumentalist Adam Pierce leads this indie band through an array of catchy, song-based tunes and experimental arrangements highlighting a stylized sense of craft and musicianship. On “Pretending,” Pierce opens with some soft left-hand doubles that he moves…
Modern Drum Set Stickings by Swiss Chris
BOOK/CD LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE TO ADVANCED $14.99 Modern Drum Set Stickings is a relevant and entertaining product with plenty of ideas for expanding the tool kit and thinking a little differently. Sticking charts are presented in duple and triple meter,…
Between The Buried And Me The Parallax II: Future Sequence
CD/ALBUM Over an appropriately cinematic soundscape, The Parallax II: Future Sequence investigates perpetually relevant issues like the destructive nature of humanity. Likewise, the band continues to be on the cutting edge of modern progressive metal, and like the…
Kamelot Silverthorn
CD/ALBUM Silverthorn marks the tenth studio album—and first with new singer Tommy Karevik—for symphonic metal band Kamelot. Always a group to blend everything from progressive metal to doom/gothic and classical elements, on this release the band tells the…
METRIC MODULATIONS: CONTRACTING AND EXPANDING TIME WITHIN FORM, VOL. 2 BY ARI HOENIG AND JOHANNES WEIDENMUELLER
BOOK/DVD LEVEL: ADVANCED $19.99 If you’re familiar with the adventurous music that NYC drummer Ari Hoenig makes with his band as well as with the modernistic pianists Kenny Werner and Jean-Michel Pilc, then you know that Hoenig’s a wizard when…
ULTIMATE DRUM LESSONS: FILLS AND CHOPS, ADVANCED INDEPENDENCE & POLYRHYTHMS
DVDS LEVEL: ALL $14.99 EACH The Ultimate Drum Lessons series cherry-picks highlights from across the extensive Hudson DVD catalog, bringing students a “best of” playlist from a generous grouping of today’s masters. The two newest collections continue to enlighten. With…
Call of the Wild Leave Your Leather On
CD Well, Call of the Wild drummer Allison Busch sure got it right in her blog a couple weeks ago: The band’s sound definitely comes out of Motörhead, Thin Lizzy, and other straight-up, balls-to-the-wall rock outfits. This is pure,…
