Music
SLUG Magazine’s collection of reviews covering the latest and greatest of Utah-based music, covering all varieties of genre, style and type.
Local Reviews: Skychange
Supposedly inspired by heavy doses of psilocybin, Hallelucination almost covers up its regrettable style and terrible taste by thickly laying on highly produced psyche-out space effects and decent guitar chops. … read more
Local Reviews: Sawed Off Smile
Ogden’s Sawed Off Smile play modern rock/hardcore on Chaos Theory. Heavy riffs and plenty of clean, yet well executed melodies that don’t excessively rely on breakdowns like some of their peers. If you enjoy the bands in the band equation above, the album is a good offering—think the melody and heaviness of Mudvayne meets the early emotions of Tool with a hint of the rawness of the Deftones’ first album. … read more
Local Reviews: Mindstate
It’s got some soul to it. The Black Lungs EP has some character to it as well. Normally the self-loathing game can get a little played, but Dusk One does it and sells it with a proper delivery. Opening with a soulful Shawshank-Redemption beat you get a solid idea of what you’re in for, solid beats and meaning. … read more
Local Reviews: J.P.Whipple
I popped this bad boy in on the way to/through southern Utah recently. It’s sometimes folk-country music made for great road trip music, mixing with the increasingly redder rocks—and the “Mexican” elements of the music manifested what it might be like taking the same trail down to Las Vegas a-carousing back when honky settlers were exploring the southern deserts of this country. … read more
Local Reviews: Invdrs
The only things you really need to know about the Invdrs’ Electric Church is it makes you feel alive yet doomed, and you need to own this album. With drum hits that sound like bones snapping and popping under the immense weight of the distortion-maximized guitar and bass, you will welcome this sonic atrocity to melody. … read more
Local Reviews: I Hear Sirens
E. H. Gombrich said, “To talk cleverly of art is not difficult, because the words critics use have been employed in so many different contexts that they have lost all precision.” So is writing a review about a post-rock record. … read more
Local Reviews: The Hung Ups
Dripping sexual frustration as teenage pop-punk is prone to do, there’s no more to Red Rocket than twelve songs about girlfriends, pizza and alcoholism. The songs blast through with such haphazard high energy that they are almost indistinguishable. … read more
Local Reviews: Heterodactyl
These local boys deserve credit for coming up with charismatic instrumental parts which complement each other nicely, but the overall production feels overdone in a smooth jazz kind of way. I couldn’t connect with Fourier because I felt so far away from what was going on. … read more
Local Reviews: Hearsay
Poppy punk chops are fun to listen to and that’s all there is to it. Doesn’t matter how high-pitched the vocals, how emo the subject matter, or how derivative the melodies. Those things are secondary. Hearsay is about playing power drums and rock guitar with energy. Perfectly moshable rhythms, staccato fills, and guttural bass punctuate the tightly structured songs. … read more
Local Reviews: The Fully Blown
How do I relate to you the greatness found on this record? In complicated words I could say, The Fully Blown is a heavy hard rock band with post-punk influences and lightly dusted with hardcore inflections, with touches of psychedelic guitar work. Simply put, they fucking rock. … read more