Dorkgasm Gonzo Is God

            When word broke that Portishead would be releasing their first album in a decade, I could barely contain my excitement. I have been a fan of the trip-hop act from the U.K. since their first album, Dummy, came out in 1994. The band’s blog teased fans with progress reports and they played some new songs at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in England. One would expect a triumphant return, a bold comeback to remind fans why they fell in love with Portishead all those years ago, but then one would be disappointed.

            Describing the band Flogging Molly to the uninitiated is difficult. They have defied clear genre classification since they released their debut album, Swagger, in 2000. Eight years and three more albums later, they’ve evolved into the penultimate in Irish folk/punk, if such a genre exists. Hell, it may as well, and their latest record, Float, is one of the greatest to date.

            When I first listened to Daft Punk all those years ago, I remember thinking how awesome it was, but I thought then that they would get lost in the glut of other bedroom producers that were making their way onto the scene at the time. Now, more than ten years after I first purchased the “Da Funk / Musique” single with sweaty hands, I can see how wrong I was.

            Fans of Nine Inch Nails have come to expect a remix album after the release of any record over the last 17 years. Typically, these records are collector’s pieces, featuring crunchier sounds and unedited studio mixes that were later cleaned up. On the whole, they were fairly inaccessible to the casual fan, but this has been a banner year for Trent Reznor’s Electro-Pop-Industrial outfit.

            In 2004, Skindred released their debut album, Babylon to some acclaim and little fanfare. They spent the next three years touring their asses off across the globe, keeping in touch with fans via the internet and promising a sophomore disc to rival their first effort. Now it is 2007, and that disc was well worth the wait.

Rob Zombie is an artist first, and a filmmaker/musician second. Another view might hold that his films and music are part of his artistic body of work. In either case, he shows his ability to assemble seemingly unrelated pieces into a whole better than ever before on the new soundtrack to his remake of Halloween. This is the kind of album that rips your balls off and uses them as a makeshift hood ornament on a ’76 Dodge Charger.